This book demonstrates that a pandemic of coronary heart disease occurred in North America, western and northern Europe, and Australia and New Zealand from the 1930s to about 2000. At its peak it caused more deaths than any other disease. The book examines and compares trends in coronary heart disease mortality rates for individual countries. The most detailed analyses are for the United States, where mortality rates are examined for race, sex, and age groups and for geographic regions. Popular explanations for the rise and fall of coronary heart disease mortality rates are examined.

This book demonstrates that a pandemic of coronary heart disease occurred in North America, western and northern Europe, and Australia and New Zealand from the 1930s to about 2000. At its peak it caused more deaths than any other disease. The book examines and compares trends in coronary heart disease mortality rates for individual countries. The most detailed analyses are for the United States, where mortality rates are examined for race, sex, and age groups and for geographic regions. Popular explanations for the rise and fall of coronary heart disease mortality rates are examined.

A look at how the concept of "risk factor" has influenced public health and preventive medicine, with an emphasis upon the study of heart disease. The greatest revolutions in twentieth-century public health and preventive medicine have been the concepts of risk factors and healthy lifestyles as methods of preventing disease. A risk factor is anything that increases the riskof disease in an individual. Lifestyle refers to the individual's personal behaviors with regard to risk factors. Identifying risk factors and modifying them by changing lifestyles in order to prevent disease has become ubiquitousas a strategy in public health. The book examines the history and evolution of the concepts of risk factors and healthy lifestyles and their application to coronary heart disease, the major chronic disease of the twentieth century. The first part contains a history of the use of statistics in public health and medicine, and the ways in which various industries developed the concept of the risk factor. The second part describes the concept of healthylifestyles, which was devised by municipal public health departments and life insurance companies in the early part of the century. The third and fourth parts examine how the concepts of risk factors and lifestyles were applied tothe primary chronic disease of the twentieth century -- coronary heart disease. The focus of the book overall is on coronary heart disease as a public health, rather than a medical, issue, and the various concepts that have beenused in preventing it. William G. Rothstein is Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

In American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century, William G. Rothstein sombines sociological with historical analysis to explain the devlopment of the medical profession in nineteenth-century America. After describing how medicine first became a full-time vocation early in the nineteenth century, Rothstein examines the founding of medical schools and societies, regulatory efforts, and the development of "heroic medicine" as the accepted form of medical practice. But widespread public opposition to heroic medicine soon led to the rise of rival sets such as the botanics, who were popular among the rural population, and the homeopaths, who appealed to the urban upper classes. Excluded from the regular ranks of the medical profession, both sects organized their own schools and professional societies. As Rothstein explains, it was the advent of scientific medicine, with its breakthroughs in surgery and other medical specialties, public health, and bacteriology, that put an end to medical sectarianiam and commercialism. The new laboratory science could at last prove-or disprove-the theories and practices of the major sects.

Provides an introduction to the historical development and current status of various health care topics. The book is organised in sections: basic concepts; public health; health care professions; health care organisations; mental illness; financing health care; and medical education.

In this extensively researched history of medical schools, William Rothstein, a leading historian of American medicine, traces the formation of the medical school from its origin as a source of medical lectures to its current status as a center of undergraduate and graduate medical education, biomedical research, and specialized patient care. Using a variety of historical and sociological techniques, Rothstein accurately describes methods of medical education from one generation of doctors to the next, illustrating the changing career paths in medicine. At the same time, this study considers medical schools within the context of the state of medical practice, institutions of medical care, and general higher education. The most complete and thorough general history of medical education in the United States ever written, this work focuses both on the historical development of medical schools and their current status.