This book, published in 1956, is a comprehensive report of a study that was made of the needs of the elderly through a survey conducted at the Kips Bay-Yorkville Health Center in New York City. An essential need for old people, it argues, is an advisory and consulting service that would be an integral part of the official community health and welfare structure.

Bernard Kutner, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University

David Fanshel, Family and Children’s Service, Pittsburgh

Alice M. Togo, Cornell University Medical College

Thomas S. Langner, Cornell University Medical College

This volume contains fifteen papers that were delivered at a two-day conference under the auspices of Russell Sage Foundation and the Rockefeller University. The first volume was published in 1967 and dealt with the topic of neurophysiology and emotion. The second volume contained the proceedings of the conference on genetics and behavior and was published in 1968. The aim of the series was to strengthen the dialogue between the biological and social sciences.

Contributors:  Joaquín Cravioto, Richard H. Barnes, Edward A. Suchman, William A. Mason, Leon J. Yarrow, Peter Marler, Andrew Gordon, I. Arthur Mirsky, René Dubos, Richard H. Walters, D.E. Berlyne, William Kessen, P. Herbert Leiderman, Jerome Kagan, Urie Bronfenbrenner, and Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr.

Cultural Difference and Medical Care, published in 1954, explores the difficulties inherent to U.S. medical practitioners in supplying health services and medical care to Spanish-speaking people living in the American Southwest. While its examples are drawn from this culturally distinct population, its principles apply as well to any cultural or subcultural group in any geographic setting. 

Lyle Saunders was associate professor of preventive medicine and public health (sociology), University of Colorado, School of Medicine.

In 1949 the Russell Sage Foundation began a program for the improvement of the synthesis of research in the social sciences in professional practice. This book explores some of the major areas of interest shared by medicine and social science. Particular reference is made to those concepts and formulations that bear directly upon the problems of health and that may instigate collaborative research between medical and social scientists, linking disciplines such as sociology, social psychology, and social anthropology with medical research and practice to better clarify the function of the social and cultural dynamics at work in illness and human adaptation.

Leo W. Simmons was professor of sociology at Yale University. Harold G. Wolff was professor of medicine at Cornell University Medical College.

Perceptions of Illness and Medical Practice points to behavioral science knowledge that can be used by physicians, public health specialists, nurses, medical social workers, and others who are directly or indirectly concerned with health problems. Examples are given of the use of this scientific knowledge in the actual care of the patient.

            The first part of the book outlines the major concepts from psychology, sociology, and anthropology that are pertinent for the health professions. The emphasis is on the manner in which people perceive situations and the effect of physiologic, psychologic, and sociocultural factors in determining variations in perceptions. The second part deals with the subject of disease and its interpretation, especially in connection with beliefs and attitudes toward disease. The main feature of the third part is an analysis of the rights and duties, the demands and role expectations of the physician, the nurse, and the medical social worker. The final section describes the social structure, subculture and value system of the hospital, with special attention given to the general hospital. It deals with the hospital patient, his expectations and perceptions, his ways of behaving in illness, his values, the staff’s perception of him and his behavior, and the effect of these perceptions on his care.

Stanley H. King was associate director of research at the University Health Services and lecturer on clinical psychology in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University.

Written in response to the question of who should organize, administer, and finance professional schools of nursing, this 1948 book, sponsored by the National Nursing Council, examines what the future of nursing entailed and presents a plan for standardized curricula and training in nursing education.

Esther Lucile Brown was director of the Department of Studies in the Professions of the Russell Sage Foundation.

Written as a guide to nurses who work with mental health patients in the development of skills to meet everyday problems and to improve their understanding of the emotional as well as the physical needs of the persons under their care, this 1956 book addresses problems such as: nurse and patient fears; patient aggressiveness; the demanding, withdrawn, or delusional patient; patients with suicidal tendencies; and those who have eating difficulties. Case material and actual conference recordings are used to illustrate the subject matter under discussion, drawn from a research project of one author and from the extensive practical experience in psychiatric nursing of the other author. The book develops an approach to understanding these problem situations and methods of resolving them for the patient’s benefit and improvement.

Morris S. Schwartz and Emmy Lanning Shockley, with the assistance of Charlotte Green Schwartz

This book explores the idea that the attitudes and behavior characteristics of many who suffer impaired vision are socially acquired, not inherent in their physical condition. A part of this socialization occurs when the person who has vision trouble interacts with the seeing world in the encounters of everyday life. Another part of it occurs in organizations for the blind. This study is based on a major field research project sponsored by the New York Association for the Blind and the Russell Sage Foundation.

Robert A. Scott was professor of sociology at Princeton University.

From the preface: “This book deals with man as a member of society, and with his behavior of concern to public health. Its aim is to impart in an organized fashion some of the conclusions, of potential significance to public health, that may be drawn from man’s studies of himself as an individual and as a member of society. What is presented represents an attempt to unite theory, research, and practice in a away meaningful to the public health practitioner.”

Andie L. Knutson was professor of behavioral sciences, School of Public Health, and research behavioral scientist, Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley.

This book takes origin from Cornell’s program for research and training in culture and applied science, addressing the question of facilitating the introduction of modern agriculture, industry, and medicine to areas that are deficient in these technologies. Of central concern is the fact that technological innovations are apt to have consequences ranging from hostility toward the innovator to extensive disruption and crisis in the society. More generally, people resist changes that appear to threaten basic securities, that they do not understand, or that are forced on them. This casebook offers actual examples of efforts, both successful and unsuccessful, to bring about a change in some culture, with the desirability of using social science as an aid to technology.

Contributors: John Adair, Anacleto Apodaca, Wesley L. Bliss, Henry F. Dobyns, Allan R. Holmberg, Margaret Lantis, Alexander H. Leighton, Allister MacMillan, Morris Edward Opler, Tom Taketo Sasaki, Lauriston Sharp, Rudra Datt Singh, Edward H. Spicer, and John Useem.

Edward H. Spicer was professor of anthropology and sociology, University of Arizona.