By virtue of its size, New York City was the first American city to encounter the large-scale health problems of rapid urbanization. As a result, it was forced to pioneer in areas of medicine and health, and to relate public health developments to political, economic, and social change.

A History of Public Health in New York City, 1866–1966, is the second of two volumes by John Duffy. The preceding volume traced the development of the sanitary and health problems of New York form the earliest Dutch times to the culmination of the nineteenth-century reform movement that produced the Metropolitan Health Act of 1866, the forerunner of the New York City Department of Health. In this book, Duffy provides a fascinating and beautifully documented short history of many important aspects of life in New York City over the 100 year period—sanitation, water, food, housing, schools, hospitals, clinics, health centers, diseases, medical care, and the general state of medicine. Chapters provide a narrative history of the major developments in the Health Department, followed by several topical chapters dealing with environmental conditions, epidemic diseases, the state of medicine, and maternal and child health.

John Duffy was Priscilla Aiden Burke Professor of History at the University of Maryland.

An examination of the rise and development of therapeutic care for mental illness, studying the activities involved in providing ward care to hospitalized mental health patients. This book came about as a result of a nationwide survey of patient care as provided in representative state and psychiatric hospitals, as well as an experimental project with the Boston Psychopathic Hospital to establish cooperative relations with a state and a neuropsychiatric Veterans Administration hospital in the vicinity, in order to test the applicability of principles and practices such as those used by it. In collaboration with Robert W. Hyde.

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 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.

The study reported in this 1960 book examined the process of foster home placement and the impact of this process on the foster child. It also aimed to show some of the limits and potentialities of research in an actual practicing agency. The study grew out of a Russell Sage Foundation residency held by the author during 1954–1955 at the Chicago Child Care Society.

Eugene A. Weinstein was professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University.

This 1924 book documents a study on child welfare work in the District of Columbia begun in 1918 and revisited in 1922 by the Department of Child-Helping of the Russell Sage Foundation. It aimed to develop a plan of action to improve the conditions of children in foster homes and institutions. Topics include training schools, the juvenile court, and the care of mothers with children.

Hastings H. Hart was director of the Department of Child-Helping of the Russell Sage Foundation.

Your Community was first published in 1935. This later edition, revised by Donald S. Howard, director of the Department of Social Work Administration of the Russell Sage Foundation, to reflect changes in social work and community and civic organizations, examines the idea and scope of the local community and its efforts to conserve the health and safety and promote the education and general welfare of its inhabitants. Topics include housing planning and zoning, medical care, consumer protection, public assistance, worker wages and employment conditions, and recreation. Its followup, Studying Your Community by Roland L. Warren, was published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 1955.

Joanna C. Colcord was director of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation.