Category: Health
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A Physician’s View of Prohibition
In 1922, the physician Kurt L. Elsner, M.D. wrote a New York Times Magazine column arguing against Prohibition not from a moral or constitutional perspective, as most debates did, but from a health perspective. And as far as injury to health in concerned, I may state right here that I have seen more people’s health…
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Doctor by Any Other Name
Last December, controversy swirled when a Wall Street Journal op-ed argued Jill Biden shouldn’t go by “Dr. Jill.” The same debate occurred a century prior, when in 1921 a group at UVA formed the Society for the Rationalization of the Title of Doctor. The New York Times Sunday Magazine covered the story: “It may be that the hovering spirit…
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How to Live for More Than a Hundred Years
French doctor L.H. [Louis-Henri] Goizet published a book in 1920 claiming a surefire trick to live past age 100: massaging your head. Let’s just say that’s not the prevailing scientific consensus today. Now for the treatment. He sits us on a stool, and, beginning at the top of the head, for, he says, the brain…
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Nervous Invalids Back on a Peace Basis
The end of World War I was great news for everyone, but especially for psychiatrists. Shouldn’t war have meant more need for psychiatrists, and peace meant less need? Actually, it was apparently the opposite. They’re all back, it seems — that neurotic clan of wealthy women, ranging from hysterical debutantes to idle spinsters — from…
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War as a Tonic for Jaded Feminine Nerves
WWI caused a marked declined in women’s slouching — a change which some doctors attributed to the war itself. Said Dr. Eugene L. Fisk, director of the Life Extension Institute in June 1918: The most gratifying physical change in women is in their posture. Time was, not so far distant, when the clouch was a…
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Baseball as Means of Keeping the Doctor Away
With the MLB season just resuming again last week, let’s take a trip back to 1918, when the two biggest sports were baseball and boxing. Basketball and football were very much secondary on the popularity scale. A recent conversation with my brother speculated about which people from 2018 would still be remembered by the general…
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Less Sugar Means Good-bye to Your Surplus Fat
As the government asked Americans to spend more conservatively in the early months of WWI, one way in which people could save money quickly became apparent. “In 1916 the per capita consumption of sugar in Germany was approximately 20 pounds a person per annum… In England it was about 40 pounds; in France about 37…
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Barring Sex Disease from the American Army
If soldiers in WWI thought the Axis Powers were scary, they had nothing on chlamydia. During the war, the U.S. military lost more than 7 million “person-days” and were forced to discharge more than 10,000 men due to sexually transmitted diseases. Mere months into the war, top official realized this could become a serious problem.…
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Keeping Healthy on 30 Cents a Day for Food
According to the historical consumer price index, 30 cents in August 1917 was worth $5.65 in June 2017, the most recent month for which inflation can be calculated. Can you live on $5.65 worth of food per day in the modern era? The article portrays it as a major feat, but it actually doesn’t strike…
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Small Chance for Draft Dodgers If Doctors Know Their Business
Although we now usually associate the phrase “draft dodger” with Vietnam avoiders going to Canada, the phenomenon occurred on a lesser scale during World War I as well. (Though far less frequently, given the almost unanimous American support and patriotism for the war effort.) This article on the subject begins in the second-person, being addressed…
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