In Patient's Best Interest

Relying on a comprehensive survey of local newspapers and government documents, historian Galishoff here completes a two-volume history of Newark's public health policies and actions. ( Safeguarding the Public Health: Newark, 1895-1918 , Greenwood, 1975, was published earlier.) Galishoff shows how New Jersey's largest city developed politically and socially in the 19th century and how its increasing public health problems went untended because of an inflexible political establishment and unplanned, uncontrolled, urban growth that resulted in poverty, massive pollution, and poor sanitation. Galishoff believes that the national acceptance of the bacteriological causation of disease hastened the improvement in Newark's water and sewage systems, although Newarks's present pollution problems and relatively high cancer rate should redirect public health concerns back to the environment. Cogently argued, clearly written, urban social history.