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Questions tagged [public-health]

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24 votes
2 answers
4k views

Were most people in pre-industrial societies in chronic pain?

My understanding is that, prior to the industrial revolution (and, indeed, for a fair while after), most people in Europe did not have a nutritionally balanced diet (if they were not calorifically ...
Nethesis's user avatar
  • 475
1 vote
1 answer
350 views

What was the expected survival time for a person infected with syphillis in the 1930s?

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study had the following survival rates for the participants as of: In the study, investigators enrolled a total of 600 impoverished African-American sharecroppers from Macon ...
JonathanReez's user avatar
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9 votes
1 answer
2k views

How did PHS researchers prevent Tuskegee experiment participants from obtaining treatment on their own?

According to the Wikipedia article: During World War II, 256 of the infected subjects registered for the draft and were consequently diagnosed as having syphilis at military induction centers and ...
JonathanReez's user avatar
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30 votes
1 answer
5k views

Is there a record of a rabid human attacking another human?

I was just reading the Wikipedia page on rabies, and the following claim is made: Although it is theoretically possible for rabies-infected humans to transmit it to others by biting or otherwise, no ...
Curious Layman's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
141 views

How long was the lung cancer knowledge gap between big tobacco and publically available information?

How long can a huge, deadly secret be kept? According to this paper, evidence was accumulating from lung-cancer studies in the 1940's-1950's, but in 1960 only 1/3 of doctors knew. The official warning ...
Kevin Kostlan's user avatar
23 votes
4 answers
3k views

Did medieval kingdoms issue health related guidelines?

Today national health protection agencies around the world such as CDC in United States often issue health and personal hygiene guidelines during pandemics or epidemic or where a large population of ...
SwiftPushkar's user avatar
8 votes
0 answers
183 views

What did a 19th century New Orleans Yellow Fever immunity passport look like?

In response to proposals for a so-called "immunity passport" system to be developed so that people who have recovered from COVID-19 can return to life as usual (without being subject to ...
Robert Columbia's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
88 views

How sophisticated were efforts to track the spread of past pandemics?

I am currently inquiring into the COVID Tracking Project for a first-year university course. I would like to give some historical context, i.e. past attempts at epidemic tracking. Searching the web ...
Micah Windsor's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
414 views

How are historical nutrition data gathered?

In the book 'Sapiens', Yuval N. Harari mentions that after the Agricultural Revolution child mortality soared because of malnutrition. While I can see how eating only carbohydrate-based products leads ...
hmhmmm's user avatar
  • 183
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

Were cities that enacted lockdowns during the 1918 flu pandemic successful in preventing any infections? [closed]

Many parallels are currently being drawn between the flu pandemic of 1918 and the modern spread of the coronavirus, including how a lockdown was imposed in many cities: It happened a century ago, ...
JonathanReez's user avatar
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-3 votes
1 answer
369 views

Why would "loose women" give you bad health?

Many times over the years, I have heard in various contexts, in many different variations, basically the phrase/sentiment: My secret to staying healthy is simply to never smoke, drink or use loose ...
Laymon Lacap's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
2k views

Why was compulsory vaccination abandoned in the UK?

There is currently talk in the UK of making school attendance conditional on vaccination. Similar schemes operate in various places around the world now. Vaccination against smallpox was compulsory ...
emrys57's user avatar
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31 votes
3 answers
7k views

Where (if anywhere) were X-ray machines put on trains or trolleys to image "Everybody over 14 years old"?

The background image in this X-ray analysis sotfware page shows what looks like a trolley or train car on tracks with a sign that says "X-ray Now: Everybody over 14 years old". Where might ...
uhoh's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
497 views

What's the earliest evidence of drug abuse?

Let's define drug abuse as drug use that is harmful to to the user or to others. Evidence of alcohol and opiates go back thousands of years, but some reading hasn't revealed when these substances ...
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4 votes
1 answer
275 views

Which STD did adults & children have in Kamchatka?

In 1817 Vasili Golovnin sailed a ship named Kamchatka from Kronstadt to Kamchatka and met there its governor, Rikord. In "Around the World", he wrote that: Almost all the local common people of both ...
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