The Social Transformation of American Medicine is a book written by Paul Starr and published by Basic Books in 1982. [1] It won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction [2] as well as the Bancroft Prize. [3]
Capers Jones wrote, "Paul Starr's book detailed the attempts of the American Medical Association to improve academic training of physicians, establish a canon of professional malpractice to weed out quacks, and to improve the professional status of physicians." [4]
According to Lester S. King, the book "offers illumnation and stimulation to physicians and laymen alike and can serve as a reference for scholars. It will give a deeper insight into medical sociology, whose importance to modern life is constantly expanding." [5]
A second edition with a new epilogue by Starr was published in 2017.
The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker that won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction.
Jonathan Weiner is an American writer of non-fiction books based on his biological observations, focusing particularly on evolution in the Galápagos Islands, genetics, and the environment.
The American Medical Association (AMA) is an American professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was 271,660 in 2022.
Arrowsmith is a novel by American author Sinclair Lewis, first published in 1925. It won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize. Lewis was greatly assisted in its preparation by science writer Paul de Kruif, who received 25% of the royalties on sales, although Lewis was listed as the sole author.
JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 48 times a year by the American Medical Association. It publishes original research, reviews, and editorials covering all aspects of biomedicine. The journal was established in 1883 with Nathan Smith Davis as the founding editor. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo of the University of California San Francisco became the journal editor-in-chief on July 1, 2022, succeeding Howard Bauchner of Boston University.
Paul George Vincent O'Shaughnessy Horgan was an American writer of historical fiction and non-fiction who mainly wrote about the Southwestern United States. He was the recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes for History.
Stephen Joel Barrett is an American retired psychiatrist, author, co-founder of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF), and the webmaster of Quackwatch. He runs a number of websites dealing with quackery and health fraud. He focuses on consumer protection, medical ethics, and scientific skepticism.
The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons is the medical school of Columbia University, located at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.
Abraham Flexner was an American educator, best known for his role in the 20th century reform of medical and higher education in the United States and Canada.
René Jules Dubos was a French-American microbiologist, experimental pathologist, environmentalist, humanist, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book So Human An Animal. He is credited for having made famous the environmental maxim: "Think globally, act locally." Aside from a period from 1942 to 1944 when he was George Fabyan Professor of Comparative Pathology and professor of tropical medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, his scientific career was spent entirely at The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, later renamed The Rockefeller University.
Steven Howard Hahn is Professor of History at New York University.
The Pulitzer Prize is awarded to the best in journalism and the arts for pieces of exceptional quality. In 1984, the recipients were:
Paul Elliot Starr is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. He is also the co-editor and co-founder of The American Prospect, a notable liberal magazine created in 1990. In 1994, he founded the Electronic Policy Network, or Moving Ideas, an online public policy resource. In 1993, Starr was the senior advisor for President Bill Clinton's proposed health care reform plan. He is also the president of the Sandra Starr Foundation.
Jacqueline Jones is an American social historian and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history. She held the Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas from 2008 to 2017, is the Ellen C. Temple Professor of Women’s History Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin, and is the past president of the American Historical Association. University of Texas at Austin. Her expertise is in American social history in addition to writing on economics, race, slavery, and class. She is a Macarthur Fellow, Bancroft Prize Winner, and Pulitzer Prize winner in 2024 after twice being a finalist.
Physician writers are physicians who write creatively in fields outside their practice of medicine.
Allan Morris Brandt is a historian of medicine and the Amalie Kass Professor of History of Medicine and Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He is an author of several books, including The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
The Popular Health Movement of the 1830s–1850s was an aspect of Jacksonian-era politics and society in the United States. The movement promoted a rational skepticism toward claims of medical expertise that were based on personal authority, and encouraged ordinary people to understand the pragmatics of health care. Arising in the spirit of Andrew Jackson's anti-elitist views, the movement succeeded in ending almost all government regulation of health care. During the first two decades of the 19th century, states had regularly enacted licensing legislation; by 1845, only three states still licensed medical doctors. Among the leading figures within the movement were Samuel Thomson and Sylvester Graham.
Basic research, also called pure research, fundamental research, basic science, or pure science, is a type of scientific research with the aim of improving scientific theories for better understanding and prediction of natural or other phenomena. In contrast, applied research uses scientific theories to develop technology or techniques, which can be used to intervene and alter natural or other phenomena. Though often driven simply by curiosity, basic research often fuels the technological innovations of applied science. The two aims are often practiced simultaneously in coordinated research and development.
Lester Snow King, M.D. was an American pathologist, medical editor, medical journalist, and medical historian.