9781422282830

THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD 1 94 5 TO THE P R E S ENT

Health andMedicine

John Perritano

Series Advisor: Dr. Ruud van Dijk, Contemporary History and History of International Relations, University of Amsterdam

THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

1 94 5 TO THE P R E S ENT

Health and Medicine

BOOKS IN THE SERIES

Culture and Customs in a Connected World Education, Poverty, and Inequality Food, Population, and the Environment Governance and the Quest for Security Health and Medicine Migration and Refugees Science and Technology Trade, Economic Life, and Globalization Women, Minorities, and Changing Social Structures

THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

1 94 5 TO THE P R E S ENT

Health and Medicine

John Perritano

SERI ES ADVI SOR Ruud van Dijk

Mason Crest

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© 2017 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

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ISBN: 978-1-4222-3639-0 Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3634-5 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-8283-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Perritano, John. Title: Health and medicine / by John Perritano.

Description: Broomall, PA : Mason Crest, [2017] | Series: The making of the modern world : 1945 to the present | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016020061| ISBN 9781422236390 (hardback) | ISBN 9781422236345 (series) | ISBN 9781422282830 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: World health--Juvenile literature. | World War,

1939-1945--Health aspects--Juvenile literature. | Public health--International cooperation--Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC RA441 .P47 2017 | DDC 326.1--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020061

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents Series Introduction 6 CHAPTER 1: Medicine in the Aftermath of World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 CHAPTER 2: Healing a War-Weary World 17 CHAPTER 3: Geopolitics, Health Care, and Medicine 23 CHAPTER 4: Globalization, Health, and Medicine 33 CHAPTER 5: The Current Scene 45 Timeline 56 Further Research 59 Index 60 Photo Credits 63 About the Author and Advisor 64

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CONTENTS

Series Introduction I n 1945, at the end of World War II, the world had to start afresh in many ways. The war had affected the entire world, destroying cities, sometimes entire regions, and killing millions. At the end of the war, millions more were displaced or on the move, while hunger, disease, and poverty threatened survivors everywhere the war had been fought. Politically, the old, European-dominated order had been discredited. Western Euro- pean democracies had failed to stop Hitler, and in Asia they had been powerless against imperial Japan. The autocratic, militaristic Axis powers had been defeated. But their victory was achieved primarily through the efforts of the Soviet Union—a communist dictatorship—and the United States, which was the only democracy powerful enough to aid Great Britain and the other Allied powers in defeating the Axis onslaught. With the European colonial powers weakened, the populations of their respective empires now demanded their independence. The war had truly been a global catastrophe. It underlined the extent to which peoples and countries around the world were interconnected and interdependent. However, the search for shared approaches to major, global challenges in the postwar world—symbol- ized by the founding of the United Nations—was soon overshadowed by the Cold War. The leading powers in this contest, the United States and the Soviet Union, represented mutually exclusive visions for the postwar world. The Soviet Union advocated collec- tivism, centrally planned economies, and a leading role for the Communist Party. The United States sought to promote liberal democracy, symbolized by free markets and open political systems. Each believed fervently in the promise and justice of its vision for the future. And neither thought it could compromise on what it considered vital interests. Both were concerned about whose influence would dominate Europe, for example, and to whom newly independent nations in the non-Western world would pledge their alle- giance. As a result, the postwar world would be far from peaceful. As the Cold War proceeded, peoples living beyond the Western world and outside the control of the Soviet Union began to find their voices. Driven by decolonization, the devel- oping world, or so-called Third World, took on a new importance. In particular, countries in these areas were potential allies on both sides of the Cold War. As the newly independent peoples established their own identities and built viable states, they resisted the sometimes coercive pull of the ColdWar superpowers, while also trying to use them for their own ends. In addition, a new Communist China, established in 1949 and the largest country in the developing world, was deeply entangled within the Cold War contest between communist and capitalist camps. Over the coming decades, however, it would come to act ever more independently from either the United States or the Soviet Union. During the war, governments had made significant strides in developing new tech- nologies in areas such as aviation, radar, missile technology, and, most ominous, nuclear

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energy. Scientific and technological breakthroughs achieved in a military context held promise for civilian applications, and thus were poised to contribute to recovery and, ultimately, prosperity. In other fields, it also seemed time for a fresh start. For example, education could be used to “re-educate” members of aggressor nations and further Cold War agendas, but education could also help more people take advantage of, and contrib- ute to, the possibilities of the new age of science and technology. For several decades after 1945, the Cold War competition seemed to dominate, and indeed define, the postwar world. Driven by ideology, the conflict extended into politics, economics, science and technology, and culture. Geographically, it came to affect virtual- ly the entire world. From our twenty-first-century vantage point, however, it is clear that well before the Cold War’s end in the late 1980s, the world had been moving on from the East-West conflict. Looking back, it appears that, despite divisions—between communist and capitalist camps, or between developed and developing countries—the world after 1945 was grow- ing more and more interconnected. After the Cold War, this increasingly came to be called “globalization.” People in many different places faced shared challenges. And as time went on, an awareness of this interconnectedness grew. One response by people in and outside of governments was to seek common approaches, to think and act globally. Another was to protect national, local, or private autonomy, to keep the outside world at bay. Neither usually existed by itself; reality was generally some combination of the two. Thematically organized, the nine volumes in this series explore how the post–World War II world gradually evolved from the fractured ruins of 1945, through the various crises of the Cold War and the decolonization process, to a world characterized by inter- connectedness and interdependence. The accounts in these volumes reinforce each other, and are best studied together. Taking them as a whole will build a broad understanding of the ways in which “globalization” has become the defining feature of the world in the early twenty-first century. However, the volumes are designed to stand on their own. Tracing the evolution of trade and the global economy, for example, the reader will learn enough about the polit- ical context to get a broader understanding of the times. Of course, studying economic developments will likely lead to curiosity about scientific and technological progress, social and cultural change, poverty and education, and more. In other words, studying one volume should lead to interest in the others. In the end, no element of our globalizing world can be fully understood in isolation. The volumes do not have to be read in a specific order. It is best to be led by one’s own interests in deciding where to start. What we recommend is a curious, critical stance throughout the study of the world’s history since World War II: to keep asking questions about the causes of events, to keep looking for connections to deepen your understand- ing of how we have gotten to where we are today. If students achieve this goal with the help of our volumes, we—and they—will have succeeded. — Ruud van Dijk

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SERIES INTRODUCTION

WORDS TO UNDERSTAND antibiotic: medication that destroys bacteria. colonialism: policy by which a country rules over other people for its own benefit. insecticide: chemical that kills insects. therapeutic: designed or used for treating illness.

ABOVE: Medicine was tested to its limits during World War II. Here, First Lieutenant Phyllis Hocking of the U.S. Army adjusts a glucose bag for a soldier in the Philippines on December 24, 1944, in a church that doubled as a hospital. A congregation kneels around them for Christmas Eve services.

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B ernard Rice was a long way from home. Born and raised in Indiana, Rice wanted to fly fighter planes during World War II. When he reported for active duty on January 2, 1943, he told the corporal in charge, “I can fly and navigate. How do I get into the Air Force from here?” “The Air Force is filled up, buddy,” the corporal sternly replied. “Everybody wants to fly. I want to fly. If an opening comes up, I am going to get it.” Rice never got his wings, but he did become an army medic in the 82nd Armored Medical Battalion. The unit eventually found its way to Europe, where one day in the thick of battle, Rice rushed to the aid of a wounded GI with several bullet holes in his abdomen. “There was little hope for him,” Rice wrote in a 1997 article, “Recollections of a World War II Combat Medic,” published in the Indiana Magazine of History . “There were vital organs in that area, and he had so many holes. We sprinkled sulfa powder all over his belly and put on a compression bandage.” Despite Rice’s deathly prognosis, the GI survived “and returned to his company a few months later.” The sulfa powder, no doubt, played a huge role in the soldier’s recovery, as it stopped the wound from becoming infected. Although the drug (there were several of them), with its active ingredient sulfanilamide, was discovered decades before, it was during the war that Allied soldiers used the narcotic to kill disease-causing bacteria before it could spread and kill. All combat medics, Rice included, carried packets of the drug in their haversacks. Not only did sulfonamides kill infections, but doctors also gave them to soldiers to prevent meningitis, pneumonia, and urinary tract infections. Thousands of soldiers carried sulfa drugs in their first aid kits. “Once the United States was in the war, production of sulfa drugs rose rapidly to high levels that were largely sustained for the duration,” writes historian John C H A P T E R 1 Medicine in the Aftermath of World War II

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CHAPTER 1

The contents of a U.S. military first aid kit from 1945.

E. Lesch in The First Miracle Drugs: How the Sulfa Drugs Transformed Medicine . “While the therapeutic revolution initiated by sulfa drugs had begun well before the war, a number of other important medical innovations occurred during the war and con- tributed with the sulfa drugs to historically unprecedented low levels of mortality and morbidity among combatants.” Medicine in the War’s Aftermath W orld War II changed the world in many ways. It forged new political alliances. It hastened the demise of colonialism . It also made the world a more globalized, in- terconnected place as people shared their culture, language, and religion. One of the greatest transformations came in the area of medicine and science. World War II had

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A wartime poster depicting the life-saving benefits of penicillin, used extensively during World War II and after.

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CHAPTER 1

produced appalling casualties and created new situations through which diseases were able to breed and flourish. Doctors learned quickly how to adapt. They devel- oped new surgical techniques, medicines, devices, and procedures to save as many lives as they could. “The war has served as a vast clinic and laboratory in which thousands of doc- tors have obtained experience far exceeding in scope and variety the work which the civil practitioner might expect to encounter in his private practice,” Major General Norman T. Kirk, surgeon general of the U.S. Army, said at the time. “After the war, the public will be able to draw on the services of physicians and surgeons whose skills have been sharpened by intensive practice caring for the sick and wounded.” Kirk was more than accurate. Doctors in the thick of battle found innovative ways to treat injuries and cure diseases, such as using sulfa powder, as discussed above. The use of penicillin was another breakthrough. Although Alexander Fleming had discovered the antibiotic in 1928, it wasn’t until World War II that doctors used the drug to treat infections. Penicillin was so effective that pharmaceutical companies worked overtime to make 2.3 million doses of the drug before the Western Allies in- vaded France in 1944. “Thanks to PENICILLIN,” one advertisement of the day read, “He Will Come Home!” The drawing on the ad showed a medical corpsman injecting a fallen soldier. Penicillin was one of many new tools that armies used to help both soldiers and civilians. In past wars, diseases such as typhus and malaria, each carried by insects, killed more people than bombs and guns. But in 1939, a Swiss chemist named Paul Müller discovered that dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known as DDT, was a powerful insecticide . During World War II, hundreds of thousands of soldiers sprin- kled DDT powder in their tents and on their sleeping bags to kill any typhus-carrying lice. Planes doused entire Italian towns with DDT to control typhus. In the Pacific, U.S. planes sprayed the poison to control mosquitoes that carried malaria. The war also forced surgeons to develop new surgical techniques. British doctors at Queen Victoria Hospital, for example, pioneered the use of plastic surgery to piece together the faces of pilots and others who had been disfigured by fire. Surgeons, led by Archibald McIndoe, found a way to remove healthy skin from one part of a sol- dier’s body to cover areas that had been burned. Dwight Harkin, an American army surgeon, broke new ground in open-heart surgery as he removed bullets and shrapnel from the hearts of soldiers. World War II also spurred advances in blood transfusion, immunization, and anesthesia. According to a report by the Medical Department of the U.S Army, the number of cases of gangrene, a life-threatening bacterial infection that usually sets in after an injury, was extremely low in 1944–1945 (0.35 percent) among soldiers wounded in battle. During World War I (1914–1918), the rate of infection among U.S. soldiers was 1.77 percent. In addition, the army reported that tetanus, a bacterial

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disease that affects the nervous system, was not a problem during World War II be- cause soldiers were immunized before going overseas. After thewar, the discovery of newmedical techniques anddrugs went onunabated, especially in the field of nuclear medicine. The U.S. government shipped radioisotopes, created during the building of the atomic bomb, to doctors and scientists around the world for study in the hopes they would develop new diagnostic tools for cancer and new cures for disease. A new type of medicine—nuclear medicine—was born. Healing Despite Borders Y et something more profound was happening in the war’s aftermath. When the guns of war had silenced, the world began to think about health and medicine in a new way. Germs and disease do not stop at border crossings, rivers, or mountain ranges. Nor do germs care about political, economic, and social ideologies. Disease attacks without regard to race, religion, national origin, or political philosophy.

Members of the World Health Organization in Kampala, in present-day Uganda, during the 1950 conference on malaria eradication.

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CHAPTER ONE

Advances in blood transfusions saved countless lives during World War II; here, an American soldier receives a blood transfusion with the help of his fellow soldiers on a makeshift cot in New Guinea.

In 1948 the United Nations set up the World Health Organization (WHO) to combat and eradicate diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and other contagions. WHO’s constitution states that the organization is to be “the directing and coor- dinating authority on international health work.” WHO became one of several UN agencies, including the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (now known as UNICEF), designed to respond to humanitarian emergencies. WHO focused its attention primarily on developing countries, especially those in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. WHO’s early history, however, was fraught with political turmoil, as Cold War tensions between the Western democracies, led by the United States, and the com- munist world, led by the Soviet Union increased. The UN wanted all its members to support the organization, but the Soviet Union and other communist countries balked at participating. The Soviets said they weren’t satisfied with the work of the organization and walked away for a time. BetweenNovember 1949 and August 1950, six other communist countries followed the Soviets and left the organization, believing WHO was not helping the communist countries in Eastern Europe. The communists wanted more money, insecticides, vac- cines, and drugs from WHO—but less advice from its officials. The crisis underscored the ever-widening chasm between the Communist Bloc and the Western democracies as the Cold War began. The Soviets eventually returned to WHO in 1957.

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