Childhood's deadly scourge

Known as the "deadly scourge of childhood," diphtheria was a highly feared disease in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States. In Childhood's Deadly Scourge, Evelynn M. Hammonds describes how New York City became the first city in the United States to apply laboratory-based advances in bacteriology and immunology to the treatment and prevention of this deadly disease - the first such use of scientific medicine in a public health crisis in this country.

Critical to the successful control of diphtheria, she argues, were unprecedented efforts to remove the stigma associated with the disease and provide access to treatment and preventive vaccines for the entire population at risk.

Childhood's Deadly Scourge shows that the success of the anti-diphtheria programs in New York City ultimately depended on the perception by physicians and the public that the campaigns were classless, rather than class-conscious, interventions. Important, too, was the early recognition by public health leaders that New York City's ethnically diverse population required different strategies for different groups.