Events

Staff Publications

Meat, Medicine, and Human Health in the Twentieth Century

(London: Pickering and Chatto, 2010)
David Cantor, Christian Bonah and Matthias Doerries (eds.)
This collection of ten historical essays explores some of the complex relations between meat and human health in twentieth-century North America and Europe. Its subjects include the relations between the meat and the pharmaceutical industries, the slaughterhouse and the rise of endocrinology, the therapeutic benefits of meat extracts and the short-lived fate of liver ice-cream in the treatment of pernicious anaemia. Other articles examine responses to BSE and bovine tuberculosis, cancer and meat consumption, DES in cattle, American-style meat in Mexico and Nazi attitudes towards meat eating.

Cancer in the Twentieth Century
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)
Edited by David Cantor, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Office of NIH History
On both sides of the Atlantic, cancer control programs emerged in the early twentieth century; most were focused on early detection and treatment. Yet, those initiatives took very different forms in different countries. Focusing on the United States and Britain, this volume features works on subjects such as the portrayal of cancer in the movies, feminist surgeons, risk factors for breast cancer, and the emergence of clinical trials.

A Life Worth Living: A Doctor's Reflections on Illness in a High-tech Era
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008)
Robert Martensen, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Office of NIH History
Intended for general readers confronting tough questions about how to navigate serious illness, this book of eight linked tales draws on Martensen’s experiences of caring for approximately 75,000 patients as an emergency physician.

Biomedicine in the Twentieth Century: Practices, Policies, and Politics
(IOS Press, 2006)
Edited by Caroline Hannaway
A book presenting new scholarship on the history of the NIH and the history of biomedicine, and honoring the career and accomplishments of the Office's founding director, Dr. Victoria A. Harden.

NIH Highlights

Archived issues of the NIH History Highlights newsletter (PDF format).