Plagues and Politics: The Story of the United States Public Health Service

New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc, 1989. First edition. FIrst printing [stated]. Hardcover. Fair in good dust jacket. Inscribed by an Assistant Surgeon General in 2000. Rear board weakened and reglued.. Sewn binding. Paper over boards. 223 p. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Foreword by Everett Koop. From Wikipedia: "The Public Health Service Act of 1944 structured the United States Public Health Service (PHS), founded 1798, as the primary division of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), (which was established in 1953), which later became the United States Department of Health and Human Services in 1979-1980, (when the Education agencies were separated into their own U.S. Department of Education). The Office of the Surgeon General was created in 1871. The PHS comprises all Agency Divisions of Health and Human Services and the Commissioned Corps. The Assistant Secretary for Health (ASH) oversees the PHS and the United States Public Health Service, Commissioned Corps." From an on-line posting: "Fitzhugh Mullan, M.D. is the Murdock Head Professor of Medicine and Health Policy at the George Washington University School of Public Health and a clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington Univesity School of Medicine. He is also a memeber of the medical staff at the Upper Cardozo Community Health Center in Washington, D.C. Dr. Mullan graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1964 with a degree in history and from the University of Chicago Medical School in 1968. He trained in pediatrics at the Jacobi and Lincoln Hospitals in the Bronx, New York. In 1972 he was commissioned in the United States Public Health Service and practiced in New Mexico as one of the first physicians in the National Health Service Corps. From 1977 through 1981 he served as Director of the National Health Service Corps in Washington, D.C., followed by tours as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Institute of Medicine, as a senior medical officer at the National Institutes of Health and, in 1984-1985, as the Secretary of the Health and Environment Department for the state of New Mexico. During 1986-88 he was on faculty in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health followed by a two years on the staff of the Surgeon General, directing the Office of Public Health History. He was appointed Director of the Bureau of Health Professions in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in 1990 and to the rank of Assistant Surgeon General (Rear Admiral) in 1991. In subsequent years, he served on both the President s Task Force on Health Care Reform and the Council on Graduate Medical Education. In 1996, he retired from the Public Health Service and joined the staff of the journal Health Affairs as a Contributing Editor and the Editor of the Narrative Matters section, positions he continues to hold. Dr. Mullan has written widely for both professional and general audiences on medical and health policy topics. His books include White Coat Clenched Fist: The Political Education of an American Physician (Macmillan, 1977), Vital Signs: A Young Doctor s Struggle with Cancer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), Plagues and Politics: The Story of the United States Public Health Service (Basic Books, 1989), Big Doctoring in America: Profiles in Primary Care (University of California Press/Milbank Fund, 2002). He is the senior editor of Healers Abroad: Americans Responding to Human Resource Crisis in the HIV/AIDS (National Academy Press, 2005)."