Research Catalog

To raise up the man farthest down : Tuskegee University's advancements in human health, 1881-1987

Title
To raise up the man farthest down : Tuskegee University's advancements in human health, 1881-1987 / Dana R. Chandler and Edith Powell ; foreword by Linda Kenney Miller.
Author
Chandler, Dana R. (Dana Ray), 1958-
Publication
Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2018]

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StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextUse in library Sc E 18-818Schomburg Center - Research & Reference

Details

Additional Authors
Powell, Edith, 1940-
Description
xvii, 197 pages : illustrations; 24 cm
Summary
An important historical account of Tuskegee University's significant advances in health care, which affected millions of lives worldwide. Alabama's celebrated, historically black Tuskegee University is most commonly associated with its founding president, Booker T. Washington, the scientific innovator George Washington Carver, or the renowned Tuskegee Airmen. Although the university's accomplishments and devotion to social issues are well known, its work in medical research and health care has received little acknowledgment. Tuskegee has been fulfilling Washington's vision of "healthy minds and bodies" since its inception in 1881. In To Raise Up the Man Farthest Down, Dana R. Chandler and Edith Powell document Tuskegee University's medical and public health history with rich archival data and never-before-published photographs. Chandler and Powell especially highlight the important but largely unsung role that Tuskegee University researchers played in the eradication of polio, and they add new dimension and context to the fascinating story of the HeLa cell line that has been brought to the public's attention by popular media. Tuskegee University was on the forefront in providing local farmers the benefits of agrarian research. The university helped create the massive Agricultural Extension System managed today by land grant universities throughout the United States. Tuskegee established the first baccalaureate nursing program in the state and was also home to Alabama's first hospital for African Americans. Washington hired Alabama's first female licensed physician as a resident physician at Tuskegee. Most notably, Tuskegee was the site of a remarkable development in American biochemistry history: its microbiology laboratory was the only one relied upon by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (the organization known today as the March of Dimes) to produce the HeLa cell cultures employed in the national field trials for the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. Chandler and Powell are also interested in correcting a long-held but false historical perception that Tuskegee University was the location for the shameful and infamous US Public Health Service study of untreated syphilis. Meticulously researched, this book is filled with previously undocumented information taken directly from the vast Tuskegee University archives. Readers will gain a new appreciation for how Tuskegee's people and institutions have influenced community health, food science, and national medical life throughout the twentieth century.
Subject
  • Tuskegee University > History
  • Tuskegee University
  • African American universities and colleges > Alabama > History
  • Medicine > Research > History. > Alabama
  • Poliomyelitis vaccine > History
  • Medicine > Research
  • Poliomyelitis vaccine
  • Alabama
Genre/Form
History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Tuskegee's commitment to health care : an overview -- Health education and outreach expands -- The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and the Carver Research Foundation -- The search for the vaccine -- Tuskegee University's HeLa Cell Project -- After the polio vaccine.
Call Number
Sc E 18-818
ISBN
  • 9780817319892
  • 0817319891
LCCN
2017053878
OCLC
1011680759
Author
Chandler, Dana R. (Dana Ray), 1958- author.
Title
To raise up the man farthest down : Tuskegee University's advancements in human health, 1881-1987 / Dana R. Chandler and Edith Powell ; foreword by Linda Kenney Miller.
Publisher
Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2018]
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Added Author
Powell, Edith, 1940- author.
Research Call Number
Sc E 18-818
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