The American Red Cross
The American Red Cross

Author: Marian Moser Jones

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM

Published: 2013-01-07

Total Pages: 646

ISBN-13: 1421408236

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The iconic relief organization’s activities over a half century of history, through wars, epidemics, and other disasters: “Well-researched . . . fascinating.” —Julia F. Irwin, Bulletin of the History of Medicine In dark skirts and bloodied boots, Clara Barton fearlessly ventured onto Civil War battlefields to tend to wounded soldiers. She later worked with civilians in Europe during the Franco-Prussian War, lobbied legislators to ratify the Geneva conventions, and founded and ran the American Red Cross. The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal tells the story of the charitable organization from its start in 1881, through its humanitarian aid during wars, natural disasters, and the Depression, to its relief efforts of the 1930s. Marian Moser Jones illustrates the tension between the organization’s founding principles of humanity and neutrality and the political, economic, and moral pressures that sometimes caused it to favor one group at the expense of another. This book tells the stories of: • U.S. natural disasters such as the Jacksonville yellow fever epidemic of 1888, the Sea Islands hurricane of 1893, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake • crises abroad, including the 1892 Russian famine and the Armenian massacres of 1895–96 • efforts to help civilians affected by the civil war in Cuba • power struggles within the American Red Cross leadership and subsequent alliances with the American government • the organization’s expansion during World War I • race riots and massacres in East St. Louis, Chicago, and Tulsa between 1917 and 1921 • help for African American and white Southerners after the Mississippi flood of 1927 • relief projects during the Dust Bowl and after the New Deal An epilogue relates the history of the American Red Cross since the beginning of World War II and illuminates the organization’s current practices and international reputation.

American Philanthropy Abroad
American Philanthropy Abroad

Author: Merle Curti

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-29

Total Pages: 680

ISBN-13: 1351532480

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This book tells for the first time, in rich detail, and without apologetics, what Americans have done, in the voluntary sector and often without official sanction, for human welfare in all parts of the world. Beneath the currently fashionable rhetoric of anti-colonialism is the story of people who have aided victims of natural disasters such as famines and earthquakes, and what they contributed to such agencies of cultural and social life as libraries, schools, and colleges. The work of an assortment of individuals, from missionaries to foundation executives, has advanced public health, international education, and technical assistance to the Third World. These people have also assisted in relief and relocation of refugees, displaced persons, and those who suffered religious and racial persecution. These activities were especially noteworthy following the two world wars of the twentieth century. The United States established great foundations—Carnegie, Rosenwald, Phelps-Stokes, Rockefeller, Ford, among others—which provided another face of capitalist accumulation to those in backward economic regions and those suffering political persecution. These were meshed with religious relief agencies of all denominations that also contributed to make possible what Arnold Toynbee called “a century in which civilized man made the benefits of progress available to all mankind.” This is a massive work requiring more than five years of research, drawing upon a wide array of hitherto unavailable materials and source documents.

Blood
Blood

Author: Douglas Starr

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2012-09-05

Total Pages: 628

ISBN-13: 0307823563

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Essence and emblem of life--feared, revered, mythologized, and used in magic and medicine from earliest times--human blood is now the center of a huge, secretive, and often dangerous worldwide commerce. It is a commerce whose impact upon humanity rivals that of any other business--millions of lives have been saved by blood and its various derivatives, and tens of thousands of lives have been lost. Douglas Starr tells how this came to be, in a sweeping history that ranges through the centuries. With the dawn of science, blood came to be seen as a component of human anatomy, capable of being isolated, studied, used. Starr describes the first documented transfusion: In the seventeenth century, one of Louis XIV's court physicians transfers the blood of a calf into a madman to "cure" him. At the turn of the twentieth century a young researcher in Vienna identifies the basic blood groups, taking the first step toward successful transfusion. Then a New York doctor finds a way to stop blood from clotting, thereby making all transfusion possible. In the 1930s, a Russian physician, in grisly improvisation, successfully uses cadaver blood to help living patients--and realizes that blood can be stored. The first blood bank is soon operating in Chicago. During World War II, researchers, driven by battlefield needs, break down blood into usable components that are more easily stored and transported. This "fractionation" process--accomplished by a Harvard team--produces a host of pharmaceuticals, setting the stage for the global marketplace to come. Plasma, precisely because it can be made into long-lasting drugs, is shipped and traded for profit; today it is a $5 billion business. The author recounts the tragic spread of AIDS through the distribution of contaminated blood products, and describes why and how related scandals have erupted around the world. Finally, he looks at the latest attempts to make artificial blood. Douglas Starr has written a groundbreaking book that tackles a subject of universal and urgent importance and explores the perils and promises that lie ahead.