Charles V. Chapin
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Charles Value Chapin (January 17, 1856 in Providence, RI – January 31, 1941 in Providence) was a pioneer in public health practice, serving as Health Officer for Providence, RI between 1884 and 1932. He also served as President of the American Public Health Association in 1927.
His observations on the nature of the spread of infectious disease were often dismissed at first, but eventually gained wide-spread support. His book "The Sources and Modes of Infection" was frequently read in the United States and Europe.
The Providence City Hospital was re-named the Charles V. Chapin Hospital in 1931, to recognize his substantial contributions to improving the sanitary condition of the city of Providence.
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[edit] Career
Charles V. Chapin MD, became a pre-eminent U.S. public health official with a career spanning nearly half a century, or 48 years, he served as the Superintendent of the Providence, Rhode Island Department of Health. He was considered to be the Dean of City Health Officials. He became President of the American Public Health Associaton and won numerous awards from this organization. He served as President of the American Epidemiological Society. He was awarded the distinguised Marcellus Hartley Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, and the W.T. Sedgwick Medal of the APHA. He won honorary degrees from Brown University, Rhode Island State College, and from Yale, where W.T. Winslow, the father of modern American epidemiology, was chair.
[edit] Publications and Accomplishments
He was a prolific writer. One of his classic works was entitled, The Sources and Modes of Infection (1910), and A Report on State Public Health Work Based on a Survey of State Boards of Health (1915). Six of his papers were in the category of public health administration, five were in communicable diseases and five were published in epidemiology and vital statistics. Later review found five of the papers particularly noteworthy. Their tiles were: The Fetich of Disinfection 1906, and Studies in Air and Contact infection at the Providence City Hospital 1911). These two contained the basic tenets of the Sources and Modes of Infection cited above. He published on the administrative and resource aspects of the public's health, in How Should We spend the Health Appropriation (1913). His contributions to community hygiene and sanitary science were considered lasting. According To John Barry, in, The Great Influenza, (2005), he led successful community hygiene practices to combat the pandemic flu of 1918 at Providence.
Chapin taught us that diseases come from persons, and not things, and that they are spead only by contact, food, and animal carriers. He inspired others to evaluate all of the collective efforts of community hygiene in terms of outcomes, an early effort to quantify the social sciences aspect of public health practice. Further, he was a forerunner to the notion of health disaprities among the poor, having published, Deaths among Taxpayers and Non-Taxpayers (1924), an early connection of health and economic status. In 1926 he published Changes in Contagious Diseases, which described the variety of infectious agents in smallpox Vs. scarlet fever. Altogether he published more than 113 titles. During his lifetime it was written, that his contributions to the philosophy and methodology of public health were greater than, "any living man". He was compared to his forerunners in the field, Frank, Chadwick, Simon, Shattuck, Sedgwick, and Biggs, as one of the greats of all time in public health. These comments and summary of the man and his work were written by none other than C.E.A Winslow, of Yale.
[edit] Publications
- Charles V. Chapin. 1910. "The Sources and Modes of Infection". John Wiley & Sons, New York.
- Charles V. Chapin. 1901. "Municipal Sanitation in the United States". Snow & Farnham, Providence, RI.
[edit] References
- Milton Terris. 1999. "Charles V. Chapin (1856-1941), 'Dean of City Health Officers'". Journal of Public Health Policy 20(2):214-220.
- Martha Mitchell. 1993. "Encyclopedia Brunonia".
- Elizabeth Fee and Dorothy Porter. 1992. "Public health, preventive medicine and professionalization: England and America in the ninetheenth century". in "Medicine in Society", Andrew Wear, editor. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- John M. Barry. 2004. "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History". Penguin Books, New York.
