For What Ails You
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Medical historian Susan Pryor describes the role of the apothecary in the colonial society, and looks at colonial understanding of disease and treatment.
Medicine and Madison Avenue
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Designed to help users better understand the evolution and complexity of medicinal marketing in the 20th century, this website provides more than 600 health-related advertisements printed in newspapers and magazines from 1910 to 1960. Ads are organized into six categories: Household Products; Over-the-Counter Drugs; Personal and Oral Hygiene; Vitamins and Tonics, Food, Nutrition and Diet Aids; Institutional and Pharmaceutical; and Cigarettes. Over-the-Counter Drugs; Personal and Oral Hygiene; Vitamins and Tonics, Food, Nutrition and Diet Aids provide the largest number of advertisements; the Cigarette category offers only one.
Supplementary materials, such as internal reports from marketing companies, American Medical Association reports and editorials, Federal Trade Commission archival records, transcripts of 1930s radio commercials, and medical journal articles, focus on the production and influence of health-related advertisements. A bibliography provides 80 further reading suggestions. The project highlights materials for case studies on Fleischmann's Yeast, Listerine, and Scott Tissue.
AIDS: 25 Years Later
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NBC's Robert Bazells reports on AIDS, 25 years after the Centers for Disease Control first issued a report on what was then a new mystery illness. Since that day, the virus has infected 65 million people, and killed 25 million.
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U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency
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The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency exists to prosecute, investigate, and disrupt drug trafficking and large-scale use of illegal substances.
The agency is not particularly strong on historical resources—with the exception of information from the 1990s to present. However, a few features should be noted for their potential.
If you are interested in the history of the organization itself, the agency offers an eight PDF overview of its actions since its creation (15 to 51 pages per PDF), as well as transcriptions of speeches and testimony. The speeches date from 2001 to present, while the accessible testimony reaches back as late as 1995.
Statistics available on the site include arrests, drug seizures, state substance abuse fact sheets, national studies, and meth lab incidents.
The agency runs a museum in Arlington, VA. Exhibit topics may cover the history of drug epidemics and drug culture in the U.S., the history of prescription drugs and their abuse, and more. If you aren't located in Virginia, the museum also offers five virtual exhibits, some more extensive than others, covering DEA history; DEA deaths; the Purple Heart; the DEA in Iraq; and organization operations and career fields. Available supplemental activity guides are not targeted for history education.