Trends in employee health service : Margaret F. McKiever, editor.

  • United States. Public Health Service. Division of Occupational Health
Date:
1965]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Trends in employee health service : Margaret F. McKiever, editor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    most important of which are engineers, physicians, chemists, and nurses. The industrial physician and nurse are concerned with the well-being of the worker, while the industrial health engineer and chemist are concerned with the condition or “well-being” of the work- er’s environment. The entire program is preventive rather than cura- tive in nature. Quoted from Brandt, Allen D.: Industrial Health Engineering. New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1947, p. v. From the early concepts, which made the industrial physician’s chief interest the administration of first aid to the injured, we have reached a stage of progress where the potential hazards of industry are neutralized before they have actually inflicted harm. From its fragmentary beginnings industrial medicine has attained to the de- velopment of highly organized programs of health conservation which affect the well-being of that large part of our population engaged in the labors of industry. Quoted from Hazlett, T. Lyle: “Industrial Medicine—Historical Notes.” Introduction to Industrial Medicine. Chicago, Industrial Medicine Pub- lishing Co., 1947, p. 6. Medicine has been inclined to approach the subject [industrial hy- giene] in terms of occupational diseases; public health has had a broader approach, regarding workers as individuals who, because of the combined hazards of occupation and industry, including economic disadvantages, constitute a group for which special precautions must be exercised. The precautions applied relate to those hazards peculiar to a given occupation or industry, or both, plus ordinary public-health practices in such fields as nutrition, tuberculosis, syphilis, etc., being concerned not only with working conditions but with the worker’s home and its environment, with his family, their recreation and health education, and their ability to obtain medical, nursing, dental, and hospital care. Quoted from Mustard, Harry S8.: An Introduction to Public Health, second edition. New York, The Macmillan Co., 1947, p. 169. I define industrial medicine as the broad field which is concerned with all of the health problems of employed persons, and industrial health as the objective of industrial medicine. In other words, in- dustrial health is the end and the practice of industrial medicine is the means. Industrial hygiene I consider to be that subdivision of industrial medicine which deals primarily with the prevention of illness, occupational or nonoccupational, through methods applied to the working environment or to the employed individual. Quoted from Goldwater, Leonard J.: “Future of Industrial Medicine.” Industrial Medicine, 17: 27 (January) 1948. Industrial hygiene is primarily concerned with relationships be- tween the health of the worker and the stresses of his occupation and