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This "From the Archives" article provides the texts of two articles on Native Americans written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first, Alice C. Fletcher's speech on "The Legal Condition of Indian Women," appeared on pp. 237-241 of the Report of the International Council of Women, March 25 to April 1, 1888 ,published by the National Woman Suffrage Association, Washington, D.C., in 1888. The second, Gertrude Bonnin's report of "A Year's Experience in Community Service Work Among the Ute Tribe of Indians," appeared in the American Indian Magazine, vol. 4, no. 4 (October-December 1916), pp. 307-310. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1916, the United States experienced its first polio epidemic, resulting in 6,000 deaths and 21,000 injured individuals. Medical practices were ill prepared to stop the disease and treat survivors. Historians have documented the creation of the polio vaccine during the 20th century, but less is written about efforts to provide rehabilitation services to children afflicted with polio. This research looked at Polio After-Care Committees, a new form of community practice that provided care to children with disabilities. The Committees worked to change community-level systems of care while providing medical care, demonstrating that new forms of community-based service organization could reach children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the paper titled "Economic stabilization of the family: The standard of living" by Harry L. Lurie that was presented at the 5th Annual Meeting of the National Conference of Social Work in Memphis, Tennessee on May 2 to 9, 1928. It mentions the issues to consider in analysing poverty in terms of standards of living and sources of income. It also explores the development of the Chicago Standard Budget by social agencies in Illinois to govern the assistance to poor families.

In 1905, Massachusetts General Hospital initiated the first medical social work program in the United States. Based on the writings of its leaders, this paper presents the early history of medical social work in the United States. Inspired by developments in European health care that emphasized the community context of disease, medical social work pioneers saw a need to individualize the patient while also promoting public health measures in the community, improving the patient's environment to eliminate the causes of disease. In addition, since they served patients because of their diseases rather than their poverty, medical social workers were among the first to provide social work services to the non-poor. In spite of their emphasis on environmental change, many of early medical social work leaders had an anti-institutional bias; they were suspicious of large-scale solutions for what they saw as fundamentally individual problems. Consequently, methods for promoting individual adaptation developed more rapidly than methods for promoting environmental change. Ironically, the medicalization of social problems in contemporary times has resulted in a focus on individual pathology rather than social and lifestyle causation in health, even as the rising cost and complexity of the system challenges health care consumers in the United States. Reaffirming the environmental emphasis of medical social work pioneers provides a way for today's health care social workers to incorporate environmental modification into their practice and promote the health of all citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]