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Pamphlet created by the American Women’s Hospitals (AWH) highlighting their work around the world, including Greece, Albania, Greece, India, and the southern United States, and appealing for contributions. Features a reprint of a 1932 New York Times article about the AWH’s rural health service work in the Spartanburg County, South Carolina, where deaths from pellagra were cut in half in two years. Four pages. Illustrated with photographs.

Why It Matters

The AWH reprinted the New York Times article “Win Fight on Pellagra: Medical Unit at Spartanburg County Reduces Deaths by One-half.” The 1932 article reports on the successful efforts of the AWH to fight pellagra in Spartanburg County, where the disease was widespread and often fatal. By printing this article from a respected national news source such as the Times, the AWH built credibility and hoped to gain more financial support for their work in in the rural Southern United States.

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Analyze this evidence

  • What is the purpose of this pamphlet? Who was it created for/was its intended audience?
  • Why do you think a health-mobile ( a car with a trailer full of medical supplies and medicine) was the best way for the doctors of the AWH to reach people in Appalachia?
The spread of pellagra in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, which during 1930 took on alarming proportions, has been checked and the deaths in the last two years has been cut by more than one-half, according to the annual report of the Spartanburg County Department of Health. The success of the movement to stamp out pellagra in that part of the country is largely due to the efforts of the American Women's Hospitals, which established its first unit in the United States at Spartanburg in February, 1931. The unit runs a health-mobile equipped with electric lights, a gas stove and running water. It has been used over two years and taken out over the county to show the industrial sections and the rural sections what foods to buy, and how to prepare to prevent pellagra. Year after year this work was carried on and Pellagra reduced until, according to official reports, it is practically wiped out in Spartanburg County.