MIA: History: USA: Publications: Health
Health
Before the excellent informational quality Health advice for the public monthly periodical Health and Hygiene (1935 - 1938) appeared, there were produced in 1934 three issues of Health.
C. J. Atkins of International Publishers and People’s World very kindly, in a response to a query from me, enlightens us regarding Dr. Luttinger and this publication:
Paul Luttinger’s name first appeared in the Daily Worker in March 1933 in an ad for an upcoming panel of Health experts on "child misery." By August of that year, he had a Health column in the paper and was also listed as a CP candidate for NY Supreme Court in September. By mid-1934, there are references to the May issue of Health in his column. In August 1934, his “Dr. Luttinger Advises” column was replaced by Workers’ Health, to be run by a group of doctors called the Daily Worker Medical Advisory Board Panel. (Don’t know the reason for the replacement...perhaps Luttinger was to focus on Health magazine full time?) I think he also had some pieces in New Masses.
He and a Dr. Daniel Luttinger continued to run ads for their medical practice in the Daily Worker until 1935, after which time I can find no further reference to him.
By 1939, however, he was publishing in the Trotskyist journal The New International, so we can assume he left the party at some point between 1935 and 39.
My [C.J. Atkins] guess is that Health magazine was perhaps Luttinger’s own enterprise, a take-off from his Daily Worker columns, with or without official party funding or support...who knows... I can’t find any ad for the magazine in Daily Worker, only references to it in Luttinger’s columns. At some point in the mid-30s either he had an ideological shift or some kind of falling out and appears to have drifted out of the CP orbit.
Marty adds: One can find on the inside front cover of the June 1934 issue of Health advertisements for major CP USA publications of the time including, particularly prominently so, New Masses.
We provide here, in addition to scans of the complete run (3 issues) of Health a pdf file of crops of Dr. Luttinger’s column on Health, scanned from microfilm of the Daily Worker of 1933 and 1934, and of the announcement the cessation of that column and its replacement with the column "Workers’ Health.
The first two issues of Health presented here I scanned from copies in my personal collection.
The third and final issue is represented here by a scan prepared by the New York Academy of Medicine for me, from a copy of that issue held by them, scanned by Arlene Shaner. Arlene had, some years earlier, very kindly allowed me to personally scan copies of Health and Hygiene in the NYAM collection that had been missing from my personal collection of that publication, at their facility. This allowed me to provide in digital form a complete run of every issue of that publication. More recently the NYAM appears to have abandoned letting researchers make scans on the premises, but offers to scan material on request, for a very modest fee.
Martin H. Goodman MD
Riazanov Library digital archive projects
February 2020 San Pablo CA
Dr. Paul Luttinger columns in the Daily Worker of 1933 and 1934
Health 1934
Last updated on 28 February 2020