Dr. Whelan presented this speech on November 10, 1992 upon her acceptance of the Calver Award presenter by the Environmental Division of the American Public Health Association.
This lecture pays tribute to Homer Calver and his crusade against premature death and disease during the first decades of this century. Calver's greatness came because of the time in which he lived.
The modern cinema often portrays the early twentieth century as the gilded age of romance and comfortable leisure. But, it also was a world with the persistent stench of raw sewage and suffocating air pollution; a world haunted by misery and early death from tuberculosis, diphtheria, influenza and diarrheal diseases; a time when medical procedure and practices were medieval Calver was more than...