Summary

In this extensive review of her experiences in public health and rural and urban medicine, Eva Salber, MD, explores the commonalities and the differences in medical practice among three environments: pre-World War II South Africa, urban America, and the hills of North Carolina. Trained in South Africa, where she and her husband practiced for many years, Salber came to the US during a very difficult political period for whites in Cape Town.

In Boston, she pursued her passion for the plight of the poor and their health issues by studying further public health and running a ghetto clinic. Later, as a member of the Duke University faculty, she established rural health clinics in North Carolina. She describes, in this memoir, the contrasts among the cultures as well as her own difficulty in obtaining the funding and support she needed to carry out her work in each setting.

Commentary

This is a remarkable journal of the problems encountered by women in gaining medical education and position in the first half of the 20th century, and the continuing problems of providing health care for the poor in all three of the locations in which the author worked. Altogether, the work is enlightening, well organized and easily readable. It provides the reader with the details of one woman physician's struggles, but maintains a positive and loving view of the patients and even the politics.

Publisher

Duke Univ. Press

Place Published

Durham, N.C.

Edition

1989 1989 1989

Page Count

270