Abortion in England 1900–1967

Mexicans required the stimulus of the influenza epidemic of 1918 before they established a state board of health. He describes the efforts to eradicate malaria between 1923 and 1947, and the contemporaneous success in reducing high infant and maternal death rates. After analysing changes in physician supply and distribution since statehood, Spidle concludes with an analysis ofthe growth of board-certified specialists after 1940, a summary ofthe influence ofthe Lovelace Clinic, and brief profiles of the three dominant institutions during the last twenty-five years: the University of New Mexico School of Medicine (founded 1964), the New Mexico Medical Society, and the New Mexico Board of Medical Examiners. The second book is a more detailed analysis of the Lovelace Medical Center. Ten years after statehood, William Randolph Lovelace and Edgar T. Lassetter became formal partners in a general medical practice in Albuquerque. By the late 1920s, their partnership was generally known as the Lovelace Clinic, and they decided to develop a group practice modelled on the Mayo Clinic. There were twelve doctors in the group by 1941; four more by 1947 including a nephew, Randy Lovelace, who had achieved national renown as a pioneer in aerospace medicine. Spidle discusses the incorporation of the Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research in 1947 and the numerous research projects, especially in aerospace medicine, supported by the Foundation during the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1958 and 1959, the Lovelace Foundation and Clinic acquired considerable notoriety as the site for the medical evaluation of the seven astronauts who participated in Project Mercury, America's first manned spacecraft mission. The number of physician specialists at the Clinic grew from twenty-three in 1950 to seventy-five in 1965, and research expenditures expanded from $13,000 in 1950 to $3,445,000 in 1965, the year of Randy Lovelace's death in a private plane crash. The last two decades of growth and change at the Lovelace Medical Center have included the establishment ofthe Inhalation Toxicology Research Institute and clinical research projects that now involve some 25 million dollars annually; an array of medical education programs, many with the University ofNew Mexico's School of Medicine; the emergence of the Lovelace Health Plan, one of the earliest and largest health maintenance organizations in the Southwestern United States; and transformative affiliations with the Hospital Corporation of America (1984) and the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States (1986). With only occasional lapses into fulsomeness, Spidle has accomplished his objectives of honouring The Lovelace Medical Center and situating its history within local and national contexts. The University ofNew Mexico Press should receive gold stars for the superb design of these books. The tables, maps, and photographs are engagingly aligned with the text, and the presence of notes at the bottom of each page is an exquisite joy for readers who want them.