In June 1958, about eight months after the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite circled the globe, former Illinois governor and future United Nations ambassador Adlai Stevenson had an idea for another scientific endeavor with global implications: What if the world community could cooperate on achieving a selection of public health goals that knew no boundaries?

U.S. Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas had Stevenson’s speech printed in the Congressional Record. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota promoted Stevenson’s idea on the world stage culminating in its adoption by the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) in 1959.  It would subsequently be sponsored by the UN as the International Health and Medical Research Year (abbreviated as IHY), and coincide with the WHO’s Twelfth World Health Assembly in 1961.

What is IHY? It is a proposed International Health Year to be sponsored by the World Health Organization of the United Nations.

If the plan for it goes through it will be put into effect in June, 1961. During the following year all the nations of the world would contribute their skill and knowledge in an all-out war against cancer, heart disease, mental illness, old age and infants’ diseases, as well as many other human ills.

Among several common themes in early books for children, instruction in conduct recurs frequently. Searching American Children’s Books, 1654-1819, a new Readex database, whether using Suggested Searches or employing Advanced Search, will result in many relevant texts. As for girls, the instructions on conduct sometimes coincide with the instructions for boys, but not always.

You’re traveling to another dimension, north of Rutland, Vermont, to a place not only of sight and sound but of mind, on a journey to what was the epicenter of paranormal activity in 1870s America.  Your destination does not appear on any map, but about five miles off Route 7 in the Town of Chittenden there’s a signpost for the High Life Ski Club, formerly the farmstead of the Eddy family. You’ve arrived at “Spirit Vale,” a wondrous realm whose ethereal residents, if they existed at all, benefited from the active suspension of disbelief by mortals holding hands with strangers in a dimly lit room. Call it “the twilight zone.”

The 1870 census lists the human population of Chittenden, Vermont, as 802 souls including brothers William and Horatio Eddy, their sister Mary, and numerous other close relatives. From 1873 through 1875 the psychic population of the Eddy farmhouse was augmented by a plethora of “materialized spirits” such as “Honto” (a Native American maiden), “The Witch of the Mountain,” even Lord Byron, the famous poet who died in 1824. Guests attending a séance stood a good chance of also seeing the shades of departed loved ones, and many testified to exactly that.

As seen in Part 2 of this series, U.S. newspaper coverage of the Spanish Influenza ended 1918 on a relatively positive note. On New Year’ Eve the San Jose Mercury News reported:

The conditions for San Jose and adjoining territory seem to be on a direct road to improvement as far as influenza is concerned….At all the local hospitals, the conditions were reported as better, nearly all those ill were doing nicely and the percentage of new cases had dropped to a very small number.

The next day, January 1, 1919, the same paper’s headline was “Influenza epidemic Takes Turn for Worse….38 Cases Reported.” Dr. James Bullitt, San Jose’s health officer warned “last night that a great deal of precaution must be observed in homes where cases of the disease exist….that the number of pneumonia cases developing each day is on the increase…”