(circa 1922)Previous Author
Bibliography Biography Sources
Bibliography of Items in the Feeding America Collection
Biography
Bertha M. Wood was a dietitian at the Food Clinic of the Boston Dispensary,
whose director at the time was Michael Marks Davis. In 1920, Wood contributed
a study of immigrant diet to Davis' classic work, Immigrant Health and the
Community (1920) which appeared as part of the Carnegie Corporation-sponsored
series "Americanization Studies: The Acculturation of Immigrant Groups
into American Society," published between 1920 and 1921. She expanded
her study to include a discussion of and recipes for additional ethnic groups,
and published it as a book, Foods of the Foreign-Born in Relation to Health.
Intended for physicians, dietitians, nurses, social workers, and others who
provided care to immigrant populations, her book, like her initial study,
was based on recognizing the necessity of understanding and accommodating
traditional diets of immigrants, rather than condemning or ignoring them
completely. Many of the recipes in Foods of the Foreign-Born in Relation
to Health were first published in an Appendix to Davis' Immigrant Health
and the Community. Wood also wrote Fundamentals of Dietetics; A Textbook
for Nurses and Dietitians (1926).
Michael M. Davis Jr. (1879 - 1971) had a long career as a medical administrator and was an early advocate for public access to affordable health care. His many books include Paying Your Sickness Bills (1931), The Crisis in Hospital Finance (1932); The Health of a Nation; Making and Keeping Americans Well (1943); and Medical Care for the Individual and the Issue of Compulsory Health Insurance (1948).
- Cordasco, Francesco, Ed., Dictionary of American Immigration History.
Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1990.
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Davis, Michael M., Immigrant Health and the Community, with a new introduction by Raymond E. O'Dowd. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1971.
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Wood, Bertha M., Foods of the Foreign-Born in Relation to Health. Boston: Whitcomb & Barrow, 1922.
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Who Was Who in America. Vol. V: Marquis Who's Who, Inc., 1968.