Most lives are restricted in focus and reflect relatively narrow aspects of their times. A few lives affect and reflect a broad range of human beings and human events. The subject of this book, Jelliffe, led a life of the latter kind.

This book provides a historical inquiry into the quantification of needs in humanitarian assistance. Needs are increasingly seen as the lowest common denominator of humanity. Standard definitions of basic needs, however, set a minimalist version of humanity – both in the sense that they are narrow in what they compare, and that they set a low bar for satisfaction. The book argues that we cannot understand humanitarian governance if we do not understand how humanitarian agencies made human suffering commensurable across borders in the first place. The book identifies four basic elements of needs: As a concept, as a system of classification and triage, as a material apparatus, and as a set of standards. Drawing on a range of archival sources, including the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), and the Sphere Project, the book traces the concept of needs from its emergence in the 1960s right through to the present day, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call for “evidence-based humanitarianism.” Finally, the book assesses how the international governmentality of needs has played out in a recent humanitarian crisis, drawing on field research on Central African refugees in the Cameroonian borderland in 2014–2016. This important historical inquiry into the universal nature of human suffering will be an important read for humanitarian researchers and practitioners, as well as readers with an interest in international history and development.

A fascinating look at a bizarre, forgotten epidemic from the national bestselling author of The American Plague. In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it arrived. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims-who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.

Abstract: The economic and health considerations of infant feeding in developing nations are described. A theoretical model is presented which evaluates the value of breast feeding according to its overall benefits and costs. Breast feeding is deemed to be a cost effective feeding mode which promotes the health and nutritional status of infants. Numerical data are provided which illustrate the implications of hypothesized changes in breast feeding patterns in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

The science of nutrition has advanced beyond expectation since Antoine La voisier as early as the 18th century showed that oxygen was necessary to change nutrients in foods to compounds which would become a part of the human body. He was also the first to measure metabolism and to show that oxidation within the body produces heat and energy. In the two hundred years that have elapsed, the essentiality of nitrogen-containing nutrients and of proteins for growth and maintenance of tissue has been established; the ne cessity for carbohydrates and certain types of fat for health has been docu mented; vitamins necessary to prevent deficiency diseases have been identified and isolated; and the requirement of many mineral elements for health has been demonstrated. Further investigations have defined the role of these nutrients in metabolic processes and quantitated their requirements at various stages of development. Additional studies have involved their use in the possible prevention of, and therapy for, disease conditions.