Officer Ugg, Mr Yuk, Uncle Barf... Ad Nausea: Controlling Poison Control, 1950-1985

This historical analysis focuses on the arrival of acute poisoning as a fully institutionalized social problem. Early medical concerns about childhood poisonings, voiced particularly by pediatricians, made dramatic news in the early 1950s. Further promotion of the problem occurred as hundreds of hospitals hurriedly established poison control centers and telephone hotlines. I examine reasons why hospitals rushed into poison control as well as why, despite a high incidence of poisonings and over two million hotline calls annually, hospitals are now abandoning poison control. A highly consolidated, governmentally supported network of poison centers is currently emerging — an anomaly in this age of corporate transformation of the larger health care system.