Staphylococcus is a family of common bacteria. Many people naturally carry it in their throats, and it can cause a mild infection in a healthy patient. MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, but is shorthand for any strain of...

Ringworm is a skin infection caused by a fungus that can affect the scalp, skin, fingers, toenails or foot. In New York City, ringworm is not required to be reported so that the number of people infected each year is unknown.

Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, is a highly contagious bacterial illness that causes a cough lasting several weeks.

Lice are six-legged, wingless, insect parasites of humans, mammals (cattle, pigs etc.), and birds (chicken and other birds). Lice are divided into two groups: lice found on mammals, which need blood for sustenance; and those found on birds, which...

Mumps is a viral illness that causes fever and swelling of one or more glands near the jaw. Mumps is more common during winter and spring.

Meningococcal meningitis is a severe bacterial infection of the meninges (a thin lining covering the brain and spinal cord) caused by the bacteria called Neisseria meningitidis. Meningococcemia is the term for infections involving the bloodstream...

Measles is a highly contagious viral disease that causes fever and a rash. Measles is more common in winter and spring. Epidemics of measles can occur.

Infectious mononucleosis is a viral disease that affects certain types of white blood cells. It is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), which is a member of the herpes virus family. Most cases occur sporadically and outbreaks are rare. Infectious...

Hepatitis B (formerly known as serum hepatitis) is an infection of the liver caused by a bloodborne virus.

Rubella is a viral disease that causes fever, rash and swollen glands. Illness is usually mild, but if a woman gets rubella during pregnancy, it can cause miscarriage, stillbirth or birth defects in her unborn child. Rubella is more common in winter...

Influenza is a viral infection of the nose, throat, bronchial tubes and lungs. There are two main types of virus: influenza A and influenza B. Each type includes many different strains, which tend to change each year. Influenza is not a reportable...

What is Asthma? Asthma is a lung disease. People have it for many years. There is no cure for asthma, but you can take charge and learn to control it. During an asthma episode, the airways in your lungs get swollen. Your chest feels tight. You may...

Chickenpox is a highly contagious disease caused by the varicella virus, a member of the herpes virus family. It is the most commonly reported childhood disease. In 1994, there were 5,977 cases reported among New York City residents (rate of 81.6...

Viral meningitis is a viral infection of the lining (meninges) covering the brain and spinal cord. There are many types of viruses that can cause this disease. There were more than 450 cases of viral meningitis reported among New York City residents...

As his fledgling union teetered on the brink of a strike, Albert Shanker was the linchpin of a last-minute settlement that laid out the goals that would dominate his thinking for the rest of his life.

Albert Shanker was born to immigrants from Czarist Russia, Morris, who delivered newspapers, and Mamie, a garment worker holding union cards in both the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union.

Jeannette DiLorenzo, was a champion of worker and senior causes who helped organize the UFT before serving as an officer of the union for many years.

In 1962, Al Shanker was after Sol Jaffe's job. The two had worked together closely in the Teachers Guild and the early UFT, with Shanker supporting Jaffe in his first bid to become the UFT's secretary. But now Jaffe had sided with the "militants" and...

It was the Depression and even the salesgirls at Macy's were required to stand 5-foot-5 and have a college degree. Rose Schuyler had the diploma, but not the reach.

Like the others who gave up their nights and weekends for the collective bargaining campaign in 1961, June Temple was a dutiful foot soldier. She could live with the long exhausting hours and no pay — not even car fare. But for some there were worse...

He hated supervisors with a serious passion. To him, all the raises in the world wouldn't change the fact that teachers were forced to work in a system he called "a thinly veiled despotism."

It's your typical August day in Washington, D.C.: One of those patented pool-of-sweat afternoons when most people have peeled off as much clothing as good taste — or at least the law — allows. But here in his small Georgetown apartment, propped up in...

Militancy lost its romance early in Fanny Simon’s life. Only a teenager, she found out that a strike doesn’t guarantee a happy ending. Her father lost his job and the family was uprooted when a strike by glove cutters was crushed.

George Altomare, a founder of the UFT who led with insight, devotion and a great deal of heart, died on Aug. 20, at age 92 after a long illness. He loved teaching and dedicated his life to improving public school education for New York City students...

They made for an odd couple. Henry Linville, soft-spoken and almost courtly, with neither the temperament nor talent for personal confrontation. Not so his longtime and much younger sidekick Abraham Lefkowitz. “He was a fighter,” remembers Ruben...

Born in 1898, Layle Lane was a toddler when a vow to lynch her Congregational minister father forced the family to flee their Marrietta, Ga. home. A graduate of Howard University with a master's from Columbia, she became a high school social studies...

By the mid-1950s it was apparent there was no shortage of rising young stars on the horizon. Still, none shone brighter than Ely Trachtenberg.

If your idea of an accountant is a conservative, number-crunching nerd, you should have known Dave Wittes.

The youngest of seven children, Martha Straus grew up on the Lower East Side. "There was no starvation but there were no luxuries either," she says. Her father and older brother took part in the 1910 cloak makers strike that came to be known as "the...

Born in 1866, Henry Richardson Linville grew up in St. Joseph, Mo., and earned his Ph.D at Harvard before moving to the city and becoming a biology teacher at Jamaica HS. That’s when the newly formed Teachers Union chose Linville as its head.

When the union needed a sharp lawyer, it didn’t have far to look as long as Jules Kolodny was around.

Brilliant and articulate, no one ever doubted that Rebecca Simonson had a way with words. But it wasn't so much poetry as strategy that led the leader of the Teachers Guild in the 1940s to compare organizing to "opening a flower one petal at a time."

In 1960, Si Beagle was one of the city's few supervisors to go out on strike, walking the picket line alone at Bronx's JHS 113. "I had no choice. How could I look in the mirror and rationalize it. Here Mr. Big Shot. Talks, talks, talks, but he ends...

Alice Marsh, the UFT's first legislative rep in Albany, was the only child of a working single mother who insisted she go on to high school while the rest of her elementary school graduating class went off to work.

Fifth disease, usually a mild rash illness with low or no fever, is caused by a human parvovirus (B19). For many years, fifth disease was viewed as an unimportant illness of children. Recently, studies have shown that the virus may be responsible for...

Group A streptococci are bacteria commonly found in the throat and on the skin. The vast majority of Group A Strep infections are mild illnesses, such as strep throat and impetigo. Occasionally however, these bacteria can cause much more severe and...