Race and Medicine in Nineteenth- and Early-twentieth-century America

Race and Medicine in Nineteenth- and Early-twentieth-century America

Author: Todd Lee Savitt

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13:

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During the days of slavery in America, racism and often-faulty medical theories contributed to an atmosphere in which African Americans were seen as chattel: some white physicians claimed that African Americans had physiological and anatomical differences that made them well suited for slavery. These attitudes continued into the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. In Race and Medicine, historian Todd Savitt presents revised and updated versions of his seminal essays on the medical history of African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the South. This collection examines a variety of aspects of African American medical history, including health and illnesses, medical experimentation, early medical schools and medical professionals, and slave life insurance. Savitt examines the history of sickle-cell anemia and identifies the first two patients with the disease noted in medical literature. He proposes an explanation of why the disease was not well known in the general African American population for at least 50 years after its discovery. Charleston Low Country and not elsewhere in the country. Other topics Savitt explores include African American medical schools, the formation of an African American medical profession, and SIDS among Virginia slaves. With its new research data and interpretations of existing materials, Race and Medicine will be a valuable resource to those interested in the history of medicine and African American history as well as to the medical community.


Book Synopsis Race and Medicine in Nineteenth- and Early-twentieth-century America by : Todd Lee Savitt

Download or read book Race and Medicine in Nineteenth- and Early-twentieth-century America written by Todd Lee Savitt and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the days of slavery in America, racism and often-faulty medical theories contributed to an atmosphere in which African Americans were seen as chattel: some white physicians claimed that African Americans had physiological and anatomical differences that made them well suited for slavery. These attitudes continued into the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. In Race and Medicine, historian Todd Savitt presents revised and updated versions of his seminal essays on the medical history of African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the South. This collection examines a variety of aspects of African American medical history, including health and illnesses, medical experimentation, early medical schools and medical professionals, and slave life insurance. Savitt examines the history of sickle-cell anemia and identifies the first two patients with the disease noted in medical literature. He proposes an explanation of why the disease was not well known in the general African American population for at least 50 years after its discovery. Charleston Low Country and not elsewhere in the country. Other topics Savitt explores include African American medical schools, the formation of an African American medical profession, and SIDS among Virginia slaves. With its new research data and interpretations of existing materials, Race and Medicine will be a valuable resource to those interested in the history of medicine and African American history as well as to the medical community.

Medicalizing Blackness

Medicalizing Blackness

Author: Rana A. Hogarth

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2017-09-26

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1469632888

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In 1748, as yellow fever raged in Charleston, South Carolina, doctor John Lining remarked, "There is something very singular in the constitution of the Negroes, which renders them not liable to this fever." Lining's comments presaged ideas about blackness that would endure in medical discourses and beyond. In this fascinating medical history, Rana A. Hogarth examines the creation and circulation of medical ideas about blackness in the Atlantic World during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She shows how white physicians deployed blackness as a medically significant marker of difference and used medical knowledge to improve plantation labor efficiency, safeguard colonial and civic interests, and enhance control over black bodies during the era of slavery. Hogarth refigures Atlantic slave societies as medical frontiers of knowledge production on the topic of racial difference. Rather than looking to their counterparts in Europe who collected and dissected bodies to gain knowledge about race, white physicians in Atlantic slaveholding regions created and tested ideas about race based on the contexts in which they lived and practiced. What emerges in sharp relief is the ways in which blackness was reified in medical discourses and used to perpetuate notions of white supremacy.


Book Synopsis Medicalizing Blackness by : Rana A. Hogarth

Download or read book Medicalizing Blackness written by Rana A. Hogarth and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1748, as yellow fever raged in Charleston, South Carolina, doctor John Lining remarked, "There is something very singular in the constitution of the Negroes, which renders them not liable to this fever." Lining's comments presaged ideas about blackness that would endure in medical discourses and beyond. In this fascinating medical history, Rana A. Hogarth examines the creation and circulation of medical ideas about blackness in the Atlantic World during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She shows how white physicians deployed blackness as a medically significant marker of difference and used medical knowledge to improve plantation labor efficiency, safeguard colonial and civic interests, and enhance control over black bodies during the era of slavery. Hogarth refigures Atlantic slave societies as medical frontiers of knowledge production on the topic of racial difference. Rather than looking to their counterparts in Europe who collected and dissected bodies to gain knowledge about race, white physicians in Atlantic slaveholding regions created and tested ideas about race based on the contexts in which they lived and practiced. What emerges in sharp relief is the ways in which blackness was reified in medical discourses and used to perpetuate notions of white supremacy.

"Two Strikes--a Lady and a Colored"

Author: Margaret Vigil-Fowler

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Through an exploration of African American women physicians' role in medicine, an alternative interpretation of medicine's professionalization "grand narrative" emerges. The height of medicine's period as "autonomous" coincides with creating a more exclusionary profession that nearly eliminated black women's already limited opportunities to become licensed physicians and practice at all. Making American medicine the "modern" field that professionalized in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries meant excluding African American women and linking medicine's growing prestige and cultural authority to white masculinity. The profession barred black women from many of the most elite schools, internships, jobs, and organizations. Because medicine became so thoroughly associated with whiteness and masculinity, the profession and even most historians of medicine overlooked the fact that roughly 130 black women became physicians between the Civil War and the start of World War II. By placing African American women physicians as central agents in the narrative of medicine's professionalization, "centering in the margins," this dissertation reveals the extent to which medicine and white masculinity became bound together. Yet, even as the profession excluded black women, they continued to find significant ways to contribute to improving health in their communities and the alternative clinical spaces of their own making, especially through public health, and strove to ameliorate the "health disparities" they recognized in African Americans from the nineteenth century into the mid-twentieth.


Book Synopsis "Two Strikes--a Lady and a Colored" by : Margaret Vigil-Fowler

Download or read book "Two Strikes--a Lady and a Colored" written by Margaret Vigil-Fowler and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an exploration of African American women physicians' role in medicine, an alternative interpretation of medicine's professionalization "grand narrative" emerges. The height of medicine's period as "autonomous" coincides with creating a more exclusionary profession that nearly eliminated black women's already limited opportunities to become licensed physicians and practice at all. Making American medicine the "modern" field that professionalized in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries meant excluding African American women and linking medicine's growing prestige and cultural authority to white masculinity. The profession barred black women from many of the most elite schools, internships, jobs, and organizations. Because medicine became so thoroughly associated with whiteness and masculinity, the profession and even most historians of medicine overlooked the fact that roughly 130 black women became physicians between the Civil War and the start of World War II. By placing African American women physicians as central agents in the narrative of medicine's professionalization, "centering in the margins," this dissertation reveals the extent to which medicine and white masculinity became bound together. Yet, even as the profession excluded black women, they continued to find significant ways to contribute to improving health in their communities and the alternative clinical spaces of their own making, especially through public health, and strove to ameliorate the "health disparities" they recognized in African Americans from the nineteenth century into the mid-twentieth.

Medical Apartheid

Medical Apartheid

Author: Harriet A. Washington

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2008-01-08

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 076791547X

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NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book. "[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust.


Book Synopsis Medical Apartheid by : Harriet A. Washington

Download or read book Medical Apartheid written by Harriet A. Washington and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book. "[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust.

Doctored

Doctored

Author: Tanya Sheehan

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 027103792X

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"Examines the relationship between photography and medicine in American culture. Focuses on the American Civil War and postbellum Philadelphia to explore how medical models and metaphors helped establish the professional legitimacy of commercial photography while promoting belief in the rehabilitative powers of studio portraiture"--Provided by publisher.


Book Synopsis Doctored by : Tanya Sheehan

Download or read book Doctored written by Tanya Sheehan and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Examines the relationship between photography and medicine in American culture. Focuses on the American Civil War and postbellum Philadelphia to explore how medical models and metaphors helped establish the professional legitimacy of commercial photography while promoting belief in the rehabilitative powers of studio portraiture"--Provided by publisher.

Precarious Prescriptions

Precarious Prescriptions

Author: Laurie B. Green

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2014-03-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1452941637

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In Precarious Prescriptions, Laurie B. Green, John Mckiernan-González, and Martin Summers bring together essays that place race, citizenship, and gender at the center of questions about health and disease. Exploring the interplay between disease as a biological phenomenon, illness as a subjective experience, and race as an ideological construct, this volume weaves together a complicated history to show the role that health and medicine have played throughout the past in defining the ideal citizen. By creating an intricate portrait of the close associations of race, medicine, and public health, Precarious Prescriptions helps us better understand the long and fraught history of health care in America. Contributors: Jason E. Glenn, U of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; Mark Allan Goldberg, U of Houston; Jean J. Kim; Gretchen Long, Williams College; Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, Cornell U; Lena McQuade-Salzfass, Sonoma State U; Natalia Molina, U of California, San Diego; Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College; Jennifer Seltz, Western Washington U.


Book Synopsis Precarious Prescriptions by : Laurie B. Green

Download or read book Precarious Prescriptions written by Laurie B. Green and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Precarious Prescriptions, Laurie B. Green, John Mckiernan-González, and Martin Summers bring together essays that place race, citizenship, and gender at the center of questions about health and disease. Exploring the interplay between disease as a biological phenomenon, illness as a subjective experience, and race as an ideological construct, this volume weaves together a complicated history to show the role that health and medicine have played throughout the past in defining the ideal citizen. By creating an intricate portrait of the close associations of race, medicine, and public health, Precarious Prescriptions helps us better understand the long and fraught history of health care in America. Contributors: Jason E. Glenn, U of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; Mark Allan Goldberg, U of Houston; Jean J. Kim; Gretchen Long, Williams College; Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, Cornell U; Lena McQuade-Salzfass, Sonoma State U; Natalia Molina, U of California, San Diego; Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College; Jennifer Seltz, Western Washington U.

Against the Odds

Against the Odds

Author: Wilbur Watson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-12-02

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1351533347

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"Racial separatism, gender discrimination, and white dominance have historically thwarted black Americans' occupational aspirations. Access to medical education has also been limited, and mobility within the profession, leading to unequal access to health care. There have, however, been notable triumphs. In Against the Odds, Wilbur Watson describes successful efforts by determined individuals and small groups of black Americans, since the early nineteenth century, to establish a strong black presence in the medical profession. Changes in medical education and hospital management, desegregation of the medical establishment, and the contemporary challenges of managed-care organizations all attest to their achievements.Watson analyzes sociocultural, political, and psychological factors associated with African-American medical practice; race and gender differences in medical education and professional development; and doctor-patient relationships during and since the period of racial separatism. He discusses the policy implications of physicians' viewpoints on issues such as folk practitioners as health care providers, medical care for the poor, abortion and euthanasia, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the emergence of managed-care organizations. Through in-depth interviews with older physicians and comparative analyses of their situated techniques of coping with racial discrimination and segregation, we gain insight into the effects of separatism on the minds, selves, and social interactions of African-American physicians. Finally, Watson outlines current ethics, demographic changes since desegregation, the contemporary status of black physicians, and recent changes in the socioeconomic organization of the profession of medicine.Against the Odds is a unique study of the history, ethnography, and social psychology of blacks in medicine. Watson successfully debunks the myth that black physicians were less competent providers than t"


Book Synopsis Against the Odds by : Wilbur Watson

Download or read book Against the Odds written by Wilbur Watson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Racial separatism, gender discrimination, and white dominance have historically thwarted black Americans' occupational aspirations. Access to medical education has also been limited, and mobility within the profession, leading to unequal access to health care. There have, however, been notable triumphs. In Against the Odds, Wilbur Watson describes successful efforts by determined individuals and small groups of black Americans, since the early nineteenth century, to establish a strong black presence in the medical profession. Changes in medical education and hospital management, desegregation of the medical establishment, and the contemporary challenges of managed-care organizations all attest to their achievements.Watson analyzes sociocultural, political, and psychological factors associated with African-American medical practice; race and gender differences in medical education and professional development; and doctor-patient relationships during and since the period of racial separatism. He discusses the policy implications of physicians' viewpoints on issues such as folk practitioners as health care providers, medical care for the poor, abortion and euthanasia, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the emergence of managed-care organizations. Through in-depth interviews with older physicians and comparative analyses of their situated techniques of coping with racial discrimination and segregation, we gain insight into the effects of separatism on the minds, selves, and social interactions of African-American physicians. Finally, Watson outlines current ethics, demographic changes since desegregation, the contemporary status of black physicians, and recent changes in the socioeconomic organization of the profession of medicine.Against the Odds is a unique study of the history, ethnography, and social psychology of blacks in medicine. Watson successfully debunks the myth that black physicians were less competent providers than t"

Diabetes

Diabetes

Author: Arleen Marcia Tuchman

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-08-05

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0300228996

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Who gets diabetes and why? An in-depth examination of diabetes in the context of race, public health, class, and heredity Who is considered most at risk for diabetes, and why? In this thorough, engaging book, historian Arleen Tuchman examines and critiques how these questions have been answered by both the public and medical communities for over a century in the United States. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Tuchman describes how at different times Jews, middle-class whites, American Indians, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans have been labeled most at risk for developing diabetes, and that such claims have reflected and perpetuated troubling assumptions about race, ethnicity, and class. She describes how diabetes underwent a mid-century transformation in the public's eye from being a disease of wealth and "civilization" to one of poverty and "primitive" populations. In tracing this cultural history, Tuchman argues that shifting understandings of diabetes reveal just as much about scientific and medical beliefs as they do about the cultural, racial, and economic milieus of their time.


Book Synopsis Diabetes by : Arleen Marcia Tuchman

Download or read book Diabetes written by Arleen Marcia Tuchman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-05 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who gets diabetes and why? An in-depth examination of diabetes in the context of race, public health, class, and heredity Who is considered most at risk for diabetes, and why? In this thorough, engaging book, historian Arleen Tuchman examines and critiques how these questions have been answered by both the public and medical communities for over a century in the United States. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Tuchman describes how at different times Jews, middle-class whites, American Indians, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans have been labeled most at risk for developing diabetes, and that such claims have reflected and perpetuated troubling assumptions about race, ethnicity, and class. She describes how diabetes underwent a mid-century transformation in the public's eye from being a disease of wealth and "civilization" to one of poverty and "primitive" populations. In tracing this cultural history, Tuchman argues that shifting understandings of diabetes reveal just as much about scientific and medical beliefs as they do about the cultural, racial, and economic milieus of their time.

Health Care in America

Health Care in America

Author: John C. Burnham

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2015-05-15

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1421416093

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A comprehensive history of sickness, health, and medicine in America from Colonial times to the present. In Health Care in America, historian John C. Burnham describes changes over four centuries of medicine and public health in America. Beginning with seventeenth-century concerns over personal and neighborhood illnesses, Burnham concludes with the arrival of a new epoch in American medicine and health care at the turn of the twenty-first century. From the 1600s through the 1990s, Americans turned to a variety of healers, practices, and institutions in their efforts to prevent and survive epidemics of smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, influenza, polio, and AIDS. Health care workers in all periods attended births and deaths and cared for people who had injuries, disabilities, and chronic diseases. Drawing on primary sources, classic scholarship, and a vast body of recent literature in the history of medicine and public health, Burnham finds that traditional healing, care, and medicine dominated the United States until the late nineteenth century, when antiseptic/aseptic surgery and germ theory initiated an intellectual, social, and technical transformation. He divides the age of modern medicine into several eras: physiological medicine (1910s–1930s), antibiotics (1930s–1950s), technology (1950s–1960s), environmental medicine (1970s–1980s), and, beginning around 1990, genetic medicine. The cumulating developments in each era led to today's radically altered doctor-patient relationship and the insistent questions that swirl around the financial cost of health care. Burnham's sweeping narrative makes sense of medical practice, medical research, and human frailties and foibles, opening the door to a new understanding of our current concerns.


Book Synopsis Health Care in America by : John C. Burnham

Download or read book Health Care in America written by John C. Burnham and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive history of sickness, health, and medicine in America from Colonial times to the present. In Health Care in America, historian John C. Burnham describes changes over four centuries of medicine and public health in America. Beginning with seventeenth-century concerns over personal and neighborhood illnesses, Burnham concludes with the arrival of a new epoch in American medicine and health care at the turn of the twenty-first century. From the 1600s through the 1990s, Americans turned to a variety of healers, practices, and institutions in their efforts to prevent and survive epidemics of smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, influenza, polio, and AIDS. Health care workers in all periods attended births and deaths and cared for people who had injuries, disabilities, and chronic diseases. Drawing on primary sources, classic scholarship, and a vast body of recent literature in the history of medicine and public health, Burnham finds that traditional healing, care, and medicine dominated the United States until the late nineteenth century, when antiseptic/aseptic surgery and germ theory initiated an intellectual, social, and technical transformation. He divides the age of modern medicine into several eras: physiological medicine (1910s–1930s), antibiotics (1930s–1950s), technology (1950s–1960s), environmental medicine (1970s–1980s), and, beginning around 1990, genetic medicine. The cumulating developments in each era led to today's radically altered doctor-patient relationship and the insistent questions that swirl around the financial cost of health care. Burnham's sweeping narrative makes sense of medical practice, medical research, and human frailties and foibles, opening the door to a new understanding of our current concerns.

Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans

Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans

Author: Urmi Engineer Willoughby

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2017-12-13

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 0807167762

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Through the innovative perspective of environment and culture, Urmi Engineer Willoughby examines yellow fever in New Orleans from 1796 to 1905. Linking local epidemics to the city’s place in the Atlantic world, Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans analyzes how incidences of and responses to the disease grew out of an environment shaped by sugar production, slavery, and urban development. Willoughby argues that transnational processes—including patterns of migration, industrialization, and imperialism—contributed to ecological changes that enabled yellow fever–carrying Aedes aëgypti mosquitoes to thrive and transmit the disease in New Orleans, challenging presumptions that yellow fever was primarily transported to the Americas on slave ships. She then traces the origin and spread of medical and popular beliefs about yellow fever immunity, from the early nineteenth-century contention that natives of New Orleans were protected, to the gradual emphasis on race as a determinant of immunity, reflecting social tensions over the abolition of slavery around the world. As the nineteenth century unfolded, ideas of biological differences between the races calcified, even as public health infrastructure expanded, and race continued to play a central role in the diagnosis and prevention of the disease. State and federal governments began to create boards and organizations responsible for preventing new outbreaks and providing care during epidemics, though medical authorities ignored evidence of black victims of yellow fever. Willoughby argues that American imperialist ambitions also contributed to yellow fever eradication and the growth of the field of tropical medicine: U.S. commercial interests in the tropical zones that grew crops like sugar cane, bananas, and coffee engendered cooperation between medical professionals and American military forces in Latin America, which in turn enabled public health campaigns to research and eliminate yellow fever in New Orleans. A signal contribution to the field of disease ecology, Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans delineates events that shaped the Crescent City’s epidemiological history, shedding light on the spread and eradication of yellow fever in the Atlantic World.


Book Synopsis Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans by : Urmi Engineer Willoughby

Download or read book Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans written by Urmi Engineer Willoughby and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2017-12-13 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the innovative perspective of environment and culture, Urmi Engineer Willoughby examines yellow fever in New Orleans from 1796 to 1905. Linking local epidemics to the city’s place in the Atlantic world, Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans analyzes how incidences of and responses to the disease grew out of an environment shaped by sugar production, slavery, and urban development. Willoughby argues that transnational processes—including patterns of migration, industrialization, and imperialism—contributed to ecological changes that enabled yellow fever–carrying Aedes aëgypti mosquitoes to thrive and transmit the disease in New Orleans, challenging presumptions that yellow fever was primarily transported to the Americas on slave ships. She then traces the origin and spread of medical and popular beliefs about yellow fever immunity, from the early nineteenth-century contention that natives of New Orleans were protected, to the gradual emphasis on race as a determinant of immunity, reflecting social tensions over the abolition of slavery around the world. As the nineteenth century unfolded, ideas of biological differences between the races calcified, even as public health infrastructure expanded, and race continued to play a central role in the diagnosis and prevention of the disease. State and federal governments began to create boards and organizations responsible for preventing new outbreaks and providing care during epidemics, though medical authorities ignored evidence of black victims of yellow fever. Willoughby argues that American imperialist ambitions also contributed to yellow fever eradication and the growth of the field of tropical medicine: U.S. commercial interests in the tropical zones that grew crops like sugar cane, bananas, and coffee engendered cooperation between medical professionals and American military forces in Latin America, which in turn enabled public health campaigns to research and eliminate yellow fever in New Orleans. A signal contribution to the field of disease ecology, Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans delineates events that shaped the Crescent City’s epidemiological history, shedding light on the spread and eradication of yellow fever in the Atlantic World.