Sex, Sickness, and Slavery
Sex, Sickness, and Slavery

Author: Marli F. Weiner

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2012-06-21

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0252036999

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This study of medical treatment in the antebellum South argues that Southern physicians' scientific training and practice uniquely entitled them to formulate medical justification for the imbalanced racial hierarchies of the period. Challenged with both helping to preserve the slave system (by acknowledging and preserving clear distinctions of race and sex) and enhancing their own authority (with correct medical diagnoses and effective treatment), doctors sought to understand bodies that did not necessarily fit into neat dichotomies or agree with suggested treatments. Expertly drawing the dynamic tensions during this period in which Southern culture and the demands of slavery often trumped science, Weiner explores how doctors struggled with contradictions as medicine became a key arena for debate over the meanings of male and female, sick and well, black and white, North and South.

Germs at Bay
Germs at Bay

Author: Charles Vidich

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2021-01-19

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13:

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Examines America's experience with a wide range of quarantine practices over the past 400 years and the political, economic, immigration, and public health considerations that have prompted success or failure within the evolving role of public health. The novel strain of coronavirus that emerged in late 2019 and became a worldwide pandemic in 2020 is only one of more than 87 new or emerging pathogens discovered since 1980 that have posed a risk to public health. While many may consider quarantine an antiquated practice, it is often one of the only defenses against new and dangerous communicable diseases. Tracing the United States' quarantine practices through the colonial, postcolonial, and modern eras, Germs at Bay provides an eye-opening look at how quarantine has worked despite routine dismissal of its value. This book is for anyone seeking to understand the challenges of controlling the spread of COVID-19 and helps readers internalize the lessons learned from the pandemic. Few titles provide this level of primary source data on the United States' long reliance on quarantine practices and the political, social, and economic factors that have influenced them.