Maladies of empire : how colonialism, slavery, and war transformed medicine / Jim Downs.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Downs, Jim, 1973- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Epidemiology--History.

Epidemiology.

Enslaved persons--Health and hygiene.

Enslaved persons.

Imperialism and science.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, [2021]

Summary:

"Standard histories of medicine celebrate brilliant Westerners such as Florence Nightingale and John Snow. In this unorthodox telling, Jim Downs turns our focus to another key group of contributors: the subjugated peoples-forced into close quarters by enslavement and empire-whose bodies were the experimental matter on which medical progress relied"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: The laboring dead

Crowded places: the roots of fresh air

Missing persons: the decline of contagion theory and the rise of epidemiology

Discovering epidemiology's voice: slavery, science, and the development of epidemiological methods in West Africa

Recordkeeping: epidemiological practices in the British Empire

Florence Nightingale: the unrecognized epidemiologist of the Crimean War and India

The other civil war: the United States Sanitary Commission's conflicted mission

Narrative maps: black troops, Muslim migrants, and the international cholera epidemic of 1865-6

"Sing, unburied, sing": slavery, Confederacy, and the practice of epidemiology

Conclusion: From subjugation to science.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-674-24988-7

0-674-24990-9

OCLC:

1242406506