Driven by Fear

"This study of the pesthouse, an institution designed to cope with the fear of contagious disease, is a significant contribution to the history of American medicine and public health as well as the history of immigration and ethnicity."--Journal of American Ethnic History
"With this timely book, Risse has made an important contribution to the critical reflection of ongoing reorganisations and the apparent strengthening of federal powers in matters of quarantine and epidemic preparedness in the USA."--Social History of Medicine
"An excellent account of the largely overlooked role of pesthouses in public health history… [Driven by Fear is] deeply researched, wonderfully written, and very timely."--Western Historical Quarterly
"A true gem from one of our most distinguished historians of medicine. Risse's book is ambitious, original, and even brave. Driven by Fear covers an admirably wide variety of subjects and subdisciplines, and in the process truly breaks new ground in the history of public health. Moreover, Risse's prose consistently helps us feel the past--his is indeed an emotional as well as intellectual achievement."--Robert D. Johnston, editor of The Politics of Healing: Histories of Alternative Medicine in Twentieth-Century North America
"Using a wonderfully drawn history of San Francisco's Pest House as his primary exhibit, Risse shows us how fear of contagion, if not diluted with compassion and a respect for human dignity, quickly produces harsh, impersonal, and militaristic measures against 'the enemy,' people who disgust us simply because they have, or might have been exposed to, whatever the threatening disease of the day is--smallpox, syphilis, leprosy, plague, or even SARS or Ebola. A must read for anyone interested in protecting the public's health, social justice, and human rights."--George J. Annas, author of Worst Case Bioethics: Death, Disaster, and Public Health
"In this startlingly vivid and humane study, Guenter Risse, doyen of hospital historians, sets a lost history in the context of issues of disease prevention, municipal politics, and the history of the emotions. Only by understanding the lived experience of disgust and fear in the past, Risse argues, are we likely to do better in the present and future with stigmatized diseases."--Colin Jones, author of The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris
"A deeply researched, very well-written and timely account by the foremost historian of public health policy in the city by the Golden Gate of how emotions of fear and disgust can war with compassion and rational planning in the shaping of a community’s response to epidemics. Risse has made a major contribution to both San Francisco history and American social history by documenting the tangled racial, ethnic, psychological, ideological, and practical roots of the discourse and practice of activists who worked to protect the city's residents from contagion by smallpox, syphilis, leprosy, and bubonic plague in the early years of the twentieth century. Driven by Fear is an engaging and highly original addition to Western American history and American urban history and a must read for historians and contemporary public health scholars and practitioners."--William Issel, author of Church and State in the City: Catholics and Politics in Twentieth Century San Francisco
"Thoroughly grounding his book in rich primary sources, particularly newspapers (especially the San Francisco Chronicle, and medical sources, Risse provides a model for sound historical research and storytelling, both of considerable use to undergraduates. Far more than an isolated historical account, the work continually relates the historical implications to modern medical culture and practice. Highly recommended."--Choice

"A well-researched study that demonstrates the shortsightedness of governments that focused more on satisfying business interests than on funding adequate health provisions in response to epidemics."--Journal of American History

"Risse makes expert use of the history of the pesthouse to illustrate the dangers of authoritarian public health interventions . . . and makes a persuasive case for community-based, multi-directional responses that conscientiously reckon with the ways in which racial, ethnic, and class disparities frame our understanding of health and risk."--Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

"This book is valuable for its detailed history of a troubling chapter in medical and public health history. It should be required reading for today's public health policy makers."--Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"Guenter Risse has written a very interesting and well-documented book, one that has a message for contemporary times as well as being an exploration into the history of San Francisco's pest house."--Pacific Historical Review