Driven by Fear
Epidemics and Isolation in San Francisco's House of Pestilence
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University of Illinois Press
Published:30th Dec '15
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£103.00(9780252039843)
Emotion's powerful role in personal and public responses to disease
From the late nineteenth century until the 1920s, authorities required San Francisco's Pesthouse to segregate the diseased from the rest of the city. Although the Pesthouse stood out of sight and largely out of mind, it existed at a vital nexus of civic life where issues of medicine, race, class, environment, morality, and citizenship entwined and played out. Guenter B. Risse places this forgotten institution within an emotional climate dominated by widespread public dread and disgust. In Driven by Fear, he analyzes the unique form of stigma generated by San Franciscans. Emotional states like xenophobia and racism played a part. Yet the phenomenon also included competing medical paradigms and unique economic needs that encouraged authorities to protect the city's reputation as a haven of health restoration. As Risse argues, public health history requires an understanding of irrational as well as rational motives. To that end he delves into the spectrum of emotions that drove extreme measures like segregation and isolation and fed psychological, ideological, and pragmatic urges to scapegoat and stereotype victims--particularly Chinese victims--of smallpox, leprosy, plague, and syphilis.
Filling a significant gap in contemporary scholarship, Driven by Fear looks at the past to offer critical lessons for our age of bioterror threats and emerging infectious diseases.
"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
ISBN: 9780252081385
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 28mm
Weight: 481g
316 pages