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

Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans PDF Author: Urmi Engineer Willoughby
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807167754
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
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.

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

Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans PDF Author: Urmi Engineer Willoughby
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807167762
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
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.

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

Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans PDF Author: Urmi Engineer Willoughby
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807167754
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Yellow Fever in the Imagination and Development of an American New Orleans, 1793-1860

Yellow Fever in the Imagination and Development of an American New Orleans, 1793-1860 PDF Author: Paul Michael Warden
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Epidemics
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
"Focusing on the yellow fever ecology of nineteenth-century New Orleans, this dissertation explores how this disease and the perception of unhealthiness inform imaginations of space and place. It examines, in turn, how this imagination influenced immigration, settlement, capital investment, sectionalism, identity formation, racial theory, and a number of other elements of antebellum southern social and political life. It begins by defining three zones of infection in the Americas-endemic, epidemic and ecdemic-based upon their suitability for the virus and its mosquito vector rather the long-running standard of delineating them based on the propensity for devastating outbreaks. This is an important distinction because, as will become clear later, the constant presence of the disease lends itself to herd immunity. This is crucial to demonstrating that New Orleans, as the primary entrepôt between the U.S. and the Caribbean, occupied a unique position among American port cities due to its disease ecology. By yellow fever ecology, I am referring to the sum of biological factors and human actions that made severe outbreaks of the disease more likely. Applying elements of cognitive mapping and environmental psychology, I argue that a confluence of period environmental and medical theory influenced how a myriad of individuals on both sides of the Atlantic came to imagine the relationship between yellow fever, New Orleans, bodies, race, and the Old Southwest. This project broadens our conception of disease ecology to include the thoughts, preconceptions, and biases of human actors. Further, I contend that these perceptions significantly decreased capital investment and immigration, the latter clearly demonstrated by settlement patterns in the region prior to the American Civil War. In addition, this project considers the response of local lay and medical officials to this crisis. In doing so, I reconceive the development of regional theories of medical distinctiveness as an outgrowth of late-enlightenment, transnational developments in natural science. Rather than a declension narrative in nineteenth-century Louisiana public health, I show that the resistance of local officials to northern public health policy was an important step in the early trajectory of what would become tropical medicine. Broadly conceived, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of how perceptions of health and wellness, as well as their inverse, both shape and reveal deeper social and economic conflicts. By using disease as an analytical framework, my work places the U.S. South within global discourses of post-enlightenment science and medical theory, as well as the development of racialized colonial/tropical medicine. When considered alongside more traditional topics in southern studies, the result is a far more complex narrative that demonstrates how the perceptions and reality of this disease environment affected the imagination and development of this city." --from the Abstract.

Fearful Ravages

Fearful Ravages PDF Author: Benjamin H. Trask
Publisher: Louisiana Life
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
"In the nineteenth century, New Orleans was stigmatized by an extremely high mortality rate . One of the major causes of this frightening annual death roll was yellow fever. The sporadic arrival of fever caused tens of thousands of citizens to flee; while at the same time, anxious neighbors in nearby towns tracked the fever's movement. The severity of yellow fever epidemics was erratic and puzzled physicians. In some years thousands of people perished; at other times only a handful died. This ghastly phenomenon appeared in the summer and remained until late autumn and marked New Orleans as a dangerous place. For decades the laymen in New Orleans determined the first frost was the sign that the fever was quickly fading, and for that reason residents hoped and prayed for this meteorological blessing" -- back cover.

Hurricane of the Human Frame

Hurricane of the Human Frame PDF Author: Urmi Engineer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Yellow fever
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description


Yellow Fever in Nineteenth Century New Orleans

Yellow Fever in Nineteenth Century New Orleans PDF Author: Thaïs Emelda Kaiser
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Epidemics
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description


Yellow Fever in Nineteenth Century New Orleans : Necropolis of the South

Yellow Fever in Nineteenth Century New Orleans : Necropolis of the South PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 7

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Book Description


Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South

Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South PDF Author: Cindy Ermus
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807167126
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Hurricanes, floods, oil spills, disease, and disappearing wetlands are some of the many environmental disasters that impact the Gulf South. The contributors to Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South explore the threat, frequency, and management of this region’s disasters from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Scholars from the fields of history, sociology, and anthropology examine the underlying causes of vulnerability to natural hazards in the coastal states while also suggesting ways to increase resilience. Greg O’Brien considers the New Orleans flood of 1849; Andy Horowitz, the Galveston storm of 1900; and Christopher M. Church, the 1928 hurricane in Florida and the Caribbean. Urmi Engineer Willoughby delves into the turn-of-the-century yellow fever outbreaks in New Orleans and local attempts to eradicate them, while Abraham H. Gibson and Cindy Ermus discuss the human introduction of invasive species and their long-term impact on the region’s ecosystem. Roberto E. Barrios looks at political-ecological susceptibility in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward, and Kevin Fox Gotham treats storm- and flood-defense infrastructures. In his afterword, Ted Steinberg ponders what the future holds when the capitalist state supports an unwinnable battle between land developers and nature. These case studies offer new ways of understanding humans’ interactions with the unique, and at times unforgiving, environment of the Gulf South. These lessons are particularly important as we cope with the effects of climate change and seek to build resilience and reduce vulnerability through enhanced awareness, adequate preparation, and efficient planning.

Necropolis

Necropolis PDF Author: Kathryn Olivarius
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674276078
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award Winner of James H. Broussard Best First Book Prize, SHEAR Winner of the Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History Winner of the Humanities Book of the Year Award, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities “A brilliant book...This transformative work is a pivotal addition to the scholarship on American slavery.” —Annette Gordon-Reed “A stunning account of ‘high-risk, high-reward’ profiteering in the yellow fever–ridden Crescent City...a world in which a deadly virus altered every aspect of a brutal social system, exacerbating savage inequalities of enslavement, race, and class.” —John Fabian Witt, author of American Contagions “Olivarius’s new perspectives on yellow fever, immunocapitalism, and the politics of acclimation...will influence a generation of scholars to come on the intersections of racism, slavery, and public health.” —The Lancet In antebellum New Orleans, at the heart of America’s slave and cotton kingdoms, epidemics of yellow fever killed as many as 150,000 people. With little understanding of the origins of the illness—and meager public health infrastructure—one’s only hope if infected was to survive, providing the lucky few with a mysterious form of immunity. Repeated epidemics bolstered New Orleans’s strict racial hierarchy by introducing another hierarchy, a form of “immunocapital,” as white survivors leveraged their immunity to pursue economic and political advancement while enslaved Blacks were relegated to the most grueling labor. The question of health—who has it, who doesn’t, and why—is always in part political. Necropolis shows how powerful nineteenth-century Orleanians constructed a society that capitalized on mortal risk and benefited from the chaos that ensued.

Aluminum Upcycled

Aluminum Upcycled PDF Author: Carl A. Zimring
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421421860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Tracing the benefits—and limitations—of repurposing aluminum. Besides being the right thing to do for Mother Earth, recycling can also make money—particularly when it comes to upcycling, a zero waste practice where discarded materials are fashioned into goods of greater economic or cultural value. In Upcycling Aluminum, Carl A. Zimring explores how the metal’s abundance after World War II—coupled with the significant economic and environmental costs of smelting it from bauxite ore—led to the industrial production of valuable durable goods from salvaged aluminum. Beginning in 1886 with the discovery of how to mass produce aluminum, the book examines the essential part the metal played in early aviation and the world wars, as well as the troubling expansion of aluminum as a material of mass disposal. Recognizing that scrap aluminum was as good as virgin material and much more affordable than newly engineered metal, designers in the postwar era used aluminum to manufacture highly prized artifacts. Zimring takes us on a tour of post-1940s design, examining the use of aluminum in cars, trucks, airplanes, furniture, and musical instruments from 1945 to 2015. By viewing upcycling through the lens of one material, Zimring deepens our understanding of the history of recycling in industrial society. He also provides a historical perspective on contemporary sustainable design practices. Along the way, he challenges common assumptions about upcycling’s merits and adds a new dimension to recycling as a form of environmental absolution for the waste-related sins of the modern world. Raising fascinating questions of consumption, environment, and desire, Upcycling Aluminum is for anyone interested in industrial and environmental history, discard studies, engineering, product design, music history, or antiques.