Chronic Disparities Public Health in Historical Perspective

by Wempe, Sean Andrew; Spohnholz, Jesse; Stratton, Clif

• ISBN13: 9780190696252
• ISBN10: 0190696257
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780197535318
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2020-08-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

Growing directly out of the experiences of a team of Washington State University historians who designed a new foundational course for WSU's common requirements, the Roots of Contemporary Issues series is built on the premise that students will be better at facing current and future challenges, no matter their major or career path, if they are capable of addressing controversial and pressing issues in mature, reasoned ways using evidence, critical thinking, and clear written and oral communication skills.

To help students achieve these goals, each title in the Roots of Contemporary Issues series argues that today's problems are not simply the outcomes of yesterday's decisions: they are shaped by years, decades, and centuries of historical developments. Solving the central problems facing our world requires a deep historical understanding of the ways in which humans have been interconnected with faraway places for centuries.

Chronic Disparities: Public Health in Historical Perspective begins with a controversial and pressing issue facing students today: how have public health initiatives challenged and/or reinforced societal inequalities of race, class, and gender? It explores the cultural, political, religious, demographic, and economic effects both government and private public-health practices have had on inequalities of race, class, and gender in an increasingly globalizing society, from the pre-Modern era to the present.

Chronic Disparities examines events and processes including the emergence of public health and sanitation in Europe; the coercive globalization of systems of health; colonial medicine and the selective application of "Western" medical policy; eugenics; responses to substance abuse; the AIDS/HIV pandemic; and many more. It includes a series introduction that explains this innovative approach to learning history and a conclusion that offers a model for applying the approach in seeking to understand other public health policies, events, and crises.

Author Biography

Sean Andrew Wempe is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Bakersfield.

Table of Contents

List of Maps/Figures
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Series Introduction: Connecting the Past and Present
Introduction

Chapter 1. Health as a Public Utility--Local Plague Responses in the Christian & Islamic Worlds
The 'Horrible Sickness'
Charity & Conspiracies: Religion, the Poor, and Persecution of Jews
Cairo: Mamluks, Ottomans, and Contagion
Florence: Publica Utilitas, Sanitary Policies, and Persecution of the Poor

Chapter 2. Cholera, Colonialism, and Class
Sanitarians and Sewers: Cholera in Britain, 1830s to 1850s
Removing the Pump Handle: The 1854 Broad Street Cholera Outbreak in London
Cholera, Containment, and Centralization: Imperial Germany and the United States
Reinforcing Inequalities: Cholera in British-controlled India into the 20th century

Chapter 3. Controlling the Colonized & Female Bodies-VD Containment, Eugenics, & Experimentation in Metropole & Colony
Mosquito Women: Tropical Medicine and Racism in STD Perception
Politics of Prostitution: Imperial STD Controls
Pregnancy as "STD": Racial Mixing and State Control of Sex
The Eugenicists: Race Hygiene, STDs, and Reproductive Rights
The "Doomed Race": Eugenics and Experimentation on Oppressed Racial Groups

Chapter 4. "Civilizing" Addiction--From Local to Global Inequalities in the Standardization of Opium Controls
Buddhism and Bans on Opium: Burma's Drug Controls Prior to British Rule
From Medicine to Aphrodisiac to Pathology: Opium, Gender, and Class in China
"Politics of the Poppy": Substance Control in the United Kingdom
"Lady Britannia and her Children": Substance Control in the British Empire
Global Drug Diplomacy: Replicating British Prejudices in Narcotics Control Worldwide

Chapter 5. The Global AIDS Crisis--Stigma, Patronage, and Dependency Networks
The Stigma of Disease: "Risk Groups" and Constructs of Morality
The "Geography of Blame": Haiti as the Origin of HIV?
"Out of Africa": Imperialism's Influence on Scientific Thought
Good Intentions, Flawed Foundations: USAID, UNAIDS, & NGOs
Uganda and TASO: Success, Discrimination, and Dependency

Conclusion

Index