Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945

by Weindling, Paul Julian

• ISBN13: 9780198206910
• ISBN10: 0198206917
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-03-30
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

How did typhus come to be viewed as a "Jewish disease" and what was the connection between the anti-typhus measures during the First World War and the Nazi gas chambers and other genocidal medical practices in the Second World War? This powerful book provides valuable new insight into the history of German medicine in its reaction to the international fight against typhus and the perceived threat of epidemics from the East in the early part of this century. Paul Weindling examines how German bacteriology became increasingly racialized, and how it sought to eradicate the disease by the eradication of the perceived carriers. Delousing became a key feature of Nazi preventive medicine during the Holocaust, and gassing a favored means of eliminating typhus.

Author Biography

Paul Weindling is Wellcome Trust research Professor in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	viii
List of Maps	x
List of Tables	x
Acknowledgements	xi
Note on Names of Places and Persons	xiv
Foreword	xv
I. MICROBES AND MIGRANTS
Disease as Metamorphosis	3	(16)
Eradicating Parasites	19	(30)
Cleansing Bodies, Defending Borders	49	(24)
The First World War and Combating Lice	73	(38)
II. CONTAINMENT
Defending German Health: Technical Solutions	111	(28)
The Sanitary Iron Curtain: The Relief of Polish and Russian Typhus	139	(44)
German-Soviet Medical Collaboration	183	(26)
The Demise of Internationalism	209	(16)
III. ERADICATION
From Geo-medicine to Genocide	225	(46)
Delousing and the Holocaust	271	(51)
`Victory with Vaccines': Human Guinea-pigs and Louse-feeders	322	(51)
From Medical Research to Biological Warfare	373	(20)
Clinical Trials on Trial	393	(44)
APPENDICES
I. Typhus Statistics in Germany, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine	428	(7)
II. Typhus Vaccines and Sera, 1876-1944	435	(2)
Select Bibliography	437	(14)
Index	451