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Silent Travelers - Germs, Genes, and the Immigrant Menace (Paperback, Johns Hopkins paperbacks ed)
Loot Price: R778
Discovery Miles 7 780
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Silent Travelers - Germs, Genes, and the Immigrant Menace (Paperback, Johns Hopkins paperbacks ed)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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Donate to Against Period Poverty
Total price: R798
Discovery Miles: 7 980
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Fascinating, well-researched account of how immigration and public
health have influenced each other in the American experience. Kraut
(History/American University; Huddled Masses, etc. - not reviewed)
asserts that "the double helix of health and fear that accompanies
immigration continues to mutate, producing malignancies on the
culture." Current fears about AIDS and Haitian refugees, for
example, echo the concern of Californians in the early 1900's over
bubonic plague and Chinese immigrants and that of easterners in the
1830's over cholera and Irish immigrants. Kraut examines the
nativist prejudices that can stigmatize an entire group as a health
menace and shows how scientific medicine has been used by some
Americans to advocate exclusion and by others to promote
assimilation. Further, he looks at how national, state, and local
governments have codified and regulated public-health issues and
what the immigrant response has been. Kraut vividly and
sympathetically describes the inspection of newcomers at Ellis
Island, using both oral history sources and excerpts from the US
Public Health Service's Book of Instructions for the Medical
Inspection of Immigrants. He demonstrates how health care became a
cultural battleground involving the home, the hospital, and the
corner drugstore as folk healers and midwives met opposition from
physicians and home health nurses, and as quackery thrived.
Reliance on Old World remedies - such as tying a potato to the
wrist to reduce a fever or using charms to ward off the evil eye -
conflicted with the health advice published by such groups as the
DAR, eager to turn immigrants into robust Americans. B&w
illustrations include photographs that depict actual conditions, as
well as drawings that reveal prevalent attitudes and
misperceptions.) Absorbing and sobering illumination of a dark
corner of the American psyche. (Kirkus Reviews)
This study traces the American tradition of the suspicion of
immigrant populations spreading disease. From the cholera outbreak
of the 1930s to the associations of Haitians and AIDS, the author
shows how immigrant groups have been regularly slandered as
carriers of particular diseases.
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