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Living in the shadow of death : tuberculosis and the social experience of illness in American history / Sheila M. Rothman.
Author
Rothman, Sheila M.
[Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/Created
New York : BasicBooks, [1994], ©1994.
Description
xi, 319 pages ; 25 cm
Availability
Copies in the Library
Location
Call Number
Status
Location Service
Notes
ReCAP - Remote Storage
RC310 .R68 1994
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Details
Subject(s)
Tuberculosis
—
United States
—
History
[Browse]
Summary note
For more than 150 years, until well into the twentieth century, tuberculosis was the dreaded scourge that AIDS is for us today. Based on the diaries and letters of hundreds of individuals over five generations, Living in the Shadow of Death is the first book to present an intimate and evocative portrait of what it was like for patients as well as families and communities to struggle against this dreaded disease.
"Consumption," as it used to be called, is one of the oldest known diseases. But it wasn't until the beginning of the nineteenth century that it became pervasive and feared in the United States, the cause of one out of every five deaths. Consumption crossed all boundaries of geography and social class. How did people afflicted with the disease deal with their fate? How did their families? What did it mean for the community when consumption affected almost every family and every town?
Sheila M. Rothman documents a fascinating story. Each generation had its own special view of the origins, transmission, and therapy for the disease, definitions that reflected not only medical knowledge but views on gender obligations, religious beliefs, and community responsibilities. In general, Rothman points out, tenacity and resolve, not passivity or resignation, marked people's response to illness and to their physicians.
Convinced that the outdoor life was better for their health, young men with tuberculosis in the nineteenth century interrupted their college studies and careers to go to sea or to settle in the West, in the process shaping communities in Colorado, Arizona, and California. Women, anticipating the worst, raised their children to be welcomed as orphans in other people's homes. In the twentieth century, both men and women entered sanatoriums, sacrificing autonomy for the prospect of a cure.
Poignant as biography, illuminating as social history, this book reminds us that ours is not the first generation to cope with the death of the young or with the stigma of disease and the proper limits of medical authority. In an era when a deadly contagious disease once again casts its shadow over individual lives and communities, Living in the Shadow of Death gives us a new sense of our own past as it equips us to comprehend the present.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Pt. I. The Invalid Experience: New England Men, 1810-60. 1. The Dreaded Disease. 2. Manhood and Invalidism. 3. The Pursuit of Health. 4. Body and Soul
Pt. II. The Female Invalid: The Narrative of Deborah Vinal Fiske, 1806-44. 5. Coming of Age. 6. Domestic Duties. 7. Deborah and Her Doctors. 8. Intensive Care
Pt. III. Health Seekers in the West, 1840-90. 9. Come West and Live. 10. The Physician as Living Proof. 11. The Western Narrative
Pt. IV. Becoming a Patient, 1882-1940. 12. A Disease of the Masses. 13. Confining for Cure. 14. In the Shadow of the Sanatorium. 15. The Sanatorium Narrative.
Show 1 more Contents items
ISBN
0465030025
LCCN
91059017
OCLC
28336602
RCP
C - S
Statement on language in description
Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage.
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Living in the shadow of death : tuberculosis and the social experience of illness in American history / Sheila M. Rothman.
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