Smallpox in America, Ch 1-3 (week of Mar 6)
by Prof. Hangen - March 3rd, 2017
Brandeis history professor Michael Willrich‘s book about smallpox traces the complex interactions between medicine, public health, government and politics in the Progressive Era. We will read this book over several weeks, from March 6 to March 27. Please bring the book to class on the days we’re discussing the assigned chapters.
Keep in mind that the Conference Day for your Disease Project is Wed 3/15. Your poster is due in class and you should be prepared to make a short presentation to your peers about your project on that day. Project guidelines, if you need them, are posted on Blackboard and in the left sidebar on this page.
Mon, March 6: Read Pox, Prologue “New York, 1900” and Chapter 1 “Beginnings”
Some discussion questions to guide your reading and thinking:
- Consider the subtitle. How is this an “American history”? Is it, in some way, a history of America itself? Or of the era? Where does Willrich locate the story – in the sick people, or the researchers, or the law, or somewhere else? Why does he begin the story in 1900, when smallpox is already a very old disease?
- How do race and gender intersect with the story of smallpox outbreaks at the turn of the 20th century?
- One of Willrich’s claims is that smallpox “sparked one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the twentieth century” (14). This is a surprising claim; why?
- Explain the difference between smallpox variolation and vaccination.
- Why didn’t the US go the route of compulsory vaccination laws, as in other developed industrial nations at the time?
Wednesday, March 8: Read Pox, Chapters 2 “The Mild Type” and 3 “Wherever Wertenbaker Went”
Some discussion questions to guide your reading and thinking:
- How did communities, states and the federal government respond to “mild type” smallpox? Was Middlesboro, Kentucky, typical? What cultural factors made fighting smallpox in the South more challenging in these years?
- Describe the work of health inspectors like Wertenbaker – what did they do, and not do? What kind of authority (moral, legal, jurisdictional) did they have?
- What can you learn from these chapters about IDEAS of health and sickness at the time?
- What do these chapters tell you about how the American health care system developed?