In Search of Health: Landscape and Disease in American Environmental History

Mitman, Gregg

doi:10.1093/envhis/10.2.184

Cited by 38 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…In recent decades scholars have traced these ecologies of knowledge to, variously, bacteriological epidemiology (Mendelsohn 1998 ) parasitology (Farley 1992 ) and tropical medicine (Worboys 1998 ; Tilley 2011 ). In addition, historians have shown how ecological conceptions of infectious disease were influenced by medical researchers’ encounters with novel pathogens endemic in “settler societies” (Griffiths and Robin 1997 ; Mitman 2005 ; Nash 2006 ). This was particularly true of Burnet, whose work on behalf of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in Australia fostered an interest in the control of agricultural pests and animal viruses, prompting interdisciplinary collaborations with parasitologists, zoologists and animal ecologists.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

René Dubos, tuberculosis, and the “ecological facets of virulence”

Honigsbaum

2017

HPLS

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Reflecting on his scientific career toward the end of his life, the French-educated medical researcher René Dubos presented his flowering as an ecological thinker as a story of linear progression—the inevitable product of the intellectual seeds planted in his youth. But how much store should we set by Dubos’s account of his ecological journey? Resisting retrospective biographical readings, this paper seeks to relate the development of Dubos’s ecological ideas to his experimental practices and his career as a laboratory researcher. In particular, I focus on Dubos’s studies of tuberculosis at the Rockefeller Institute in the period 1944–1956—studies which began with an inquiry into the tubercle bacillus and the physiochemical determinants of virulence, but which soon encompassed a wider investigation of the influence of environmental forces and host–parasite interactions on susceptibility and resistance to infection in animal models. At the same time, through a close reading of Dubos’s scientific papers and correspondence, I show how he both drew on and distinguished his ecological ideas from those of other medical researchers such as Theobald Smith, Frank Macfarlane Burnet, and Frank Fenner. However, whereas Burnet and Fenner tended to view ecological interactions at the level of populations, Dubos focused on the interface of hosts and parasites in the physiological environments of individuals. The result was that although Dubos never fully engaged with the science of ecology, he was able to incorporate ecological ideas into his thought and practices, and relate them to his holistic views on health and the natural harmony of man and his environment.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

René Dubos, tuberculosis, and the “ecological facets of virulence”

Honigsbaum

2017

HPLS

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“…"Environmental history approaches… emphasize contingency and change along [the] material dimensions of the human past, especially as creatures or chemicals become caught up in the projects of human societies and economies. Much of the narrative and analytical power in this approach derives from an assumption that nonhuman substances or organisms have concrete effects on history that we, as historians, can recognize, even if past actors saw them quite differently or not at all" (Mitman, 2008).…”

Section: Toronto Waterfront Re-engagement With Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

The edge is the context: transmigrative betweenness

Birjandi¹

2021

Preprint

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Port cities are particularly important because they are affected by mutations and fluctuations of industrial evolution. These ports encounter other sequential and recreational functions that miss opportunities for identity and particular waterfront characteristics. A city’s waterfront could be envisioned as a thick line, an equipped and inhabitable limen, creating a sense of belonging that could lead to significant identity by corresponding to both internal qualities of a city and external regional influences. These marginal bands can reveal the dynamic in-between-ness of being in the middle. It is an appropriate time to assess redevelopment projects on waterfront sites and shorelines to evaluate ways to recreate the image of the city, appeal to an urban population and recapture economic investment. Waterfront projects embody potential that speaks to our future and our past. In fact, a waterfront is a hybrid-scape that deals with the gap between city and water to provide alternatives for future usage.

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“…In many ways, Cuba first established Latin America’s acceptance of bacteriology. Latin America’s climate, geography, and people figured prominently in developing efforts to combat Anopheles aegypti mosquitos, which are aggressive biters of humans, and to control yellow fever including fumigation, covering water containers, isolating sick individuals, quarantining infected cities, and draining or filling puddles, ponds, and receptacles of stagnant water (Cueto & Palmer, 2015; Espinosa, 2009; Marranghello, 1994; Mitman, 2005).…”

Section: Anti-yellow Fever Campaignsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Yellow Fever’s Historical Lessons for COVID-19: International Interventions and Disease Control in Early Twentieth-century Ecuador and Guatemala

Carey

2021

Journal of Developing Societies

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Throughout tropical urban Latin America, yellow fever wreaked havoc. Located at sea level, Guayaquil (Ecuador) and Puerto Barrios (Guatemala) were particularly susceptible to yellow fever; yet, Ecuadorians and Guatemalans enjoyed significant success in early twentieth-century campaigns against yellow fever. Reflecting international efforts that informed, collaborated with, and at times underwrote Latin American public health campaigns, the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) sent representatives to Guatemala and Ecuador in the mid-1910s to eradicate yellow fever. While those interventions enjoyed immediate success, the long-term effects were more ambiguous. By collaborating with RF, Ecuador had all but eradicated yellow fever by 1919. In Guatemala, however, a few months after RF declared Guatemala free of yellow fever, influenza struck, likely originating from US military camps in Guatemala that RF sought to shield from yellow fever. Analysis of early twentieth-century yellow fever epidemics and campaigns to arrest them sheds light on COVID-19 pandemic challenges. Even as knowledge of disease etiology was evolving in Ecuador and Guatemala, most leaders accepted or at least did not publicly reject scientific medicine. In contrast, beginning with the most powerful politicians and filtering down throughout federal, state, and municipal authorities, many US leaders rejected science crucial to the campaigns against COVID-19. Similarly, in a pattern that resonates with US residents rejecting precautionary measures against COVID-19 such as wearing masks and maintaining social distance, compliance with anti-yellow fever campaigns was not always forthcoming.

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In Search of Health: Landscape and Disease in American Environmental History

Cited by 38 publications

References 8 publications

René Dubos, tuberculosis, and the “ecological facets of virulence”

René Dubos, tuberculosis, and the “ecological facets of virulence”

The edge is the context: transmigrative betweenness

Yellow Fever’s Historical Lessons for COVID-19: International Interventions and Disease Control in Early Twentieth-century Ecuador and Guatemala

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