Malaria

Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States

Margaret Humphreys

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9780801875991
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Policy

This is the story of a war against a disease that we can never win but must continue to fight.

In Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States, Margaret Humphreys presents the first book-length account of the parasitic, insect-borne disease that has infected millions and influenced settlement patterns, economic development, and the quality of life at every level of American society, especially in the south.

Humphreys approaches malaria from three perspectives: the parasite's biological history, the medical response to it, and the patient's experience of the disease. It addresses numerous questions including how the parasite thrives and eventually becomes vulnerable, how professionals came to know about the parasite and learned how to fight them, and how people view the disease and came to the point where they could understand and support the struggle against it.

In addition Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States argues that malaria control was central to the evolution of local and federal intervention in public health, and demonstrates the complex interaction between poverty, race, and geography in determining the fate of malaria.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Pestilence That Stalks in Darkness
• 2 The Mist Rises: Malaria in the Nineteenth Century
• 3 Race, Poverty, and Place
• 4 Making Malaria Control Profitable
• 5 A Ditch in Time Saves Quinine?
• 6 Popular Perceptions of Health, Disease, and Malaria
• 7 Denouement
• Notes
• Note on Sources
• Index