Dying in the City of the Blues
eBook - PDF

Dying in the City of the Blues

Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health

  1. 360 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Dying in the City of the Blues

Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health

About this book

This groundbreaking book chronicles the history of sickle cell anemia in the United States, tracing its transformation from an “invisible” malady to a powerful, yet contested, cultural symbol of African American pain and suffering.

Set in Memphis, home of one of the nation’s first sickle cell clinics, Dying in the City of the Blues reveals how the recognition, treatment, social understanding, and symbolism of the disease evolved in the twentieth century, shaped by the politics of race, region, health care, and biomedicine. Using medical journals, patients' accounts, black newspapers, blues lyrics, and many other sources, Keith Wailoo follows the disease and its sufferers from the early days of obscurity before sickle cell’s “discovery” by Western medicine; through its rise to clinical, scientific, and social prominence in the 1950s; to its politicization in the 1970s and 1980s. Looking forward, he considers the consequences of managed care on the politics of disease in the twenty-first century.

A rich and multilayered narrative, Dying in the City of the Blues offers valuable new insight into the African American experience, the impact of race relations and ideologies on health care, and the politics of science, medicine, and disease.

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Yes, you can access Dying in the City of the Blues by Keith Wailoo in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medicina & Teoria, pratica e riferimenti medici. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
These 
images 
of 
sickled 
cells 
appeared 
in 
James 
Herrick’s 
1910 
article 
in 
Archives 
of
Internal 
Medicine
and 
in 
countless 
articles 
since 
then. 
In 
America 
and 
the 
West, 
the
new 
disease 
would 
take 
its 
name 
from 
the 
shape 
of 
these 
cells. 
In 
African 
cultures, 
as
one 
critic 
later 
noted, 
the 
names 
given 
the 
disease 
(such 
as 
‘‘Chwechweechwe’’)
reflected 
the 
patient’s 
experience 
of 
recurrent 
pain 
rather 
than 
the 
pathologist’s
fascination 
with 
cellular 
morphology. 
(Reproduced 
from 
Herrick, 
‘‘Peculiar 
Elon-
gated 
and 
Sickle-shaped 
Red 
Blood 
Corpuscles 
in 
a 
Case 
of 
Severe 
Anemia,’’ 
Archives
of 
Internal 
Medicine
6 
[1910]: 
517)
Reverend 
T. 
O. 
Fuller 
(1867–1942), 
pictured 
here 
ca. 
1930, 
reflected 
the 
modera-
tion 
and 
accommodation 
and 
the 
ideals 
of 
racial 
uplift 
charateristic 
of 
many 
Mem-
phis 
black 
pastors 
in 
the 
Jim 
Crow 
era. 
Such 
ideas 
often 
brought 
them 
into 
conflict
with 
other 
black 
Memphians 
and, 
occasionally, 
with 
their 
own 
congregations. 
(Re-
produced 
from 
T. 
O. 
Fuller, 
The 
Story 
of 
Church 
Life 
among 
Negroes
[Memphis: 
T. 
O.
Fuller, 
1938])

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Introduction. Pain and Suffering in Memphis
  4. 1 Conjurors of Health in the New South
  5. 2 Race Pathologies, Apparent and Unseen
  6. 3 Remaking Jim Crow Medicine
  7. 4 The Commodification of Black Health
  8. 5 Sickled Cells, Black Identity, and the Limits of Liberalism
  9. 6 Promising Therapy: Government Medicine on Beale Street
  10. 7 Pain and Policy at the Crossroads of Managed Care
  11. Conclusion. Race against Disease
  12. Notes
  13. Primary Sources
  14. Index
  15. A section of illustrations