Contagion: Responding to Infectious Disease
Vaccination poster for the Chicago Department of Health produced by the WPA c. 1936-1941. (LOC)
When yellow fever struck Philadelphia in 1793, the entire federal government picked up and left town, leaving individuals to fend for themselves. A hundred years later, the pendulum had swung sharply in the other direction. Health workers took extreme measures to contain disease – imprisoning the sick, burning entire districts, and vaccinating resistant citizens at gunpoint.
In this hour of BackStory we trace the trajectory of that change and examine the shifting role of the state when it comes to coping with epidemics. Where do we draw the line between promoting the public good and protecting individual rights? How did people understand the causes and experience of disease in their own time? The History Guys look at a drama that unfolded in a New York City immigrant neighborhood when smallpox hit. We’ll also explore how diseases ravaged camps of escaped slaves behind Union lines during and after the Civil War. And contributor Catherine Moore shares the devastating story of what happened in Philadelphia when soldiers returning from World War I brought the Spanish flu home with them.
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Guests Include:
- Dr. Robert Gaynes, attending physician at the Atlanta, GA VA
- Michael Willrich, Professor of History at Brandeis University
- Jim Downs, Associate Professor of History at Connecticut College
Further Exploration
- Resources galore! Consult a list of outside links compiled by the BackStory team to provide a more complete picture of the history of disease in America and peruse a bibliography of sources used in the making of this episode.
- Listen to individual show segments.
Even Further
- Read the listener discussion that helped shape this episode.
- See a listing of music used in the episode.
Sometimes there is a small voice of reason that is not heeded during these events
QuoteWas there a doctor or anyone during any era of these outbreaks saying that there were better ways to handle things?
While I very much enjoyed the discussion and points made during the segment today on the metaphor “war on cancer,” it seems to me there was no distinction between use of the metaphor to describe an individual’s response to her/his own cancer (where it may be more appropriate and where the caller was focused) and the national research response to cancer, where for many reasons it is no longer appropriate nor energizing. At the time this trope emerged (in its most public incarnation in conjunction with the National Cancer Act in 1971), “a cure” for cancer seemed not just possible but almost within our grasp and a moral obligation for the country to pursue.
Fast forward 40 years, however, and the scientific picture is much different: We now know that ancer is actually a constellation of hundreds of different “kinds” of disease, with different causes, different medical interventions, and different research responses. Genomic medicine has served to create many more effective treatments, but also has reminded us of the enormity of a challenge that is unlikely to be met in a clean, sweeping way. We see a future where much cancer can be prevented (by lifestyle changes or vaccination), some cancers can be cured, and many cancers will be successfully managed during long and otherwise healthy lives as chronic disease. But we will almost certainly never have an unqualified “win” from science — and to describe our efforts this way ensures a perpetual siege mentality that leads to public skepticism and distrust.
Rick Borchelt
QuoteSpecial Assistant to the Director
National Cancer Institute, NIH
Good show! When I give my talk on Childbirth and Medicine in Early 19th c. America I use several 20th c. slide images of small pox victims to illustrate what a dreadful disease it was. As it was clear from your guests most of us have never seen or even imagined how horrible and frightening it was to experience. The reaction of my audience whether students or the general public is always to be stunned as nothing in our modern medical experience prepares us for such a sight.
QuoteSuch pictures also give me an opportunity to laud Jefferson for bravery when he not only had his slaves inoculated but his own young daughters at a time when that process was pretty scary as well.
Without being able to actually see a case of small pox it’s hard to understand how incredibly fortunate we are to have benefited from its eradication.
Of all the recent episodes I thought this one was the best. I offer this opinion because i thought of all those that see history as examining the dead past. In the episode we could see the arc of history; the past morphing and prodding the changes over the decades. Rather than a set of discrete and unconnected events we can see how the national response to epidemics as part of the modernization and urbanization processes. Well done guys!
Quotelove the broadcast… but more recent podcasts skip back to intro a few minutes into broadcast . this happens with both streamed and dowloaded versions. this does not happen on podasts from other sources so thinking there might be some issue in your production process.
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