Yellow fever & public health in the New South /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Ellis, John H. (John Hubert), 1931-2008, author.
Imprint:	Lexington, Ky. : University Press of Kentucky, [1992] ©1992
Description:	1 online resource (xii, 233 pages) : illustrations
Language:	English
Subject:	Yellow fever -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century. Public health -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century. Public health. Yellow fever. Public Health -- history. Yellow Fever -- history. Southern States. Southeastern United States. History. Electronic books.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11113485

Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other title:	Yellow fever and public health in the New South.
ISBN:	0813170060 9780813170060 9780813148229 0813148227 9780813117812 081311781X
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index. Description based on online resource; title from resource home page (Project MUSE, viewed April 14, 2020).
Summary:	"The public health movement in the South began in the wake of a yellow fever epidemic that devastated the lower Mississippi Valley in 1878--a disaster that caused 20,000 deaths and financial losses of nearly $200 million. The full scale of the epidemic and the tentative, troubled southern response to it are for the first time fully examined by John Ellis in this new book. At the national level, southern congressional leaders fought to establish a strong federal health agency, but they were defeated by the young American Public Health Association, which defended states' rights. Local responses and results were mixed. In New Orleans, business and professional men, reacting to the denunciation of the city as the nation's pesthole, organized in 1879 to improve drainage, garbage disposal, and water supplies through voluntary subscription. Their achievements were of necessity modest. In Memphis--the city hardest hit by the epidemic--a new municipal government in 1879 helped form the first regional health organization and during the 1880s led the nation in sanitary improvements. In Atlanta, though it largely escaped the epidemic, the Constitution and some citizens called for health reform. Ironically their voices were drowned out by ritual invocation of local health mythology and by unabashed exploitation of the stigma of pestilence attached to New Orleans and Memphis. By 1890 Atlanta rivaled Charleston and Richmond for primacy in black mortality rates. That the public health movement met with only limited success Ellis attributes to the prevailing atmosphere of opportunistic greed, overwhelming debt, economic instability, and inordinate political corruption. But the effort to combat a terrifying disease not fully understood did eventually produce changes and the vastly improved health systems of today"--Publisher's description.
Other form:	Print version: Ellis, John H. (John Hubert), 1931- Yellow fever & public health in the New South. Lexington, Ky. : University Press of Kentucky, ©1992 081311781X

Review by Choice Review

The 1878 yellow fever epidemic was a devastating event which caused many deaths but which also resulted in responses leading to the National Board of Health and major advances in American public health. This marvelous book is based on a lifetime of research and study, and it touches on many of the important themes related to the epidemic and the emergence of the public health movement in the South. This well-crafted study should be required reading for anyone with an interest in the history of public health or the South, or with special interest in the history of New Orleans, Memphis, or Atlanta. This book contains 56 pages of notes. Ellis (history, Lehigh University) is to be congratulated on a job well-done. This important book should be widely read by specialists in the various fields involved. Advanced undergraduate; graduate. M. Kaufman; Westfield State College

Review by Choice Review

Yellow fever & public health in the New South /

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