Malaria : poverty, race, and public health in the United States /

Physician-historian Humphreys (Duke Univ.) provides a historical analysis of the beginning and ending of malaria in the US. She offers the premise that the disappearance of malaria in the US by the 1950s is one of the hallmarks of the US's rise to world leadership, domination, and prosperity. Multiple themes emerge, including the changing nature of public health; the responsible vector, plasmodium, dispersed by the bite of mosquitoes; and the influence of poverty, race, immunity, and migration on patterns of disease. She explores the biology and evolution of malaria in the US within 19th-century colonies; reasons for its prevalence in the South, including the ethical challenge of discussing race and poverty together; public health efforts launched to eradicate malaria from 1900 to the 1940s, including its disappearance in the upper Mississippi valley despite no active public health campaign; and various theories about its eventual eradication, including massive DDT campaigns in the 1940s. Humphreys clearly articulates the factors most important to the perpetuation of malaria: poor nutrition, lack of access to medical care, poor housing, livestock, and the existence of other chronic disease conditions. However, she regrets that lessons learned from US eradication of malaria are not relevant to other countries where the disease remains endemic. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate students; professionals. J. E. Thompson University of Pennsylvania