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The Ailing City: Health, Tuberculosis, and Culture in Buenos Aires, 1870–1950

by Diego Armus

Duke University Press, 2011
eISBN: 978-0-8223-9419-8 | Cloth: 978-0-8223-4999-0 | Paper: 978-0-8223-5012-5
Library of Congress Classification RA644.T7A768 2011
Dewey Decimal Classification 614.542098211

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

For decades, tuberculosis in Buenos Aires was more than a dangerous bacillus. It was also an anxious state of mind shaped not only by fears of contagion and death but also by broader social and cultural concerns. These worries included changing work routines, rapid urban growth and its consequences for housing and living conditions, efforts to build a healthy “national race,” and shifting notions of normality and pathology. In The Ailing City, the historian Diego Armus explores the metaphors, state policies, and experiences associated with tuberculosis in Buenos Aires between 1870 and 1950. During those years, the disease was conspicuous and frightening, and biomedicine was unable to offer an effective cure. Against the background of the global history of tuberculosis, Armus focuses on the making and consolidation of medicalized urban life in the Argentine capital. He discusses the state’s intrusion into private lives and the ways that those suffering from the disease accommodated and resisted official attempts to care for them and to reform and control their morality, sociability, sexuality, and daily habits. The Ailing City is based on an impressive array of sources, including literature, journalism, labor press, medical journals, tango lyrics, films, advertising, imagery, statistics, official reports, and oral history. It offers a unique perspective on the emergence of modernity in a cosmopolitan city on the periphery of world capitalism.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Diego Armus is Associate Professor of Latin American History at Swarthmore College. He has written and edited several books in Spanish, and is the editor of Disease in the History of Modern Latin America: From Malaria to AIDS, also published by Duke University Press.

REVIEWS

“... The Ailing City serves as a exemplary work in the social and cultural history of disease, and it will justifiably become a prized resource on its topic.”

-- Mariola Espinosa Medical History

“For its thought-provoking analysis of the discourses surrounding tuberculosis, based on deep immersion in historical archives, and for its reconstruction of the clandestine, perilous corners of dynamic urban life, The Ailing City deserves attention from historical geographers, especially those with an interest in the modernization of Latin American cities.”

-- Eric D. Carter Journal of Historical Geography

“At a time when the spectre of tuberculosis has again raised its ugly head across the world, this well informed history of the disease and its treatment in the Argentine capital makes a significant contribution to public health debates…. This book is worth reading, revealing as it does that combating disease is never just the preserve of scientists and technocrats, but often a political task that involves taking a hard look at poverty and social deprivation.”

-- Gavin O'Toole Latin American Review of Books

“Diego Armús has written an important book that tells us much about how the reaction to tuberculosis helped create the modern society of the city of Buenos Aires. The impact was not just on hospitals, sanatoria and those who suffered the disease – tuberculosis also had a significant and interesting impact on many sectors of the city’s culture. This is a book well worth reading.”

-- Joel Horowitz Journal of Latin American Studies

“This analysis of the discourses, practices, and images of tuberculosis in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Buenos Aires delivers a comprehensive overview of the many ways in which fears about the disease influenced daily life in the Argentine metropolis. ... Armus’s book is a rich and welcome study of how discussions about disease prevention and control reflected broader cultural and political anxieties during a period of significant social change in Argentina.”

-- Katherine Bliss The Americas

“This book is a valuable addition to the history of Buenos Aires and to the history of medicine. Instructors in these fields as well as in urban studies will welcome its appearance in English.”

-- Julia Rodriguez American Historical Review

“This is an important book based on an exhaustive examination of materials on TB as a disease and cultural artifact. It will be essential reading for those interested in Latin American History, the social history of disease, the history of TB and Argentine History.”

-- Ann Zulawski Global Public Health

"Armus’s study excels not just as a history of tuberculosis but also as an urban history, a history of medicalization, and a history of hygiene. This last focus is a particular strength of the book, as Armus masterfully reconstructs the multiple and shifting understandings of hygiene present in Buenos Aires during this period."

-- Adam Warren Hispanic American Historical Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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