A Blessed Formula for Progress: The Politics of Health, Medicine, and Welfare in Havana (1897--1935) (2013)
Rodriguez, Daniel A. (Author)
Ferrer, Ada
Weinstein, Barbara
Grandin, Greg
Chazkel, Amy
New York University
Weinstein, Barbara
Grandin, Greg
Bender, Thomas
Chazkel, Amy
Bender, Thomas
Edition Details: Advisor: Ferrer, Ada; Committee Members: Weinstein, Barbara, Grandin, Greg, Bender, Thomas, Chazkel, Amy.
Physical Details: 312 pp.
Language: English
A Blessed Formula for Progress explores the early postcolonial history of Cuban medicine. It traces the local, national, and transnational politics of health in early twentieth-century Havana and examines the conflicts and debates over disease and medical care, poverty and social assistance that shaped the lives of the city's residents. In post-independence Cuba, health lay at the intersection of public and private: maternal practices, living conditions, and personal hygiene all became political touchpoints, refracting questions of race, national progress, and the legacies of colonialism and neocolonialism. I argue that the medical history of Havana was not decided within the elite halls of government and hospitals or among politicians and medical professionals. Rather, the republican medical system was the product of intense public debate, local institution-building, and popular protest and engagement. It played out on the streets of Havana, as U.S. military officials sought to "clean up" the capital, as Cuban medical reformers sought to impose hygienic habits on poor women, as patients sought out medical care, and as Cuban physicians clashed with Spanish hospital owners. At stake in these conflicts and others was the role of medicine in a postcolonial Cuba: how would medical services be organized, and for the benefit of which social groups? At the turn of the twentieth century, Cuban reformers articulated a medical nationalism that tied the promises of independence to the health conditions of the Cuban people. Reformers saw in medical science a blueprint to transform the broken former colony into a modern republic, reshape the urban landscape of Havana and transform its inhabitants into healthy modern citizens. But Cuban public health and medicine were themselves deeply embedded in colonial structures, as U.S. power shaped Cuban health policy and as the continuing influence of Havana's Spanish merchant elite shaped public health and medical practice in the city. But urban residents were not the passive objects of modernizing reforms. Rather, they resisted state intrusion into their homes, places of work, and personal lives, even as they engaged with new state and private health and welfare institutions. They sought out healthcare and medical counsel without necessarily accepting the terms of elite medical discourses.
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/03(E), Sep 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1468951381.
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