Kathryn Olivarius (Author)
Disease is thought to be a great leveler of humanity, but in antebellum New Orleans acquiring immunity from the scourge of yellow fever magnified the brutal inequities of slave-powered capitalism. Antebellum New Orleans sat at the heart of America’s slave and cotton kingdoms. It was also where yellow fever epidemics killed as many as 150,000 people during the nineteenth century. With little understanding of mosquito-borne viruses―and meager public health infrastructure―a person’s only protection against the scourge was to “get acclimated” by surviving the disease. About half of those who contracted yellow fever died. Repeated epidemics bolstered New Orleans’s strict racial hierarchy by introducing another hierarchy, what Kathryn Olivarius terms “immunocapital.” As this highly original analysis shows, white survivors could leverage their immunity as evidence that they had paid their biological dues and could then pursue economic and political advancement. For enslaved Blacks, the story was different. Immunity protected them from yellow fever, but as embodied capital, they saw the social and monetary value of their acclimation accrue to their white owners. Whereas immunity conferred opportunity and privilege on whites, it relegated enslaved people to the most grueling labor. The question of good health―who has it, who doesn’t, and why―is always in part political. Necropolis shows how powerful nineteenth-century white Orleanians―all allegedly immune―pushed this politics to the extreme. They constructed a society that capitalized mortal risk and equated perceived immunity with creditworthiness and reliability. Instead of trying to curb yellow fever through sanitation or quarantines, immune white Orleanians took advantage of the chaos disease caused. Immunological discrimination therefore became one more form of bias in a society premised on inequality, one more channel by which capital disciplined and divided the population.
...More
Article
Kathryn Olivarius;
(2019)
Immunity, Capital, and Power in Antebellum New Orleans
(/isis/citation/CBB394438457/)
Article
Almeida, Maria Antónia Pires de;
(2013)
Epidemics in the News: Health and Hygiene in the Press in Periods of Crisis
(/isis/citation/CBB001320417/)
Article
Mariola Espinosa;
(2014)
The Question of Racial Immunity to Yellow Fever in History and Historiography
(/isis/citation/CBB232506989/)
Thesis
Keller, Kathryn Jean;
(2000)
Racing immunities: How yellow fever gendered a nation
(/isis/citation/CBB001560927/)
Book
Urmi Engineer Willoughby;
(2017)
Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans
(/isis/citation/CBB065443274/)
Article
Alcalá Ferráez, Carlos;
(2012)
De miasmas a mosquitos: el pensamiento médico sobre la fiebre amarilla en Yucatán, 1890--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001420572/)
Thesis
Espinosa, Mariola;
(2003)
Epidemic Invasions: Yellow Fever, Public Health, and the Limits of Cuban Independence, 1878 through the Early Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB001562033/)
Thesis
Engineer, Urmi;
(2010)
Hurricane and the Human Frame: Yellow Fever, Race, and Public Health in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans
(/isis/citation/CBB001562769/)
Book
Tim Carter;
(2014)
Merchant Seamen's Health, 1860-1960: Medicine, Technology, Shipowners and the State in Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB510390199/)
Article
Huffard, R. Scott, Jr.;
(2013)
Infected Rails: Yellow Fever and Southern Railroads
(/isis/citation/CBB001200324/)
Article
Rebelo, Fernanda;
(2013)
Entre o Carlo R. e o Orleannais: a saúde pública e a profilaxia marítima no relato de dois casos de navios de imigrantes no porto do Rio de Janeiro, 1893--1907
(/isis/citation/CBB001420664/)
Book
Shah, Nayan;
(2001)
Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown
(/isis/citation/CBB000101127/)
Book
Dickerson, James L.;
(2006)
Yellow Fever: A Deadly Disease Poised to Kill Again
(/isis/citation/CBB000800195/)
Book
Espinosa, Mariola;
(2009)
Epidemic Invasions: Yellow Fever and the Limits of Cuban Independence, 1878--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001020061/)
Article
McMillen, Christian W.;
(2008)
“The Red Man and the White Plague”: Rethinking Race, Tuberculosis, and American Indians, ca. 1890--1950
(/isis/citation/CBB000930711/)
Article
Melanie A Kiechle;
(2021)
“Health is Wealth”: Valuing Health in the Nineteenth-Century United States
(/isis/citation/CBB251116095/)
Article
Keith Wailoo;
(2020)
Spectacles of Difference: The Racial Scripting of Epidemic Disparities
(/isis/citation/CBB687253716/)
Article
Seng, Loh Kah;
(2008)
“Our lives are bad but our luck is good”: A Social History of Leprosy in Singapore
(/isis/citation/CBB000930667/)
Article
Valentina Gazzaniga;
Silvia Marinozzi;
(2017)
De Carbone, Sive Carbuncolo. Il Carbonchio nella Pubblicistica Italiana dalla Restaurazione all'Unità
(/isis/citation/CBB317291966/)
Book
Yip Ka-che;
Wong Man Kong;
Leung Yuen Sang;
(2019)
A Documentary History of Public Health in Hong Kong
(/isis/citation/CBB886275024/)
Be the first to comment!