Fevered Lives: Tuberculosis in American Culture since 1870

by Katherine Ott

Consider two polar images of the same medical the pale and fragile Camille ensconced on a chaise in a Victorian parlor, daintily coughing a small spot of blood onto her white lace pillow, and a wretched poor man in a Bowery flophouse spreading a dread and deadly infection. Now Katherine Ott chronicles how in one century a romantic, ambiguous affliction of the spirit was transformed into a disease that threatened public health and civic order. She persuasively argues that there was no constant identity to the disease over time, no "core" tuberculosis. What we understand today as pulmonary tuberculosis would have been largely unintelligible to a physician or patient in the late nineteenth century. Although medically the two terms described the same disease of the lungs, Ott shows that "tuberculosis" and "consumption" were diagnosed, defined, and treated distinctively by both lay and professional health workers. Ott traces the shift from the pre-industrial world of 1870, in which consumption was conceived of primarily as a middle-class malaise that conferred virtue, heightened spirituality, and gentility on the sufferer, to the post-industrial world of today, in which tuberculosis is viewed as a microscopic enemy, fought on an urban battleground and attacking primarily the outcast poor and AIDS patients. Ott's focus is the changing definition of the disease in different historical eras and environments. She explores its external trappings, from the symptoms doctors chose to notice (whether a pale complexion or a tubercle in a dish) to the significance of the economic and social circumstances of the patient. Emphasizing the material culture of disease--medical supplies, advertisements for faraway rest cures, outdoor sick porches, and invalid hammocks--Ott provides insight into people's understanding of illness and how to combat it. Fevered Lives underscores the shifting meanings of consumption/tuberculosis in an extraordinarily readable cultural history.

Genres: History, History Of Medicine, Nonfiction, American History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1996

About the author

Katherine Ott is a curator of Science, Medicine, and Society at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, which houses the largest collection of medical artifacts in the U.S.

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent synthesis on material culture surrounding tuberculosis, primarily from 1870-1920. The introduction of germ theory in the 1880s by Robert Koch and others results in the evolution of tuberculosis on all fronts: how it is diagnosed, treaated and percieved by its sufferers and others. Ott almost tries to accomplish TOO much though, and ends up writing a mile wide and an inch deep. Awesome chapter on scientific advances and their impact on racial attitudes in post-Reconstruction America. Message me if you'd like my full review.

Read for graduate course (Epidemics in World History)

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

There just didn't seem to be a strong throughline. There were facts, but they didn't seem to cohere.

Oddly, in the bibliographic note it gives the point and themes of other books, so there is acknowledgment that can happen.

One interesting direction it could have gone was on how perceptions of tuberculosis influenced the market, and then how the market influenced it back. There was also a lot on how various things weren't known, but then there should have been more on what was known or is known now.

Disappointing.

[Mills College Library]

616.995 O892 1996