Main entry:

Armus, Diego.

Title & Author:

The ailing city : health, tuberculosis, and culture in Buenos Aires, 1870-1950 / Diego Armus.

Publication:

Durham ; London : Duke University Press, 2011.

Description:

x, 416 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 353-407) and index.
People with tuberculosis looking for cures -- From being sick to becoming a patient -- Unruly and well-adjusted patients -- The fight against tuberculosis and the culture of hygiene -- The obsession with contagion -- A disease of excesses -- Immigration, race, and tuberculosis -- A female disease -- Forging the healthy body : physical education, soccer, childhood, and tuberculosis -- Tuberculosis and regeneration : imaginary cities, green spaces, and hygienic housing.

Summary:

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.

Resources:
Book review (H-Net)

ISBN:

9780822349990 (cloth ; alk. paper)
082234999X (cloth ; alk. paper)
9780822350125 (pbk. ; alk. paper)
0822350122 (pbk. ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Tuberculosis Argentina Buenos Aires History.
Public health Argentina Buenos Aires History.
Tuberculosis, Pulmonary history
Tuberculosis, Pulmonary prevention & control
History, 19th Century
History, 20th Century
Preventive Health Services history
Socioeconomic Factors
Tuberculose Argentine Buenos Aires Histoire.
Santé publique Argentine Buenos Aires Histoire.
Médecine Histoire 19e siècle.
Médecine Histoire 20e siècle.
Public health.
Tuberculosis.
Argentina
Argentina Buenos Aires.

Form/genre:

Popular Work
History.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 274601
Call No.: BIB 208423
Status: Available