Migrant Clinics and Hookworm Science: Peripheral Origins of International Health, 1840–1920

This article proposes a global history of hookworm disease based on the main scientific publications on hookworm disease (ankylostomiasis) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and archival sources from the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Board. The location of hook...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bulletin of the history of medicine 2009-12, Vol.83 (4), p.676-709
Main Author: PALMER, STEVEN
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anemia
Animals
Biology
Biomedical Research - history
Capitalization
Disease
Disease Outbreaks - history
Diseases
Epidemiology
Estates
Foundations - history
Global Health
History of medicine
History of science and technology
History, 19th Century
History, 20th Century
Hookworm Infections - epidemiology
Hookworm Infections - history
Humans
Internationality - history
Life sciences
Medicine
Medicine
surgery
pharmacy
Migrants
Parasites
Parasitic diseases
Pathology
Physicians
Plant diseases
Plantations
Public health
Rural areas
Science
Space
Transients and Migrants - history
Tropical medicine
Workforce
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Summary:This article proposes a global history of hookworm disease based on the main scientific publications on hookworm disease (ankylostomiasis) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and archival sources from the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Board. The location of hookworm research is explained by the presence of large concentrations of migrant laborers who suffered from serious hookworm disease in frontier regions during the second industrial revolution. This hookworm disease pandemic was not the result of a linear spread of infection. The extraordinary labor conditions in these regions created ideal ecologies for the reproduction of the parasite, leading to levels of infection that produced ankylostomiasis. The major findings in hookworm science came from research-oriented physicians building new institutions of medical science in peripheral nation-states. In a number of Latin American states their work led to treatment programs conceived in national terms that preceded the interest of Rockefeller philanthropy in the disease. The Rockefeller Foundation incorporated these programs in order to launch its International Health hookworm eradication program in 1914.
ISSN:0007-5140
1086-3176
1086-3176
1896-3176
DOI:10.1353/bhm.0.0292