Sickly Vapors

The southern climate with its heat oppressive humidity and stagnant marshland accentuated disease and suffering for inhabitants of the Old South from its early settling through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Vicious illnesses--from malaria and yellow fever to dysentery cholera typhoid fever typhus and smallpox--beleaguered those dwelling in the South and was blamed on the particular combination of air earth and water characteristic of those southern territories. As the rhetoric of southern sectionalism blossomed in the early nineteenth century so did a growing feeling of southern distinctiveness in health issues. <i>Sickly Vapors: Disease and Doctoring in the Old South </i>is an examination of the unique circumstances of health and disease that shaped southern living and culture before during and after the Civil War. <p/> Through archival records contemporary anecdotes and scientific literature Thomas Helling MD explores the intricacies of health and healthcare for an agrarian population that by virtue of its location was inordinately vulnerable to sicknesses and epidemics. With the influx of enslaved Africans a new set of healthcare issues were introduced. Given the region's peculiar climate ethnic makeup and customs southern doctors adopted an attitude of distinctiveness themselves. As a result southern medical progress became increasingly isolated from northern colleagues. The destructiveness of the Civil War finally provided the impetus for true integration with northern practices in the rapidly changing science of medicine and surgery. Yet with the regeneration of a medical elitism in postbellum years southern doctors clung to nostalgic notions of southern culture and southern medical distinctiveness. In this compelling volume Helling explains how the predominant mindset of southern particularity guided regional interpretation of illness therapeutic decisions and medical education foreboding a healthcare system embedded still with institutional racism.