Chagas Disease: History of a Continent's Scourge

Author:   François Delaporte ,  Arthur Goldhammer ,  Todd Meyers ,  Todd Meyers (Harvard University Wayne State University)
Publisher:   Fordham University Press
ISBN:  

9780823242498


Pages:   208
Publication Date:   14 August 2012
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Our Price $167.99 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

Chagas Disease: History of a Continent's Scourge


Add your own review!

Overview

François Delaporte’s Chagas Disease chronicles Brazilian medicine’s encounter with a disease, an insect, and a history of discovery. Between 1909 and 1911, Carlos Chagas described an infection (pathogenic trypanosome), its intermediate host, and the illness that he believed it caused, parasitic thyroiditis. Chagas’s work did not lack significance: the disease that came to share his name would be one of Latin America’s most serious endemic diseases. However, the clinical identification of the disease through “Romaña’s sign” (a palpebral edema or swelling of the eyelid) some decades later marked a transformation in the general medical knowledge of the disease and its basis altogether. Not only was the disease entity that Chagas had described shown to be a nosological illusion, but twenty-five years of scientific controversy turned out to have been based on a misunderstanding. The continued use of the term “Chagas’s Disease” even after Cecilio Romaña’s discovery thus refers to a fundamental ambiguity. Delaporte dispels this ambiguity by re-examining the various discoveries, dead ends, controversies, and major epistemological transformations that marked the history of the disease––a history that begins with the creation of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro and ends in the forests of Santa Fe in northern Argentina. Delaporte’s study shows how an epistemological focus can add depth to the history of medicine and complexity to accounts of scientific discovery.

Full Product Details

Author:   François Delaporte ,  Arthur Goldhammer ,  Todd Meyers ,  Todd Meyers (Harvard University Wayne State University)
Publisher:   Fordham University Press
Imprint:   Fordham University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.400kg
ISBN:  

9780823242498


ISBN 10:   0823242498
Pages:   208
Publication Date:   14 August 2012
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Reviews

. . . Explores the history of the identification and disease classification of Chagas Disease. -Book News Inc In this finely crafted monograph, Francois Delaporte tackles one of the most complex diseases, American trypanosomiasis, known as Chagas Disease. Through his skillful dissection, he shows how complicated its discovery actually was, and offers wonderful insights into the international dimensions of Brazilian medical science in the early twentieth century. It is good to have this important work available in English. -W. F. Bynum, MD, PhD, FRCP, Professor Emeritus, University College London Delaporte's brilliant historical exploration of Chagas' disease covers the decisive period of 1909-1935. The strength of the study is the exhaustive discussion of the scientific literature, the subtle examination of fundamental shifts in conceptual frameworks, and the unrelenting interrogation of the crucial role that chance and error play in scientific research. What Delaporte has written is a comedie humaine of post-colonial science. -Carlo Caduff, King's College, London If Delaporte is correct then Chagas did not discover the causative organisms of American trypanosomiasis, did not work out the life cycle in the bug and did not discover the disease. So why is he so revered? Delaporte thinks that this is because Chagas was an expert at reformulating the past by rewriting history. -Parasitology Several points about the discovery of Chagas disease as described in the book are striking. -The Lancet Interestingly, Delaporte makes the very same criticism to the social studies of knowledge in which the aforementioned critics could be cast out. In his view those who establish causal linkages between the context of knowledge and scientific knowledge undertake an ahistorical task since they take for granted self-evident objects. According to Delaporte, these kinds of objects obscure the never foreordained historicity of what men do in


. . . Explores the history of the identification and disease classification of Chagas Disease. -Book News Inc In this finely crafted monograph, Francois Delaporte tackles one of the most complex diseases, American trypanosomiasis, known as Chagas Disease. Through his skillful dissection, he shows how complicated its discovery actually was, and offers wonderful insights into the international dimensions of Brazilian medical science in the early twentieth century. It is good to have this important work available in English. -W. F. Bynum, MD, PhD, FRCP, Professor Emeritus, University College London Delaporte's brilliant historical exploration of Chagas' disease covers the decisive period of 1909-1935. The strength of the study is the exhaustive discussion of the scientific literature, the subtle examination of fundamental shifts in conceptual frameworks, and the unrelenting interrogation of the crucial role that chance and error play in scientific research. What Delaporte has written is a comedie humaine of post-colonial science. -Carlo Caduff, King's College, London If Delaporte is correct then Chagas did not discover the causative organisms of American trypanosomiasis, did not work out the life cycle in the bug and did not discover the disease. So why is he so revered? Delaporte thinks that this is because Chagas was an expert at reformulating the past by rewriting history. -Parasitology Several points about the discovery of Chagas disease as described in the book are striking. -The Lancet Interestingly, Delaporte makes the very same criticism to the social studies of knowledge in which the aforementioned critics could be cast out. In his view those who establish causal linkages between the context of knowledge and scientific knowledge undertake an ahistorical task since they take for granted self-evident objects. According to Delaporte, these kinds of objects obscure the never foreordained historicity of what men do in order to be able to speak about things.--Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Project Muse) 'Chagas Disease' is a page-turner, where the reader is invited to wonder what will happen next. -International Studies in the Philosophy of Science


Author Information

François Delaporte is Professor Emeritus of the University of Picardia Jules Verne. Several of his books have been translated into English, including Disease and Civilization: The Cholera in Paris, 1832; The History of Yellow Fever; Anatomy of the Passions; and Nature’s Second Kingdom. He also edited A Vital Rationalist: Selected Writings of Georges Canguilhem. Arthur Goldhammer is Senior Affiliate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Todd Meyers is Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University-Shanghai. He is the author of The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

ls

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List