Diego Armus. The Ailing City

This work is an expanded and reorganized translation of Diego Armus's 2007 book, originally published in Spanish as La ciudad impura: Salud, tuberculosis y cultura en Buenos Aires, 1870–1950. Eagerly awaited by historians of medicine, the English version is a welcome addition to the growing study of medicine in the Latin American social context. Tuberculosis is, as Armus points out early on, one of the most written-about diseases. The Argentine capital is a good site for an in-depth study of tuberculosis's social impact: at the turn of the century, the disease was one of the biggest killers in Buenos Aires, and in 1928 it was still the second highest cause of death. Weighing in at over 350 pages and in ten chapters, the book supplies a thorough and multifaceted account of the social experience of tuberculosis in Buenos Aires from the perspective of various actors. In an introductory chapter, Armus situates his work within the last thirty years of historiography, especially the large scholarly and literary work on tuberculosis and the history of Buenos Aires. The book does not follow a traditional chronology; most chapters trace continuity and change throughout selected periods, or for the entire period from 1870 to 1950, to offer “a sort of inventory of the shifting spectacle of modern life in Buenos Aires” (p. 11).

Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology) · Historiography · History of medicine · Humanities · Latin Americans · Political science · Tuberculosis · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Medicine