Author: Todd Meyers File Type: pdf Francois Delaportes Chagas Disease chronicles Brazilian medicines 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. Chagass work did not lack significance the disease that came to share his name would be one of Latin Americas most serious endemic diseases. However, the clinical identification of the disease through Romanas 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 Chagass Disease even after Cecilio Romanas 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. Delaportes study shows how an epistemological focus can add depth to the history of medicine and complexity to accounts of scientific discovery. **Review . . . 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 Delaportes 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, Kings 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 About the Author FRANCOIS DELAPORTE s Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the Universite Jules Verne de Picardie (France). 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 Natures 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 Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology at Wayne State University.

Author: Thomas Sugrue File Type: pdf Once Americas arsenal of democracy, Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of Americas racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of todays urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American urban landscape after World War II. This Princeton Classics edition includes a new preface by Sugrue, discussing the lasting impact of the postwar transformation on urban America and the chronic issues leading to Detroits bankruptcy. **