From the late nineteenth century until the 1920s, authorities required
San Francisco's Pesthouse to segregate the diseased from the rest of the
city. Although the Pesthouse stood out of sight and largely out of mind,
it existed at a vital nexus of civic life where issues of medicine,
race, class, environment, morality, and citizenship entwined and played
out. Guenter B. Risse places this forgotten institution within an
emotional climate dominated by widespread public dread and disgust. In
Driven by Fear, he analyzes the unique form of stigma generated by San
Franciscans. Emotional states like xenophobia and racism played a part.
Yet the phenomenon also included competing medical paradigms and unique
economic needs that encouraged authorities to protect the city's
reputation as a haven of health restoration. As Risse argues, public
health history requires an understanding of irrational as well as
rational motives. To that end he delves into the spectrum of emotions
that drove extreme measures like segregation and isolation and fed
psychological, ideological, and pragmatic urges to scapegoat and
stereotype victims--particularly Chinese victims--of smallpox, leprosy,
plague, and syphilis.
Filling a significant gap in contemporary scholarship, Driven by Fear
looks at the past to offer critical lessons for our age of bioterror
threats and emerging infectious diseases.