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Starved for Light: The Long Shadow of Rickets and Vitamin D Deficiency de Christian Warren

Starved for Light: The Long Shadow of Rickets and Vitamin D Deficiency

Autor Christian Warren
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 20 noi 2024

În ultimele decenii, percepția asupra sănătății publice s-a deplasat de la combaterea bolilor carențiale acute către gestionarea riscurilor cronice, însă reapariția unor afecțiuni considerate „istorice” ne obligă să reevaluăm relația dintre mediul urban și biologia umană. Remarcăm în Starved for Light o analiză clinică și socială riguroasă a rahitismului, o boală care a umbrit dezvoltarea pediatrică odată cu ascensiunea „fabricilor satanice” și a urbanizării dense. Credem că această lucrare depășește granițele unei simple cronici medicale, investigând modul în care arhitectura orașelor și condițiile socio-economice au dictat, la propriu, structura osoasă a generații întregi.

Structura volumului este organizată cronologic și tematic, pornind de la dovezile arheologice din Egiptul Antic și culminând cu „epoca incertitudinii” contemporane. Autorul, Christian Warren, dedică secțiuni esențiale disputelor științifice dintre susținătorii cauzelor dietetice și cei ai fototerapiei, oferind o perspectivă nuanțată asupra modului în care s-a ajuns la fortificarea industrială a alimentelor. Reținem, de asemenea, capitolele tulburătoare despre experimentele clinice pe copii și modul în care prejudecățile rasiale au influențat diagnosticul în Statele Unite.

Manual de referință pentru istoria medicinei, volumul este comparabil cu Vitamin Discoveries and Disasters de Frances R. Frankenburg MD, dar aduce o actualizare critică asupra politicilor de sănătate publică și a impactului mediului construit. Dacă în lucrarea sa anterioară, Silent Victories, Christian Warren celebra succesele igienei publice, în Starved for Light el adoptă o poziție mai precaută, avertizându-ne că nicio soluție tehnologică, precum suplimentele de vitamina D, nu poate substitui complet nevoile biologice fundamentale de lumină și nutriție naturală.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780226151939
ISBN-10: 022615193X
Pagini: 288
Ilustrații: 19 halftones
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.54 kg
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această carte istoricilor medicinii și specialiștilor în sănătate publică care doresc să înțeleagă rădăcinile crizelor nutriționale moderne. Cititorul va câștiga o perspectivă profundă asupra modului în care progresul industrial a modelat patologiile umane. Este o lectură esențială pentru a înțelege de ce, într-o eră a abundenței, deficiența de vitamina D rămâne o controversă medicală activă și o provocare pentru medicina pediatrică contemporană.

Despre autor

Christian Warren este istoric academic în cadrul Academiei de Medicină din New York (New York Academy of Medicine). Expertiza sa se concentrează pe intersecția dintre sănătatea publică, istoria mediului și politicile sociale din Statele Unite. Lucrarea sa anterioară, Silent Victories, a analizat progresele majore ale științelor sănătății publice în secolul XX. În volumul de față, Starved for Light, publicat de University of Chicago Press, Warren își rafinează abordarea, folosind rahitismul ca studiu de caz pentru a demonstra cum societatea și mediul construit influențează direct evoluția bolilor și răspunsul instituțiilor medicale la acestea.

Descriere scurtă

A wide-ranging history of rickets tracks the disease’s emergence, evolution, and eventual treatment—and exposes the backstory behind contemporary worries about vitamin D deficiency.
 
Rickets, a childhood disorder that causes soft and misshapen bones, transformed from an ancient but infrequent threat to a common scourge during the Industrial Revolution. Factories, mills, and urban growth transformed the landscape. Malnutrition and insufficient exposure to sunlight led to severe cases of rickets across Europe and the United States, affecting children in a variety of settings: dim British cities and American slave labor camps, moneyed households and impoverished ones. By the late 1800s, it was one of the most common pediatric diseases, seemingly an intractable consequence of modern life.
 
Starved for Light offers the first comprehensive history of this disorder. Tracing the efforts to understand, prevent, and treat rickets—first with the traditional remedy of cod liver oil, then with the application of a breakthrough corrective, industrially produced vitamin D supplements—Christian Warren places the disease at the center of a riveting medical history, one alert to the ways society shapes our views on illness. Warren shows how physicians and public health advocates in the United States turned their attention to rickets among urban immigrants, both African Americans and southern Europeans; some concluded that the disease was linked to race, while others blamed poverty, sunless buildings and cities, or cultural preferences in diet and clothing. Spotlighting rickets’ role in a series of medical developments, Warren leads readers through the encroachment on midwifery by male obstetricians, the development of pediatric orthopedic devices and surgeries, early twentieth-century research into vitamin D, appalling clinical experiments on young children testing its potential, and the eventual commercialization of all manner of vitamin D supplements. As vitamin D consumption rose in the mid-twentieth century, rickets—previously a major concern for doctors, parents, and public health institutions—faded in its severity and frequency, and as a topic of discussion. But despite the availability of drugstore supplements and fortified milk, small numbers of cases still appear today, and concerns and controversies about vitamin D deficiency in general continue to grow.
 
Sweeping and engaging, Starved for Light illuminates the social conditions underpinning our cures and our choices, helping us to see history’s echoes in contemporary prescriptions.

Notă biografică

Christian Warren is professor of history at Brooklyn College. He is the author of Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning.

Cuprins

Introduction: Sun and Skin and Bones
1 “Coeval with Civilization”: Rickets from Ancient Egypt to the “Dark Satanic Mills”
2 Rickets and Race in the United States, 1492–1900
3 Diet or Light? The Science of Rickets I
4 Testing the Cure: The Science of Rickets II
5 Cod Liver Oil: From Folk Remedy to Proven “Specific”
6 Improving upon Perfection: Modern Vitamin D Fortification
7 A Long Shadow
8 No Magic Bolus: Rickets, Risk, and Race in the Age of Uncertainty
9 Epilogue: Hard Choices, Slow Violence

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Recenzii

“Rickets is one of those diseases that seem incredibly old-fashioned. It’s difficult to comprehend, now, how widespread this bone ailment once was: In some cities less than a century ago, 90% of children showed symptoms of rickets during wintertime. But ubiquity has its benefits. In Starved for Light, Warren convincingly argues that modern medicine would be unrecognizable without the many advances in treatment that trace their roots to this once-widespread disease.” 

“Warren in his valuable new book Starved for Light deepens our understanding of many ways that disease can move through populations and time. . . . Warren’s historical study of rickets engages productively with the disease’s intricate biology. He explores how a disease that is sensitive to environmental and nutritional conditions responded in manifold ways to societal changes and inequalities. His approach offers many surprising and valuable insights.”

“Warren’s Starved for Light is an ambitious book, one that persuasively challenges the long-held view that rickets was a condition of the past and places it at the center of a broader medical, biotechnological, environmental, and social history. . . . [Warren] took on a medical condition that, gruesome though it was, might have at first appeared limited in scope to a reader, and he opened it up to broad inquiry, ranging in important directions.” 

“Starved for Light is a sweeping history of the connection between vitamin D deficiency and rickets. Warren demonstrates how governments, medical officials, the afflicted, and their loved ones have strived to understand, combat, and conquer vitamin D deficiency and rickets. . . . The text is full of interesting and compelling stories, offering excellent insights into the cultural significance of rickets while expertly detailing the many challenges of curing the disease. . . . Highly recommended.” 

“Warren deftly traces the extensive history of rickets from antiquity to the present day, focusing on the United States in the late nineteenth to twentieth century. As he explains, the typical story of rickets could easily fit into one of medical triumph and inevitability. From the eventual unraveling of the pathophysiology of rickets via laboratory research and clinical studies to the discovery of the ‘magic bullet’ of vitamin D, rickets served as an example of a disease eradicated by the advances of modern science. Warren also shows how historical understandings of rickets as a disease shaped the modernization of the fields of orthopedics and obstetrics. However, as Warren reveals, the history of rickets was not nearly as neatly wrapped up nor as inevitable as the story of the discovery of vitamin D. Rather, the key debate in rickets research, prevention, and treatment regarding environmental versus dietary factors revealed the economic, social, and political factors that influenced medical professionals to focus on universal dietary supplementation of vitamin D, rather than advocating for government funding and new urban designs for low-income neighborhoods in crowded and dark cities.” 

“This is a fascinating, well-researched, and lively account of the long history of rickets. This wide-ranging volume explores the emergence of modern medicine, theories of race and disease, public health, and ethics, literally lighting the way to a greater understanding of this medical condition. You won’t want to swallow cod liver oil after reading this book, but you might want to reach for a sunshine vitamin D beer—alas, no longer available.”

“Starved for Light offers a fresh perspective on a complex and understudied aspect of the American past. Warren convincingly demonstrates how industrialization, urbanization, and commercialization contributed to sun and vitamin D deficiency, leading to a long history of disablement that still harms many marginalized populations to this day.” 

“Starved for Light is a treasure trove of fascinating facts—from the origin of red-ochre paints on houses in Newfoundland fishing villages to the etymology of rickets—masterfully woven into a compelling narrative that shines a light on the history of rickets. Warren’s book shows that rickets is a socially constructed disease, driven not by skin color or race but by racism and a fixation of technological solutions. In the end, Warren argues, closer contact with the natural world—with sunlight—may be healthier than having a biomedical cure that keeps us living in the shadows.”

“Readers may think that they know the history of rickets. In Warren’s telling, we learn so much more than a simple story of scientific discovery, as fascinating as that might be. Research ethics, the growth of obstetrics, the invention of devices and surgeries, and the public health choices that led to commercial products reducing but not eliminating rickets all feature in a book that’s truly fun to read. Like the best works in the history of medicine, Starved for Light reveals lessons in public policy in a way that will please and inform historians, clinicians, and public health experts.”