Enlightened Immunity

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"Enlightened Immunity is the sort of book that should shape our field: a deeply researched, wholly original, and well-executed study with something important to say. Ramirez deftly illuminates multiple contexts that shaped responses to epidemic disease in New Spain, including Atlantic communities of learning, political networks, and local knowledge."-Karen Melvin, Bates College "In rich and imaginative prose, Enlightened Immunity immerses readers in the highly mediated world of preventive health in late colonial Mexico, with its smells of candle wax in processions, the sound of trumpets heralding the arrival of vaccine, the cookies and coins given the poor to entice their cooperation, the rumors and political rituals, indigenous vaccinators, barbers and clerics. This is a tour de force-a great read with great insight into the history of inoculation and vaccination, the immense complexities of suffering in late colonial Mexico, and the confusion and contradictions of the ordinary and extraordinary attempts to prevent it."-Steven Palmer, University of Windsor "[An] original and meticulous examination of the problems of disease, medical practice, scientific developments, health care, and natural remedies during late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in New Spain.Enlightened Immunity is a provocative, richly documented, and innovative contribution to the social history of medicine, public health, science, and technology in Latin America."--Claudia Agostoni, H-LatAm "Enlightened Immunity is a stellar addition to the history of medicine in Mexico and Latin America....The author uses the notes to elucidate the text, and the secondary research is outstanding. Ramirez uses an erudite prose and a 'thick' analysis that will make this book essential reading on the history of medicine in Latin America for years to come."-David Sowell, The American Historical Review "Paul Ramirez presents a novel picture of the inoculation campaign in New Spain....The story he tells, chronologically broader and socially denser than many histories of the vaccination campaign, challenges some of the more entrenched binaries-expert knowledge versus vernacular knowledge, science versus religion, rationality versus superstition-that have framed the historiography of colonial Spanish science."-Miruna Achim, Hispanic American Historical Review "Enlightened Immunity is an impressively researched work that weaves together the history of medicine, intellectual history, and religious history... Ramirez tells a story that rings as true today as it did at the turn of the nineteenth century."-Liana DeMarco, Journal of the History of Medicine "What makes Ramirez's account of preventative medicine and public health in colonial-era Mexico so incisive is its deliberate problematizing of any clear distinctions between urban and rural, secular and religious, and elite and vernacular toward a thick history of how 'heterogeneous voices shaped debate'."-Travis Chi Wing Lau, Eighteenth-Century Fiction "Enlightened Immunityreveals the inadequacy of medical histories that focus only on the perceptions and intentions of scientific and political authorities, and overlook how preventative treatments and cures are applied (or misapplied, or not applied) among flesh-and-blood communities."-Peter B. Villella, Latin American Research Review