Katherine Arner

Abstract: The story of early national American medicine and public health has centered on either domestic developments or Americans' relations to European centers like Edinburgh, London or Paris. This picture becomes much more complex when we look to epidemiological, political and commercial phenomena in the larger Atlantic world. My dissertation examines the role of post-Independence entanglements with European imperial powers, Haitian and French Revolutions and Napoleonic Wars in addition to the pressing international problem of yellow fever that was a product of these developments. All of these phenomena fostered increasing movements of pathogens, people and ideas between the US and other parts of the world. Through these patterns, inhabitants of the new nation cultivated networks and collaborations with actors outside of the US and outside of European centers. It was also this context that facilitated the country’s engagement with international disease control politics and models of disease control abroad even prior to the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Read Katherine's report on her PACHS-sponsored research here.