Diego Armus. The Ailing City: Health, Tuberculosis, and Culture in Buenos Aires, 1870-1950
This analysis of the discourses, practices, and images of tuberculosis in late nineteenthand early twentieth-century Buenos Aires delivers a comprehensive overview of the many ways in which fears about the disease influenced daily life in the Argentine metropolis. It offers vivid details about the ways in which popular, medical, and political discussion about tuberculosis highlighted larger porteño concerns about workplace safety, the professionalization of healers and physicians, immigration from Southern Europe, and the participation of women in the workforce. Author Diego Armus is careful to emphasize that the book does not attempt to explain the rise and decline of tuberculosis-related mortality in Argentina, nor does it link twentieth-century discourses about tuberculosis to early twenty-first century biomedical concerns about disease and contagion. Although he does draw on health statistics from the period to demonstrate the extent to which the threat of infection with tuberculosis was a real concern of city residents, Armus is motivated to show “that tuberculosis was a way of speaking not only about biomedical issues but also about other matters, matters not necessarily medical and more directly located in social and cultural realms” (p. 11). He deftly deploys an abundance of literary, musical, and cultural sources to show how the disease was woven into the fabric of daily life.