AMERICAN MURDERER

A case study of a public health campaign that attempted to control a debilitating disease, with only partially successful results—sound familiar?

The title is a literal translation of the hookworm’s scientific name Necator americanus, but the lurid details don’t stop there as Jarrow goes on to expand her 2003 title Hookworms with accounts of the creepy creature’s life cycle and the discovery of just how disturbingly prevalent “America’s bloodsucking murderer” was in the South in the 19th and early 20th centuries. She chronicles canny efforts, which began in 1909 as an initiative of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, first to galvanize those who were afflicted with hookworms to accept treatment and then to educate them about the necessity of proper human waste disposal to prevent reinfection—attempts that were initially met with skepticism. With portraits of prominent researchers and images of the toothy terror mixed in, the illustrations also include period photos of victims, many with symptomatically wasted bodies and bulging eyes. These last give powerful visual dimension to the story, but sharper viewers will notice that images of White individuals predominate. Though the author acknowledges the reality of segregation and discrimination—including the assumption that African Americans were not as susceptible to hookworm—she does not fully unpack the issue, implied by the illustrations, that the campaign leaned more toward White populations. Still, if reading that the infection rate dropped from an estimated 37% overall to 11% by 1940 may look like failure to readers expecting another tidy wipeout like the (supposed) eradication of smallpox, that’s many thousands of lives saved or improved. And if today, in many parts of the world, as she claims at the end, “the worms are winning,” here at least is a partial victory to celebrate.

Despite the odd blink, a searching look at the borders between science and society.