| Description |
This dissertation examines the social history of medicine in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah, from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. It contends that race and class played disproportionate roles in the creation and evolution of Progressive Era health reforms. White middle-class residents embraced new scientific theories about physical health to bring about much needed programs in public sanitation and vaccination, hospital care, welfare services for the poor, and workplace safety legislation-all of which became necessary as Utah experienced increased immigration, industrialization, and urbanization at the turn of the century. Although these programs sometimes became embroiled in religious disputes between Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and non-Mormon "gentiles," after Utah statehood in 1896 and efforts by Mormons to Americanize, religious tension diminished to allow powerful whites to implement and unequally benefit from these programs. As a result, affluent Mormons and gentiles enjoyed increased opportunities to improve the cleanliness and health of their bodies, living and working spaces, and to claim membership in the upstanding white American middle-class. By virtue of their racial, ethnic, and socio-economic status, however, poor non-white immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, and beyond suffered decreased opportunities to do the same. They experienced higher rates iv of contagious and infectious disease, accidents and injuries, poor living and working conditions, and accusations of their inability or unwillingness to assimilate into the healthy national mainstream. Yet they resisted inequality through a variety of means, including building hospitals, establishing mutual aid programs, practicing Western medicine, and embracing folk cures. Progressive middle-class whites observed, overlooked, or diminished the significance of these activities to grade and differentiate the laboring poor. White British miners seemed to be more committed to health and progress than did Greek, Italian, Chinese, and Mexican migrants, while Japanese residents appeared to be the cleanest, most American, and acceptable non-whites, until the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. After World War II, health inequality continued to drive many poor non-whites from Utah and allow middle-class whites to retain control over medicine, health, and power in the Salt Lake Valley. |
