1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910789390303321

Autore

Braun Lundy

Titolo

Breathing race into the machine : the surprising career of the spirometer from plantation to genetics / / Lundy Braun

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Minneapolis, Minnesota : , : University of Minnesota Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

1-4529-4918-2

1-4529-4099-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (304 p.)

Disciplina

616.244

Soggetti

Spirometry - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

"Inventing" the spirometer: working class bodies in Victorian England -- Black lungs and white lungs: the science of white supremacy in the nineteenth century United States -- Filling the lungs with air: the rise of physical culture in America -- Progress and race: vitality in turn of the century Britain -- Globalizing spirometry: the "racial factor" in scientific medicine -- Adjudicating disability in the industrial worker -- Diagnosing silicosis: physiological testing in South African gold mines.

Sommario/riassunto

In the antebellum South, plantation physicians used a new medical device-the spirometer-to show that lung volume and therefore vital capacity were supposedly less in black slaves than in white citizens. At the end of the Civil War, a large study of racial difference employing the spirometer appeared to confirm the finding, which was then applied to argue that slaves were unfit for freedom. What is astonishing is that this example of racial thinking is anything but a historical relic.  In Breathing Race into the Machine, science studies scholar Lundy Braun traces the lit