@article{195bdc66834e4030bead8ec773ac398c,
title = "The Pest Hospital: Memory, Vaccines, and Serum Therapy in Kansas City",
abstract = "A medical narrative from a woman in her 90s describes her childhood bout with diphtheria in Kansas City, Missouri, apparently immediately after vaccination, her confinement in the “pest hospital,” and her treatment with what she understood as a blood transfusion from a donor who was found through a radio appeal. In this essay, we trace the narrative back to the institutions, medical practices, and historical context, examining both the underlying history of medical practice and scientific understanding that is reflected in her experience and also the contexts of that history, including racial and religious attitudes.",
keywords = "Antiserum, Contagion, Diphtheria, Medical history, Medical narrative, Pediatrics, Scarlet fever, Serum therapy, Vaccination",
author = "Perri Klass and Martha Gershun",
note = "Funding Information: First and foremost, we want to thank the late Norma Jeanne Schleppegrell and her daughter, Professor Mary Schleppegrell of the School of Education at the University of Michigan, for their extraordinary generosity in telling us this story and allowing us to investigate and write about it. For their generous help and their extensive expertise, we are grateful to Sarah Henkel, archivist, and Whitney Heinzmann, coordinator, of the Kansas City Research Center, The State Historical Society of Missouri; Jolie Justus, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Truman Medical Center, now University Health; Sister Mary Kay Liston, hospital volunteer archivist; Jason Roe, Digital History Specialist, Kansas City Public Library; Alex Welborn, Head Archivist, Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine, University of Kansas Medical Center; and the reference staff of the Missouri State Archives. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.",
year = "2023",
month = sep,
doi = "10.1007/s10912-023-09781-6",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "44",
pages = "401--407",
journal = "Journal of Medical Humanities",
issn = "1041-3545",
publisher = "Human Sciences Press",
number = "3",
}