Peter H. Wood reviews Peter McCandless’s Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) in Southern Spaces.

In a few days, well before the first mosquito-killing frost reaches the South Carolina Lowcountry, I’ll head to Charleston for a conference. I look forward to the visit, and I expect to return home in good health. As medical historian Peter McCandless comments reassuringly about the region, “It is now, as it once was, a relatively healthy place.”

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