Event – Detail

Dr. David Barnes returns to the Athenæum to share some key insights and read short excerpts from his 2023 book, Lazaretto, winner of the Athenaeum Literary Award for nonfiction. While quarantine as practiced in the nineteenth century was a blunt instrument and brought with it many drawbacks that would not be tolerated today, the stories that Philadelphia’s Lazaretto contains have much to teach us, including about what effective public health leadership looks like. (It also shows us what spectacularly ineffective public health leadership looks like.)  Barnes will also reflect on his experiences working toward the preservation of the Lazaretto historic site and on what saving and interpreting the traces of the past around us today can do to help us deal with seemingly intractable social and political problems.

Book signing and reception will follow the program. Book sales arranged through Head House Books.

Attendees are encouraged to visit the Lazaretto site in advance of this talk for the 40-minute self-guided exterior audio tour, written and narrated by Barnes. The tour is compatible with mobile devices. Don’t forget headphones! Individuals may visit the grounds anytime during daylight hours.  The Lazaretto is situated on a 10-acre riverside property in Tinicum Township, just west of Philadelphia International Airport. The audio tour link provides directions.

For Athenæum members who are interested in a more in-depth exploration of the Lazaretto, be sure to register for Dr. Barnes’s guided tour of the site on Saturday, September 21 at 11AM. Space is limited.

David Barnes is Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.  His third book, Lazaretto: How Philadelphia Used an Unpopular Quarantine Based on Disputed Science to Accommodate Immigrants and Prevent Epidemics, was published in May 2023. He has been working since 2006 to preserve the Lazaretto site on the Delaware River in Tinicum Township, and has taught and published about public history and historic preservation. He guest edited an issue of the journal Change Over Time on the interpretation of historic sites related to detention, isolation, and quarantine, published in fall 2022. He is the author of The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France (University of California Press, 1995) and The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), as well as numerous articles about the history, culture, and politics of public health.