Suffering in the Land of Sunshine: A Los Angeles Illness Narrative

197 Pages·2006·1.34 MB·English

by  Emily K. Abel

Suffering in the Land of Sunshine
Critical Issues in Health and Medicine
Edited by Rima D. Apple, University of Wisconsin–Madison,
and Janet Golden, Rutgers University, Camden
Growing criticism of the U.S. health care system is coming from consumers,
politicians, the media, activists, and health care professionals. Critical Issues in
Health and Medicine is a collection of books that explores these contemporary
dilemmas from a variety of perspectives, among them political, legal, historical,
sociological, and comparative, and with attention to crucial dimensions such as
race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and culture.
Suffering in the
Land of Sunshine
A Los Angeles Illness Narrative
Emily K. Abel

Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, New Jersey , and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abel, Emily K.
Suffering in the land of sunshine : a Los Angeles illness narrative / Emily K. Abel.
p. ; cm. — (Critical issues in health and medicine)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8135-3900-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8135-3901-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Willard, Charles Dwight, 1866–1914. 2. Tuberculosis—Patients—California—
Los Angeles—Biography. I. Title. II. Series.
[DNIM: 1. Willard, Charles Dwight, 1866–1914. 2. Tuberculosis, Pulmonary—
Los Angeles—Personal Narratives. 3. Tuberculosis, Pulmonary—history—Los Angeles.
4. History, 19th Century—Los Angeles. 5. History, 20th Century—Los Angeles.
WF 300 A139s 2006]
RC313.C2A24 2006
362.196'9950092—dc22
[B]
2006007067
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
This collection copyright © 2006 by Emily K. Abel
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written
permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer
Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as
defined by U.S. copyright law.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Across the Border
For you there was no conscious departure,
no hurried packing for exile.
You are here, anyway, in your own
minor archipelago of pain.
Do what every exile does. Tell stories,
Smuggle messages across the border.
Remember things back there
As simpler than they ever were.
Karen Fiser, Words like Fate and Pain
The responsibility of the ill . . . is not to get well but to express their
illness well.
Arthur W. Frank, At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness
Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual
change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go
down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, . . . it
becomes strange indeed that illness had not taken its place with love
and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.
Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
Chapter 1 Encountering Illness 1
Chapter 2 “A Real Man Again” 22
Chapter 3 Boosting Los Angeles 45
Chapter 4 Reforming Los Angeles 68
Chapter 5 “The Old Trouble” 87
Chapter 6 The “Gash” in “Our Happiness” 117
Epilogue 141
Notes 149
Index 171

vii

Illustrations
I.1 Streetcar arriving in downtown Los Angeles, early 1900s xiv
1.1 Samuel Willard 2
1.2 Charles Dwight Willard as a boy 5
1.3 Southern Pacific passengers arriving in 1885 18
3.1 Charles Dwight Willard in 1891 46
3.2 Mary McGregor at the time of her marriage 51
3.3 Orange tower, composed of 14,000 oranges, at the Chicago
World’s Fair 55
3.4 The LA Chamber of Commerce building in the late 1890s 62
4.1 Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” departing from the San Bernardino
train station 72
6.1 Pasadena houses among the orange groves, 1890 121

ix