Skip to Main Content

Special Collections Exhibition Lagniappe: Public Pathogens: Louisiana's Historical Struggle With Disease

A little something extra to accompany our exhibitions on display in Hill Memorial Library at LSU.

Introduction

LSU Libraries Special Collections presents “Public Pathogens: Louisiana’s Historical Struggle With Disease” in Hill Memorial Library from September 29, 2025, to December 12, 2025. The exhibition examines Louisiana’s past battles with disease and  the human stories that accompanied them. 
LSU Special Collections holds historical materials from early statehood to the present that illuminate private and public responses to a wide variety of dangerous diseases, including yellow fever, cholera, typhoid, influenza, HIV-AIDS, and COVID-19. Yellow fever, particularly as experienced in New Orleans, is most heavily represented in the collection, but a variety of illnesses wreaked havoc simultaneously during times of war, political change, and natural disaster. 
 

Research Guides

Interviews from T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History

Louisiana Medical Society oral history interview abstracts

Arthur Elihu Pitchenik oral history interview abstract

These interviews belong to the University History series and the Distinguished Faculty and Administrators subseries. Dr. Pitchenik recalls the various positions he held throughout his career, including his work as a physician on the cruise ship U.S.S. Constitution, the Brooklyn Board of Health tuberculosis clinic, the Los Angeles based group practice Kaiser Permanente, LSU School of Medicine at Lafayette Charity Hospital, as well as University of Miami at Jackson Memorial Hospital and the Veteran Affairs Healthcare System.  He served as a consultant on tuberculosis and AIDS for the World Health Organization, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Florida Department of Health and the South African Department of Health.

 

The Star

Cover of newsletter with image of star and man and woman visiting woman in hospital

Issues online via the Louisiana Digital Library, courtesy of the LSU Health Sciences Center 

Suggested reading

Comments