Thomas Goetz

And now the ride is on.

The larvae flow to the heart and they are pumped out into the lungs.

This usually causes a cough, which is just what the hookworm needs.

Because with every cough, the hookworm is forced out of the lungs into the mouth and then, gulp, swallowed.

And now the worm is home free.

In the small intestine, the worm latches onto the intestinal wall.

There it feeds on blood and grows to just half an inch long at most.

From there, the adult worm produces more larvae, which are expelled with a stool into the dirt past the bush, where the worms wait for other feet to pass by.

And so the cycle continues.

But let's hook back, sorry, to the adult worms back in the intestines.

As they fester, sucking the blood out of their host, hookworms cause anemia.

That is a severe and chronic iron deficiency caused by blood loss.

Symptoms of anemia are weakness and extreme fatigue.

The English language is full of words to describe this.

Indolence, sloth, lethargy, lassitude, laziness.

In 1902, at the Pan-American Sanitary Congress in Washington, D.C., Charles Stiles announced his discovery.

And he noted that there might be a connection between this hookworm, the American killer, and the characteristic state of southern lassitude.

And that became front page news.

The headline in the New York Sun screamed, germ of laziness found.

At the time, this stereotype of a lazy Southerner, especially white Southerners, it was commonplace.