Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know


Southerners Aren’t Lazy and Dumb, They Just Had Hookworm

March 16, 2017

There was a time when the lower classes of the American South were considered lazy and dimwitted, a stereotype that still somewhat survives today. But this stereotype was rooted in fact. Hookworms, it turns out, were sapping Southerners’ life force.