Updated 2 years ago
Barefoot southerners shit in the same place behind a tree. Eventually, they got hookworms. 40% were infected. This made them lethargic..
This affected the South far more because it was warmer than the Union states. This was certainly a contributing factor in their relative backwardness, especially among the poor.
In the early 1900s, John D. Rockefeller led a movement to address this, and popularized outhouses, where six feet was enough to prevent the hookworms from infecting feet.
