Corporate Philanthrophy and Epidemics examines the Rockefeller Foundation’s involvement in the hookworm eradication programme in colonial Fiji, framed within the rise of corporate philanthropy in the United States during the late nineteenth century. Influenced by the Social Gospel movement, industrialists like Carnegie established foundations to address social issues. Inspired by this model, the Rockefellers funded the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission to combat hookworm in the American South, a disease dubbed the ‘lazy disease’ for its impact on worker productivity, particularly in plantations.