Health and Wellness in 19th-Century America

This book provides a comprehensive description of what being sick and receiving "medical care" was like in 19th-century America, allowing modern readers to truly appreciate the scale of the improvements in healthcare theory and practice. Health and Wellness in 19th-Century America covers a period of dramatic change in the United States by examining our changing understanding of the nature of the disease burden, the increasing size of the nation, and our conceptions of sickness and health. With topics ranging from the unsanitary tenements of New York's Five Points, the field hospitals of the Civil War, and to the laboratories of Johns Hopkins Medical School, author John C. Waller reveals a complex picture of tradition, discovery, innovation, and occasional spectacular success. This book draws upon an extensive literature to document sickness and wellness in environments like rural homesteads, urban East-coast slums, and the hastily built cities of the West. It provides a fascinating historical examination of a century in which Americans made giant strides in understanding disease yet also clung to traditional methods and ideas, charting how U.S. medical science gradually transformed from being a backwater to a world leader in the field.

Table of Contents:
Series Foreword Acknowledgments 1. Factors in Health and Wellness The Disease Environment African American Cultures of Health, Disease, and Healing Native American Cultures of Health, Disease, and Healing Health, Disease, and Healing in the European Tradition 2. Education and Training: Learned and Nonlearned Identifying and Training African American Healers The Selection and Training of Native American Healers The Selection and Training of European-Style Healers 3. Faith, Religion, and Medicine Religion in European-Style Medicine Religion and African American Healing Religion and Native American Healing Religion in White, Black, and Native Medicine 4. Women's Health Reproduction and Childbirth The Politics of Reproduction Doctors Writing about Women 5. The Health of Children and Infants A Dangerous Time to Be Young Coping with the Loss of a Child Trying to Save Children's Lives The Balance Sheet 6. Infectious Disease The Specter of Infectious Disease Infectious Disease and the Native Population Slavery and Infectious Disease The Culture of "Live and Let Die" The Slow Beginnings of Sanitary Reform Sanitary Reform Accelerates Public Health in the Ascendant The Recovery Begins Reckoning Up 7. Occupational Health and Dangerous Trades Slavery and Death Sickness and Accidents on Farms The Exploitation of Irish Men and Women The Perils of Manufacturing The Dangers of Mining Death and Debility on the Railways The Miseries of Prostitution Child Labor Unnecessary Deaths 8. Surgery, Dentistry, and Orthopedics Pain, Infection, and Death Rare Breakthroughs Surgery and Slavery The Birth of Anesthesia Surgery and the Civil War The Rise of Aseptic Surgery The Transformation of the Hospital The Flourishing of American Dentistry The Limits of Surgical Advance 9. The Brain and Mental Disorders Antebellum Ideas about Insanity Insanity, Religion, and Morality Medicine for the Insane Moral Treatment and the Rise of the Asylum The Rise of Neurology New and Old Directions 10. The Pharmacopeia Drugs in the European Medical Tradition The Pharmacopeia of African American Medicine The Pharmacopeia of Native American Medicine The Three Traditions 11. War and Health Military Medicine at the Start of the Century The American–Mexican War and Its Aftermath The Civil War Years Sickness and the Spanish–American War of 1898 Military Medicine in Transition 12. Institutional Facilities The Antebellum Hospital The American Dispensary The Transformation of the Hospital Inventing the Professional Nurse The Hospital and Medical Education Institutional Care at the End of the Century 13. Disease, Healing, and the Arts Depicting Sickness and Death The Politics of Health Representations of Doctors and Surgeons Bibliography Index