This is a catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of rare books dealing with 'popular medicine' in early America which is housed at the University of Rochester Medical School library. The books described in the catalogue were written by physicians and other professionals to provide information for the non-medical audience. The books taught human anatomy, hygiene, temperance and diet, how to maintain health, and how to cope with illness especially when no professional help was available. The books promoted a healthy lifestyle for the readers, giving guidance on everything from physical fitness and recreation to the special health needs of women. The collection consists of works dealing with reproduction (from birth control to delivering and caring for a baby), venereal disease, home-nursing, epidemics, and the need for public sex education.

"Fugitive Science excavates this story, uncovering the dynamic scientific engagements and experiments of African American writers, performers, and other cultural producers who mobilized natural science and produced alternative knowledges in the quest for and name of freedom. Literary and cultural critics have a particularly important role to play in uncovering the history of fugitive science since these engagements and experiments often happened, not in the laboratory or the university, but in print, on stage, in the garden, church, parlor, and in other cultural spaces and productions. Routinely excluded from the official spaces of scientific learning and training, black cultural actors transformed the spaces of the everyday into laboratories of knowledge and experimentation"--Introduction.