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.

Medicine in the 19th century may strike us as primitive by today's standards, but widespread social change of the era brought about new ideas and practices in health and healing—all described in this engaging book. Exploring the history of medicine in the 19th century around the world, this book showcases the wide range of medical ideas, practices, institutions, and patient experiences, revealing how the exchanges of ideas and therapies between different systems of medicine resulted in patients enjoying a surprising degree of choice. The author offers a unique perspective that provides an introduction to 19th-century medicine on a global stage and places the advancement of medicine within the context of wider historical changes. Chapters examine areas of dramatic change, such as the development of surgery, as well as the fundamental continuities in the use of traditional forms of supernatural healing, covering western, Chinese, unani, ayurvedic, and folk medicine-based understandings of the body and disease. Additionally, the book describes how the culture of medicine reflected and responded to the challenges posed by urbanization, industrialization, and global movement.

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.

Medicine in the 19th century may strike us as primitive by today's standards, but widespread social change of the era brought about new ideas and practices in health and healing—all described in this engaging book. Exploring the history of medicine in the 19th century around the world, this book showcases the wide range of medical ideas, practices, institutions, and patient experiences, revealing how the exchanges of ideas and therapies between different systems of medicine resulted in patients enjoying a surprising degree of choice. The author offers a unique perspective that provides an introduction to 19th-century medicine on a global stage and places the advancement of medicine within the context of wider historical changes. Chapters examine areas of dramatic change, such as the development of surgery, as well as the fundamental continuities in the use of traditional forms of supernatural healing, covering western, Chinese, unani, ayurvedic, and folk medicine-based understandings of the body and disease. Additionally, the book describes how the culture of medicine reflected and responded to the challenges posed by urbanization, industrialization, and global movement.

This book considers the historical and cultural origins of the gut-brain relationship now evidenced in numerous scientific research fields. Bringing together eleven scholars with wide interdisciplinary expertise, the volume examines literal and metaphorical digestion in different spheres of nineteenth-century life. Digestive health is examined in three sections in relation to science, politics and literature during the period, focusing on Northern America, Europe and Australia. Using diverse methodologies, the essays demonstrate that the long nineteenth century was an important moment in the Western understanding and perception of the gastroenterological system and its relation to the mind in the sense of cognition, mental wellbeing, and the emotions. This collection explores how medical breakthroughs are often historically preceded by intuitive models imagined throughout a range of cultural productions.