Abrams, Jeanne E. (Author)
New York University Press
Physical Details: viii + 306 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English
Before the advent of modern antibiotics, one's life could be abruptly shattered by contagion and death, and debility from infectious diseases and epidemics was commonplace for early Americans, regardless of social status. Concerns over health affected the founding fathers and their families as it did slaves, merchants, immigrants, and everyone else in North America. As both victims of illness and national leaders, the Founders occupied a unique position regarding the development of public health in America. This work refocuses the study of the lives of George and Martha Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams, and James and Dolley Madison away from the usual lens of politics to the unique perspective of sickness, health, and medicine in their era. For the founders, republican ideals fostered a reciprocal connection between individual health and the 'health' of the nation. Studying the encounters of these American founders with illness and disease, as well as their viewpoints about good health, not only provides us with insight into their lives, but also opens a first-hand window into the practice of medicine in the eighteenth century. Perhaps most importantly, today's American public health initiatives have their roots in the work of America's founders, for they recognized early on that government had compelling reasons to shoulder some new responsibilities with respect to ensuring the health and well-being of its citizenry. The state of medicine and public healthcare today is still a work in progress, but these founders played a significant role in beginning the conversation that shaped the contours of its development.
...MoreReview Finger, Simon (2014) Review of "Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 383-384).
Review Wehrman, Andrew (2014) Review of "Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health". Journal of American History (pp. 919-920).
Review Skinner, Daniel (2014) Review of "Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health". Medical History (pp. 619-621).
Review Kopperman, Paul E. (2014) Review of "Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health". Social History of Medicine (pp. 820-821).
Similar Citations
Book
Andrea Wulf;
(2011)
Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation
(/isis/citation/CBB371543985/)
Article
Wood, Kirsten E.;
(2014)
“Join with Heart and Soul and Voice”: Music, Harmony, and Politics in the Early American Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB001451979/)
Essay Review
Peter A. Coclanis;
(2017)
Madison, Hamilton, and Jefferson: Reinterpreting America's Founding Fathers
(/isis/citation/CBB027966481/)
Book
Emily Senior;
(2018)
The Caribbean and the Medical Imagination, 1764-1834: Slavery, Disease and Colonial Modernity
(/isis/citation/CBB827308732/)
Article
Robinson, Daniel N.;
(2003)
Jefferson and Adams on the Mind-Body Problem
(/isis/citation/CBB000330539/)
Book
Cox, Catherine;
Luddy, Maria;
(2010)
Cultures of Care in Irish Medical History, 1750--1970
(/isis/citation/CBB001250967/)
Book
Julius Sherrard Scott;
(2018)
The Common Wind: Afro-American currents in the age of the Haitian Revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB631076423/)
Article
Judith A. Carney;
(2015)
El origen africano del cultivo del arroz en Las Américas
(/isis/citation/CBB710411818/)
Article
McLean, Iain;
(2009)
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Probability and Constitutions
(/isis/citation/CBB001021427/)
Article
Jones, M.;
(2000)
The Ceylon malaria epidemic of 1934--35: A case study in colonial medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB000111976/)
Article
Aderinto, Saheed;
(2012)
Dangerous Aphrodisiac, Restless Sexuality: Venereal Disease, Biomedicine, and Protectionism in Colonial Lagos, Nigeria
(/isis/citation/CBB001200590/)
Article
Shin, Y. J.;
Kim, J.;
(2014)
The Life of Choe Ung-Sok: With a Focus on His Design for and Role in the Health Care System Immediately after the Liberation
(/isis/citation/CBB001422428/)
Article
Nogueira, André;
(2012)
Universos coloniais e “enfermidades dos negros” pelos cirurgiões régios Dazille e Vieira de Carvalho
(/isis/citation/CBB001420626/)
Article
William J. Ryan;
(2018)
"A New Strange Disease": The Feeling of Form in Hans Sloane's Case Studies of English Jamaica
(/isis/citation/CBB686574023/)
Chapter
Schwarz, Ingo;
(2003)
Alexander von Humboldt und die Gesandtschaft der Vereinigten Staaten in Berlin
(/isis/citation/CBB000800272/)
Book
Charters, Erica;
(2014)
Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of the British Armed Forces during the Seven Years' War
(/isis/citation/CBB001422026/)
Book
Sasha Turner;
(2017)
Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing, and Slavery in Jamaica
(/isis/citation/CBB684729024/)
Book
Bruce A. Ragsdale;
(2021)
Washington at the plow : The founding farmer and the question of slavery
(/isis/citation/CBB486752354/)
Book
Jim Downs;
(2021)
Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB331206634/)
Book
Kathleen M. Brown;
(2023)
Undoing Slavery: Bodies, Race, and Rights in the Age of Abolition
(/isis/citation/CBB065925879/)
Be the first to comment!