Turning Horror into Stories: Popular Health Reform and the Gospel of Prevention, 1970--1990 (2005)
Hamer, John Faithful (Author)
Johns Hopkins University
Walters, Ronald G.
Edition Details: Advisor: Walters, Ronald G.
Physical Details: 270 pp.
Language: English
Popular health reform permeated virtually every facet of American society in the 1970s and 1980s. Health food stores and health clubs proliferated; antismoking campaigns won astounding victories; breastfeeding and vegetarianism became much more common; and the increasing demand for organic food, vitamins, water filters, exercise equipment, and alternative health care created massive industries. Popular health reform resonated particularly well in America because its central philosophy---the logic of individual responsibility---was a secular restatement of deeply- rooted Judeo-Christian assumptions about the meaning of suffering and the capacity for choice. Health gurus such as Jerome Rodale, Adelle Davis, Carlton Fredericks, and the editors of _Prevention_ magazine---``America's Leading Health Magazine''---promised much to the health- conscious elite. They maintained, for instance, that pregnancy and aging---human experiences fraught with danger and uncertainty---could be controlled by the right mixture of vitamins, exercise, organic food, dietary restrictions, and positive thinking. They promised to free the American people from the tyranny of Western Medicine. Yet they replaced Doctor God with an equally demanding deity: Mother Nature. Health consciousness gave rise to a new orthodoxy with an unforgiving approach toward aging, motherhood, obesity, and disease. Health reformers redefined tragedies such as cancer, heart disease, depression, schizophrenia, crib death, and miscarriage as punishments meted out to those who failed to obey the natural laws of health. The rhetoric of health consciousness was fashioned out of the materials at hand---middle-class anxiety, biblical imagery, modern science, anti-expert sentiment, Lockean individualism, and Cold War paranoia. Even so, its ultimate purposes were psychological and/or spiritual. Popular health reform met deep human needs that transcend class, race, gender, and culture. The logic of individual responsibility was tied, in the final analysis, to the need to believe that decisions shape the destiny of those who make them in meaningful ways. Many people cannot accept the arguments of those who claim that the life of a human being is predestined---that we are all simply actors reading from scripts that were written for us by nature and/or nurture. Popular health reform was one way that late twentieth-century Americans asserted their freedom over fate.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65/12 (2005): 4689. UMI pub. no. 3155621.
Similar Citations
Thesis
Mullens, Lauri;
(2004)
Leaky Bodies: Epidemic Disease in Contemporary American Television
(/isis/citation/CBB001561812/)
Thesis
Ferraiolo, Kathleen Grammatico;
(2004)
Popular “Medicine”: Policymaking by Direct Democracy and the Medical Marijuana Movement of the 1990s
(/isis/citation/CBB001562081/)
Article
Santos, Dulce O. Amarante dos;
Fagundes, Maria Daílza da Conceição;
(2010)
Saúde e dietética na medicina preventiva medieval: o regimento de saúde de Pedro Hispano (século XIII)
(/isis/citation/CBB001420454/)
Book
Lisa Diedrich;
(2016)
Indirect Action: Schizophrenia, Epilepsy, AIDS, and the Course of Health Activism
(/isis/citation/CBB852074193/)
Chapter
Rhode, Michael;
(2013)
An Army Museum or a National Collection? Shifting Interests and Fortunes at the National Museum of Health and Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB001202350/)
Article
Figueiredo, Regina Érika Domingos de;
(2014)
Caring for the Health of Your Neighbor: The Work of Anthropologist Charles Wagley with the Serviço Especial De Saúde Pública
(/isis/citation/CBB001552713/)
Article
Nash, Linda;
(2004)
The Fruits of Ill-Health: Pesticides and Workers' Bodies in Post-World War II California
(/isis/citation/CBB000750328/)
Book
Murphy, Michelle;
(2012)
Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience
(/isis/citation/CBB001214591/)
Thesis
Shostak, Sara;
(2003)
Locating Gene-Environment Interaction: Disciplinary Emergence in the Environmental Health Sciences, 1950--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB001560615/)
Article
Wilcox, Hui Niu;
Kong, Panyia;
(2014)
How to Eat Right in America: Power, Knowledge, and the Science of Hmong American Food and Health
(/isis/citation/CBB001320893/)
Book
Anne-Emanuelle Birn;
Raúl Necochea López;
(2020)
Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America
(/isis/citation/CBB246542052/)
Article
Nancy Tomes;
(2021)
“Not Just for Doctors Anymore”: How the Merck Manual Became a Consumer Health “Bible”
(/isis/citation/CBB971333465/)
Article
Moore, Francesca;
(2013)
“Go and See Nell; She'll Put You Right”: the Wisewoman And Working-Class Health Care in Early Twentieth-Century Lancashire
(/isis/citation/CBB001320562/)
Book
Mikkeli, Heikki;
(1999)
Hygiene in the Early Modern Medical Tradition
(/isis/citation/CBB000503068/)
Book
Cavallo, Sandra;
Storey, Tessa;
(2013)
Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy
(/isis/citation/CBB001452040/)
Article
Gaillard-Seux, Patricia;
(2012)
Le serpent, source de santé: le corps des serpents dans la thérapeutique gréco-romaine
(/isis/citation/CBB001201453/)
Book
Miriam Solomon;
(2015)
Making Medical Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB474491442/)
Article
Jessica Parr;
(2019)
“Act thin, stay thin”: Commercialization, behavior modification, and group weight control
(/isis/citation/CBB684404261/)
Article
Peder Clark;
(2020)
‘Problems of Today and Tomorrow’: Prevention and the National Health Service in the 1970s
(/isis/citation/CBB559175711/)
Chapter
Dilger, Hansjörg;
(2012)
The (Ir)Relevance of Local Knowledge: Circuits of Medicine and Biopower in the Neoliberal Era
(/isis/citation/CBB001422695/)
Be the first to comment!