Cholera and Quacks: The Epistemic Contest over Medicine in the 19th Century United States (2010)
Whooley, Owen (Author)
New York University
Physical Details: 461 pp.
Language: English
Over the course of the nineteenth century, orthodox physicians in the U.S. experienced dramatic shifts in their professional standing. Concurrently, the epistemological foundation of medicine underwent tremendous change, as numerous medical sects offered competing visions of medical knowledge. This dissertation explores the interrelationship between professional and epistemological change in 19th century American medicine by introducing the concept of an epistemic contest. An epistemic contest is one in which actors, advocating competing understandings of reality and the nature of knowledge, struggle to achieve recognition for their approach to knowledge and, in turn, capture societal investment for their intellectual program. Through the case study of cholera, this dissertation reconstructs the history of the disease as a contested object of intellectual scrutiny so as to 1) identify the diverse practices and strategies employed by medical sects in the epistemic contest over medicine and 2) to identify the means by which orthodoxy achieved epistemic closure and gained professional recognition for the bacteriological model of disease. Alternative medical movements like Homeopathy drew on cholera to force orthodoxy to give an epistemological account of its knowledge and to successfully advocate for inclusion in state institutions. Orthodox physicians only gained control over the knowledge of cholera by avoiding public epistemic debates. At the turn of the century, elites within the American Medical Association (AMA) consolidated professional authority by convincing economic elites - especially the Rockefeller Foundation - to fund and promote their epistemological project of bacteriology outside the purview of the government. Using the extensive private resources of philanthropies, orthodox physicians achieved epistemic closure, gained professional recognition, and eliminated competing medical sects. This research locates the origins of the AMA's hostility toward state intervention in medicine in an earlier era than generally assumed. Furthermore, it illuminates the inherent tension between exclusionary epistemologies that justify professionalization and the epistemology of democratic institutions that stresses participatory knowledge production. Insofar as government institutions are the means by which citizens exert democratic control, the process by which orthodox physicians achieved epistemic closure was anti-democratic as it circumvented these institutions, leaving in its wake a profession insulated from public scrutiny and oversight.
...MoreDescription Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. : doc. no. 3427988.
Similar Citations
Thesis
Sliter-Hays, Sara Maria;
(2008)
Narratives and Rhetoric: Persuasion in Doctors' Writings about the Summer Complaint, 1883--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001561173/)
Article
Robert Bartlett;
Yamaan Saadeh;
(2016)
Victor Vaughan (1851–1929) and the Birth of Bacteriology in the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB802547446/)
Book
Baker, Robert B.;
Caplan, Arthur L.;
Emanuel, Linda L.;
Latham, Stephen R.;
(1999)
The American Medical Ethics Revolution: How the AMA's Code of Ethics Has Transformed Physician's Relationships to Patients, Professionals, and Society
(/isis/citation/CBB000110666/)
Article
Hawgood, Barbara J.;
(2007)
Waldemar Mordecai Haffkine, CIE (1860--1930): Prophylactic Vaccination against Cholera and Bubonic Plague in British India
(/isis/citation/CBB000831622/)
Thesis
Patricia Palma;
(2017)
"Science Can't Save Me": Public Health, Professional Medicine, and Medical Pluralism in Peru, 1856-1935
(/isis/citation/CBB822671516/)
Article
Ogawa, Mariko;
(2000)
Uneasy Bedfellows: Science and Politics in the Refutation of Koch's Bacterial Theory of Cholera
(/isis/citation/CBB000111794/)
Book
Gradmann, Christoph;
(2009)
Laboratory Disease: Robert Koch's Medical Bacteriology
(/isis/citation/CBB001020408/)
Book
Aberth, John;
(2011)
Plagues in World History
(/isis/citation/CBB001033389/)
Article
Palmer, Steven;
(2011)
Beginnings of Cuban Bacteriology: Juan Santos Fernández, Medical Research, and the Search for Scientific Sovereignty, 1880--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001231772/)
Article
Ernesto Damiani;
(2023)
Medical Conan Doyle-Leucocytes, Bacteria and Phagocytosis Before Metchnikoff
(/isis/citation/CBB040207575/)
Article
Hawgood, Barbara J.;
(2007)
Albert Calmette (1863--1933) and Camille Guérin (1872--1961): The C and G of BCG Vaccine
(/isis/citation/CBB000831643/)
Article
Margaret Pelling;
(2022)
Mythological Endings: John Snow (1813–1858) and the History of American Epidemiology
(/isis/citation/CBB716029329/)
Article
Valentina Gazzaniga;
Silvia Marinozzi;
(2017)
De Carbone, Sive Carbuncolo. Il Carbonchio nella Pubblicistica Italiana dalla Restaurazione all'Unità
(/isis/citation/CBB317291966/)
Book
McKenna, Maryn;
(2010)
Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA
(/isis/citation/CBB001034264/)
Article
Almeida, Maria Antónia Pires de;
(2012)
The Portuguese cholera morbus Epidemic of 1853--56 as Seen by the Press
(/isis/citation/CBB001220430/)
Chapter
(2021)
Il Metodo curativo per il Cholera Morbus nelle carte della biblioteca personale del cavalier Sebastiano Blasco
(/isis/citation/CBB957477333/)
Book
Hamlin, Christopher;
(2009)
Cholera: The Biography
(/isis/citation/CBB001021104/)
Article
Tullo, Ellen;
(2010)
Plague of Icy Breath. Cholera and the Gateshead Community 1831--1832
(/isis/citation/CBB001220542/)
Article
Alexander I. Parry;
(2023)
Delivering Bacteriology to the American Homemaker: Correspondence Education, Kitchen Experiments, and Public Health, 1890–1930
(/isis/citation/CBB239832240/)
Article
Platt, Harold L.;
(2004)
“Clever Microbes”: Bacteriology and Sanitary Technology in Manchester and Chicago During the Progressive Age
(/isis/citation/CBB000750325/)
Medicina nei Secoli - Arte e Scienza
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Hispanic American Historical Review
Be the first to comment!