@article{1479746,
      recid = {1479746},
      author = {Breslaw, Elaine G., },
      title = {Lotions, Potions, Pills, and Magic : Health Care in Early  America /},
      pages = {1 online resource},
      abstract = {Health in early America was generally good. The food was  plentiful, the air and water were clean, and people tended  to enjoy strong constitutions as a result of this  environment. Practitioners of traditional forms of health  care enjoyed high social status, and the cures they  offered-from purging to mere palliatives-carried a powerful  authority. Consequently, most American doctors felt little  need to keep up with Europe's medical advances relying  heavily on their traditional depletion methods. However, in  the years following the American Revolution as poverty  increased and America's water and air became more polluted,  people grew sicker. Traditional medicine became  increasingly ineffective. Instead, Americans sought out  both older and newer forms of alternative medicine and  people who embraced these methods: midwives, folk healers,  Native American shamans, African obeahs and the new  botanical and water cure advocates.In this overview of  health and healing in early America, Elaine G. Breslaw  describes the evolution of public health crises and  solutions. Breslaw examines "ethnic borrowings" (of both  disease and treatment) of early American medicine and the  tension between trained doctors and the lay public. While  orthodox medicine never fully lost its authority, Lotions,  Potions, Pills, and Magic argues that their ascendance over  other healers didn't begin until the early twentieth  century, as germ theory finally migrated from Europe to the  United States and American medical education achieved  professional standing.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1479746},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814787175.001.0001},
}