Health and Healing in America

Over the next four class periods, we will explore ideas and historical practices around sickness, health and healing in early America, using 2 case studies: the Martha Ballard diary from Maine (1780s-1810s) and the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803-1806).

For each case study, the first class period will discuss the writings of a historian and give a general overview to the text, the time period, and the conclusions that scholars are able to draw from these sources. Then you’ll go to the original text and explore for yourself, and bring your findings, questions and conclusions to our second class discussion.

A page from Ballard’s diary

This week, we’ll be working with the diary of Martha Ballard, a midwife and healer skilled in the arts of household production in rural present-day Maine just after the American Revolution.

Mon 2/4 – read an essay about Ballard as a “social healer” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, which is an excerpt from her 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Midwife’s Tale, titled “1787: Exceeding Dangerously Ill” (PDF on Blackboard)

Wed 2/6 – explore the diary itself at DoHistory.org

Mon 2/11 – UPDATE: No Class – Campus Closed due to snow removal. Read Volney Steele’s chapter from Bleed, Blister and Purge: A History of Medicine on the American Frontier, titled “Lewis and Clark: Keelboat Physicians” (PDF on Blackboard)

Wed 2/13 – we will explore the journals themselves at the Online Lewis and Clark Journals Project (University of Nebraska Lincoln)

Reading for today: Rutkow, Chapter 1
Due in class: Response paper based on our readings so far

Links we may use in class:

Biographical Sketch of Onesemius, medical pioneer and Cotton Mather’s Slave (W.E.B. DuBois Institute)
Harvard University’s “Contagion” Page on the Smallpox Epidemic of 1721 (Open Collections)
The Boston Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1776 (BBC)
The Adams children being inoculated (HBO “John Adams” Miniseries)

General News: I added some links in the sidebar regarding Chicago Style footnote citations. And/or – you should own Diana Hacker, A Writer’s Reference (it is available in the bookstore; I highly recommend owning it throughout your four years here) which has a whole section on Chicago Style citation. I will also demo Chicago Style in class.

Monday 1/28: We discussed the remainder of Porter’s book Blood and Guts (good discussion, everyone!) and selected books from this list you got in class today. If anyone hasn’t yet chosen a book, please email me ASAP with your choice. The ones already taken are:

Bown, Scurvy
Bristow, American Pandemic
Brown, The Pox
Cooter, In the Name of the Child
Crosby, The American Plague
Derickson, Black Lung
Gosling, Before Freud
Halliday, The Great Filth
Healy, Mania
Jones, Death in a Small Package
Oshinsky, Polio
Parascandola, Sex, Sin & Science
Pettit, A Cruel Wind
Reverby, Examining Tuskegee
Roe, A Plague of Corn
Swedlund, Shadows in the Valley
Warren, Brush With Death
Wolf, Deliver Me from Pain

Begin the process of borrowing and reading your chosen book, either from our WSU library, a local public library, or via inter-library loan request.

Wed 1/30: Please read (and bring) Rutkow, Seeking the Cure, Chapter 1. Bring a printed 2-3 page (double-spaced) response paper to class that considers one or more of these questions:

• Who were medical experts in colonial America, and what was their training?
• Why was medicine “just another colonial trade”? How does Rutkow’s description compare to Porter’s depiction of pre-twentieth century medical strategies as a “box of blanks” (p. 39)?
• How (and why) did John Morgan hope to transform the country’s medical education system? How successful were his efforts to professionalize medicine in the late 18th century?
• Characterize the field of medicine in colonial times. Can you extrapolate from this chapter what the prevailing theories were about disease in that era (i.e. physiological or ontological as explained in Porter p. 73, or something else entirely)?
• We might dismiss medicine in the colonial era as backward or primitive, but what were the benefits or strengths of colonial medical practices, if any?

Welcome to the all-honors course “Health and Healing in America” for Spring 2013. I have posted the syllabus for this term – just click on either of the links in the sidebar to the left.

You will need the following books for this course:

Porter, Roy. Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine. W.W. Norton, 2004. ISBN 039-332569-5
Ira Rutkow, Seeking the Cure: A History of Medicine in America (Scribner, 2010) ISBN-10: 1416538283
Michael Willrich, Pox: An American History (Penguin, 2012) ISBN-13: 9780143120780
Penney, Darby. The Lives they Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic. Bellevue Literary Press, 2009. ISBN 1-934137-147

PLEASE NOTE: the Rutkow book, Seeking the Cure will not be in the bookstore, so you are on your own for ordering it, but Amazon (or your favorite online new/used bookseller) can surely supply it or you can order it as a Kindle edition for viewing on a Kindle, smartphone, computer, or tablet.

Our class will meet on MW starting Wed 1/23 in Sullivan 107 at 12:30 pm. Since we are not meeting for almost a whole week at the start of the semester (due to a Thursday start followed by a 3-day weekend), please prepare for our first class by reading Porter, Blood and Guts Chapters 1 and 2 on “Disease” and “Doctors.” See you soon!

PS: I taught an earlier version of this course in Fall 2010, using this same website, and I’m leaving up the old information as an archive for those students. You can safely ignore any post tagged “Fall10” below this one.