1800s
1832
19th century
A01=Owen Whooley
america
american
Author_Owen Whooley
Category=MBX
city
contemporary
death
dehydration
diarrhea
disease
end of life
epidemic
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
gastrointestinal
germ theory
historical
history
infection
medical
medicine
opiate
pandemic
panic
public health
quarantine
sociology
stomach problems
treatment
united states
urban
usa
vomit
vomiting
wellness
Product details
- ISBN 9780226017631
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 10 Apr 2013
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Vomiting. Diarrhea. Dehydration. Death. Confusion. In 1832, the arrival of cholera in the United States created widespread panic throughout the country. For the rest of the century, epidemics swept through American cities and towns, killing thousands. Physicians of all stripes offered conflicting answers to the cholera puzzle, ineffectively responding with opiates, bleeding, quarantines, and all manner of remedies, before the identity of the dreaded infection was consolidated under the germ theory of disease some sixty years later. These cholera outbreaks raised fundamental questions about medical knowledge and its legitimacy, giving fuel to alternative medical sects that used the confusion of the epidemic to challenge both medical orthodoxy and the authority of the still-new American Medical Association. In "Knowledge in the Time of Cholera", Owen Whooley tells us the story of those dark days, centering his narrative on rivalries between medical and homeopathic practitioners and bringing to life the battle to control public understanding of disease, professional power, and democratic governance in nineteenth-century America.
Owen Whooley is assitant professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico.
