Purge and bleed : Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemic and the stagnation of American medicine / Marshall Foletta.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Foletta, Marshall, 1955- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Yellow fever--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia--History--18th century.

Yellow fever.

Epidemics--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia--History--18th century.

Epidemics.

Public health--United States--History--18th century.

Public health.

Medicine--United States--History--18th century.

Medicine.

Philadelphia (Pa.)--History.

Philadelphia (Pa.).

Physical Description:

270 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, [2025]

Summary:

"This book uses Philadelphia's 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic to examine the stagnation of American medicine until after the Civil War, when neither the theories of disease and health held by most American physicians nor the therapies they employed advanced much for over seventy-five years after the nation's first medical crisis"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1793 : An "awful visitation"

Benjamin Rush gives an ancient theory a new twist

Philadelphia's medical establishment : divided at the top and threatened from below

The fractured response to the 1793 epidemic

America's first medical journals and the battle for authority

Cholera and the emergence of the Gothic in American medical culture

Other voices : pharmacists, Thomsonians, and homeopaths

Voices ignored : from Antoni van Leeuwenhoek to Josiah Clark Nott

After a century the mystery is solved.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Gemmill fund bookplate.

Other Format:

Online version: Foletta, Marshall. Purge and bleed

ISBN:

9780813953113

0813953111

9780813953120

081395312X

OCLC:

1500259654