Frontier Medicine From The Atlantic To The Pacific, 1492-1941

DAVID DARY

Publication: Alfred A Knopf, 2008, New York

First edition. Boards. viii, 381pp. Illustrated. Preface, Notes, Bibliography, Index. "Using diaries, journals, newspapers, letters, advertisements, medical records, and pharmacological writings, Dary gives us firsthand accounts of Indian cures; the ingenious self-healings of mountain men; home remedies settlers carried across the plains; an early "HMO" formed by Wyoming ranchers and cowboys to provide themselves with medical care; the indispensable role of country doctors and midwives; the fortunes made from patent medicines and quack cures; the contributions of army medicine; Chinese herbalists; the formation of the American Medical Association; the first black doctors; the first women doctors; and finally the early-twentieth-century shift to a formal scientific approach to medicine that by the postwar period had for the most part eliminated the trial-and-error practical methods that were at the center of frontier medicine." Fine in fine dust jacket.

Inventory Number: 48389