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An engaging history of the role that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin played in the origins of public health in America. Before the advent of modern antibiotics, one’s life could be abruptly shattered by contagion and death, and debility from infectious diseases and epidemics was commonplace for early Americans, regardless of social status. Concerns over health affected the Founding Fathers and their families as it did slaves, merchants, immigrants, and everyone else in North America. As both victims of illness and national leaders, the Founders occupied a unique position regarding the development of public health in America. Historian Jeanne E. Abrams’s Revolutionary Medicine refocuses the study of the lives of George and Martha Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams, and James and Dolley Madison away from politics to the perspective of sickness, health, and medicine. For the Founders, republican ideals fostered a reciprocal connection between individual health and the “health” of the nation. Studying the encounters of these American Founders with illness and disease, as well as their viewpoints about good health, not only provides a richer and more nuanced insight into their lives, but also opens a window into the practice of medicine in the eighteenth century, which is at once intimate, personal, and first hand. Today’s American public health initiatives have their roots in the work of America’s Founders, for they recognized early on that government had compelling reasons to shoulder some new responsibilities with respect to ensuring the health and well-being of its citizenry—beginning the conversation about the country’s state of medicine and public healthcare that continues to be a work in progress.
Nearly nine times as many died from diseases during the American Revolution as did from wounds. Poor diet, inadequate sanitation and sometimes a lack of basic medical care caused such diseases as dysentery, scurvy, typhus, smallpox and others to decimate the ranks. Scurvy was a major problem for both the British and American navies, while venereal diseases proved to be a particularly vexing problem in New York. Respiratory diseases, scabies and other illnesses left nearly 4,000 colonial troops unable to fight when George Washington's troops broke camp at Valley Forge in June 1778. From a physician's perspective, this is a unique history of the American Revolution and how diseases impacted the execution of the war effort. The medical histories of Washington and King George III are also provided.
A prismatic examination of the evolution of medicine, from a trade to a science, through the exemplary lives of ten men and women. Johns Hopkins University, one of the preeminent medical schools in the nation today, has played a unique role in the history of medicine. When it first opened its doors in 1893, medicine was a rough-and-ready trade. It would soon evolve into a rigorous science. It was nothing short of a revolution. This transition might seem inevitable from our vantage point today. In recent years, medical science has mapped the human genome, deployed robotic tools to perform delicate surgeries, and developed effective vaccines against a host of deadly pathogens. But this transformation could not have happened without the game-changing vision, talent, and dedication of a small cadre of individuals who were willing to commit body and soul to the advancement of medical science, education, and treatment. A Scientific Revolution recounts the stories of John Shaw Billings, Max Brödel, Mary Elizabeth Garrett, William Halsted, Jesse Lazear, Dorothy Reed Mendenhall, William Osler, Helen Taussig, Vivien Thomas, and William Welch. This chorus of lives tells a compelling tale not just of their individual struggles, but how personal and societal issues went hand-in-hand with the advancement of medicine.
"The author argues that a demand for public solutions during smallpox epidemics of the eighteenth century, especially broad access to inoculation, influenced revolutionary politics and changed the way that Americans understood their health and governmental responsibilities to protect it"--
The “intelligent and sweeping” (Booklist) story of the crucial year that prefigured the events of the American Revolution in 1776—and how Boston’s smallpox epidemic was at the center of it all. In The Fever of 1721 Stephen Coss brings to life the amazing cast of characters who changed the course of medical history, American journalism, and colonial revolution: Cotton Mather, the great Puritan preacher, son of the President of Harvard College; Zabdiel Boylston, a doctor whose name is on one of Boston’s avenues; James Franklin and his younger brother Benjamin; and Elisha Cooke and his protégé Samuel Adams. Coss describes how, during the worst smallpox epidemic in Boston history Mather convinced Doctor Boylston to try making an incision in the arm of a healthy person and implanting it with smallpox matter. Public outrage forced Boylston into hiding and Mather’s house was firebombed. “In 1721, Boston was a dangerous place…In Coss’s telling, the troubles of 1721 represent a shift away from a colony of faith and toward the modern politics of representative government” (The New York Times Book Review). Elisha Cooke and Samuel Adams were beginning to resist the British in the run-up to the American Revolution. Meanwhile, a bold young printer names James Franklin launched America’s first independent newspaper and landed in jail. His teenaged brother and apprentice, Benjamin Franklin, however, learned his trade in James’s shop and became a father of the Independence movement. One by one, the atmosphere in Boston in 1721 simmered and ultimately boiled over, leading to the full drama of the American Revolution. “Fascinating, informational, and pleasing to read…Coss’s gem of colonial history immerses readers into eighteenth-century Boston and introduces a collection of fascinating people and intriguing circumstances” (Library Journal, starred review).
Building on a quarter century of scholarship following the publication of the groundbreaking Women in the Age of the American Revolution, the engagingly written essays in this volume offer an updated answer to the question, What was life like for women in the era of the American Revolution? The contributors examine how women dealt with years of armed conflict and carried on their daily lives, exploring factors such as age, race, educational background, marital status, social class, and region. For patriot women the Revolution created opportunities—to market goods, find a new social status within the community, or gain power in the family. Those who remained loyal to the Crown, however, often saw their lives diminished—their property confiscated, their businesses failed, or their sense of security shattered. Some essays focus on individuals (Sarah Bache, Phillis Wheatley), while others address the impact of war on social or commercial interactions between men and women. Patriot women in occupied Boston fell in love with and married British soldiers; in Philadelphia women mobilized support for nonimportation; and in several major colonial cities wives took over the family business while their husbands fought. Together, these essays recover what the Revolution meant to and for women.
DRUG SUPPLIES IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION by George B. Griffenhagen At the start of the Revolution, the Colonies were cut off from the source of their usual drug supply, England. A few drugs trickled through from the West Indies, but by 1776 there was an acute shortage. Lack of coordination and transportation resulted in a scarcity of drugs for the army hospitals even while druggists in other areas resorted to advertising in order to sell their stocks. Some relief came from British prize ships captured by the American navy and privateers, but the chaotic condition of drug supply was not eased until the alliance with France early in 1778. The Author: George Griffenhagen-formerly curator of medical sciences, United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution-is director of communications, American Pharmaceutical Association, and managing editor, Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association. As one historian has reminded us, "few fields of history have been more intensively cultivated by successive generations of historians; few offer less reward in the shape of fresh facts or theories" than does the American Revolutionary War. This is true to some extent even in the medical history of the Revolution. The details of the feud within the medical department of the army have been told and retold. Even accounts of the drugs employed and pharmaceutical services have been presented, primarily in the form of biographies and as reviews of the Lititz Pharmacopoeia of 1778. However, practically nothing has been published on the actual availability of medical supplies. Furthermore, the discovery of several significant but unrecorded account books of private druggists who furnished sizable quantities of drugs to the Continental Army and a careful re-evaluation of the unusually significant papers of Dr. Jonathan Potts, Revolutionary War surgeon, justify a review of the drug supplies during the early years of the war. Continental Medicine Chests As early as February 21, 1775, the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts appointed a committee to determine what medical supplies would be necessary should colonial troops be required to take the field. Three days later the Congress voted to "make an inquiry where fifteen doctor's chests can be got, and on what terms"; and on March 7 it directed the committee of supplies "to make a draft in favor of Doct. Joseph Warren and Doct. Benjamin Church, for five hundred pounds, lawful money, to enable them to purchase such articles for the provincial chests of medicine as cannot be got on credit." A unique ledger of the Greenleaf apothecary shop of Boston reveals that this pharmacy on April 4, 1775, supplied at least 5 of the 15 chests of medicines. The account, in the amount of just over 247, is listed in the name of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, and shows that 51 was paid in cash by Dr. Joseph Warren. The remaining 196 was not paid until August 10, after Warren had been killed in the Battle of Bunker Hill. The 15 medicine chests, including presumably the five supplied by Greenleaf, were distributed on April 18-three at Sudbury and two each at Concord, Groton, Mendon, Stow, Worcester, and Lancaster. No record has been found to indicate whether or not the British discovered the medical chests at Concord, but, inasmuch as the patriots were warned of the British movement, it is very likely that the chests were among the supplies that were carried off and hidden....
Originally published in 1979, this was the first study to be published since 1931 of the role of medical doctors in the northern campaigns. The military career of Dr. Potts, reconstructed here from source materials, provides considerable information to fill this historical gap.