Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. A Thorn in the Flesh: Pain, Illness, and Religion in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America
2. Resisting Resignation: The Rise of Religious Healing in the Late Nineteenth Century
3. Acting Faith: The Devotional Ethics and Gendered Dynamics of Divine Healing
4. The Use of Means: Divine Healing as Devotional Practice
5. Houses of Healing: Sacred Space, Social Geography, and Gender in Divine Healing
6. The Lord for the Body, the Gospel for the Nations: Divine Healing and Social Reform
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Heather D. Curtis is an assistant professor of the history of Christianity and American religion at Tufts University.

Reviews

Heather Curtis has done both the historical guild and the church a great favor in so elegantly narrating the history of a movement that challenged long-standing assumptions about the spiritual utility of corporal pain-and, in so doing, remapped our imaginations and transformed our understanding of suffering. -- Lauren F. Winner Books and Culture: A Christian Review Students of American religious history and American culture will find this work worthy of attention. Choice An illuminating and exceedingly careful examination of a historical terrain chock-full of landmines... Its careful attention to the experiences of both laity and elites is as strong as its evenhanded interpretation. -- Mark A. Noll Christian Century Fascinating story told by Heather D. Curtis. -- Rennie B. Schoepflin Journal of American History Thoughtfully rendered study. -- Paul Harvey American Studies Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860-1900 is an engaging and informative analysis of the divine healing movement, grounded in a wide-ranging view of its social and cultural, medical and religious milieu... Heather Curtis is to be commended for this splendid contribution to the scholarship of the era. -- Nancy A. Hardesty Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Lyrical and convincing. -- Pamela E. Klassen Church History Careful historical research that scholars of American religion and American history will find indispensable. -- Lynn S. Neal Journal of Religion A fascinating account. -- James Benedict Brethren Life and Thought