Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Benjamin Franklin's Enlightened Medicine
PART I. THE COLONIST AND MEDICINE
1. Poor Richard's Medicine
2. In Praise of Exercise
3. The Smallpox Wars
4. The Citizen and the Hospital
5. Electricity and the Palsies
6. Electricity, Mental Disorders, and a Modest Proposal
PART II. MEDICINE IN GREAT BRITAIN
7. Friends and Medical Connections
8. Scotland and the First American Medical School
9. Colds, the Weather, and the Invisible World
10. Fresh Air and Good Health
11. The Perils of Lead
PART III. LE DOCTEUR IN FRANCE
12. French Medicine and Health Imperatives
13. The Folly of Mesmerism
14. From Music Therapy to the Music of Madness
PART IV. OLD AGE, ILLNESSES, AND THE DOCTOR'S DEATH
15. Bifocals and the Aging Inventor
16. Skin and "Scurf "
17. The Gout as Your Friend?
18. A Debilitating Stone
19. The Limits of Medicine
Epilogue: Franklin's Medical Legacy
Notes
Index

Promotional Information

Stanley Finger uncovers the instrumental role that Benjamin Franklin—scientist, inventor, publisher, and statesman—played in the development of the healing arts, giving preventive and bedside medicine, hospital care, and even personal hygiene a modern look that changed the face of medical care in both America and Europe.

About the Author

Stanley Finger is Professor of Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches in the programs of neural sciences and philosophy-neuroscience-psychology. He has written widely on the history of medicine, and his many books include Origins of Neuroscience and Minds Behind the Brain. Finger is senior editor of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences.

Reviews

"Valuable and entertaining."--American Scientist "Finger's accessible study of a truly inventive and international scientist, statesman and publicist includes some of its own novelties and should attract both specialist and nonspecialist readerships."--Social History of Medicine "Eminent neuroscientist and medial historian Stanley Finger admirably lays out Franklin's association with the medical advances of his time... As Finger conducts this fascinating tour of medical history, he enlivens the narrative with information that is often useful and always interesting... A valuable and entertaining work."--American Scientist