A synthetic work that enlightens a complex historical subject, Health Care in America is logical, coherent, and very well-written. There are many books that touch upon the American health care system, but none that provide a comprehensive overview that covers the span of American history. This book, which represents the thinking of a mature and distinguished intellectual, will be of interest to scholars, students, and laypeople in history, medicine, policy studies, and the social sciences. -- Gerald N. Grob, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, author of Aging Bones: A Short History of Osteoporosis
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I.
1. Health and Disease in a Land New to Europeans
2. Traditional Treatment and Traditional Healers
3. The Beginnings of Change in Traditional Health Care
4. Setting the Stage for Modern Medicine and Health, 1850s to
1880s
Part II.
5. The Age of Surgery and Germ Theory, 1880s to 1910s
6. Physiological Medicine, 1910s to 1930s
7. Physicians, Public Health, and Progressivism
8. The Era of Antibiotics, 1930s to 1950s
Part III
9. The Age of Technological Medicine, 1940s to 1960s
10. Doctors, Patients, Medical Institutions, and Society in the Age
of Technological Medicine
11. Medicine in the Environmental Era, 1960s to 1980s
12. Environmental-Era Health Care in a Hostile Social Climate
Part IV.
13. The Era of Genetic Medicine, Late 1980s and After
14. The Recent Past as a New Epoch
Notes
Index
John C. Burnham is a research professor of history at the Ohio State University, where he is also an associated scholar in the Medical Heritage Center. His most recent books include What Is Medical History? and Accident Prone: A History of Technology, Psychology, and Misfits of the Machine Age.
Burnham writes for a broad audience, and the prose is easily accessible to undergraduates. Choice Captivating and enjoyable. Stanford Magazine Burnham's thematic analysis of more than four hundred years of history is clearly presented, and his sweeping survey is illustrated with detailed stories and evocative images. Health Care in America is grand narrative in its finest form. This book will be most useful for advanced undergraduates, particularly students interested in the health-related disciplines, as well as graduate students interested in the long history of medicine. Burnham provides a great starting point for scholars interested in the broad meaning of medicine and the questions associated with health and healing. Journal of the History of Medicine Burnham accomplishes exactly what the general synthesis should: providing the reader with all of the basic, essential information, while simultaneously provoking questions addressed in more specialized texts. On that score, Burnham performs quite admirably, and, as such, I heartily recommend Health Care in America. British Journal for the History of Science Burnham's volume will rightfully find a wide readership among historians and lay readers alike, and this ambitious, thoughtful, sweeping synthesis of the history of American health care is a welcome addition to the historiography of medicine in the United States. Isis ... [Burnham] concentrates not so much on medical, surgical, or even administrative innovations, but on the social, political, religious, and economic reactions to these innovations. By thus seeing the development of American medicine in this broad context, he brings into sharp relief the interaction between the health care enterprise and those who either cannot afford health care or have inadequate access to it. Watermark
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