Medical Culture in Revolutionary America

Medical Culture in Revolutionary America

Author: Linda S. Myrsiades

Publisher: Associated University Presse

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9780838641903

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Focusing on doctors' feuds and duels, yellow fever epidemics in Philadelphia, and a court-martial of the medical director of army hospitals in the Revolutionary War, this title is set during a time when American medicine was caught in a period of catastrophic change.


Book Synopsis Medical Culture in Revolutionary America by : Linda S. Myrsiades

Download or read book Medical Culture in Revolutionary America written by Linda S. Myrsiades and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2009 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on doctors' feuds and duels, yellow fever epidemics in Philadelphia, and a court-martial of the medical director of army hospitals in the Revolutionary War, this title is set during a time when American medicine was caught in a period of catastrophic change.


Revolutionary Medicine

Revolutionary Medicine

Author: Jeanne E Abrams

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 081475936X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.


Book Synopsis Revolutionary Medicine by : Jeanne E Abrams

Download or read book Revolutionary Medicine written by Jeanne E Abrams and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.


Medicine and Society in America, 1660-1860

Medicine and Society in America, 1660-1860

Author: Richard Harrison Shryock

Publisher:

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9781258809089

DOWNLOAD EBOOK


Book Synopsis Medicine and Society in America, 1660-1860 by : Richard Harrison Shryock

Download or read book Medicine and Society in America, 1660-1860 written by Richard Harrison Shryock and published by . This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


Evidence-Based Medicine and the Changing Nature of Health Care

Evidence-Based Medicine and the Changing Nature of Health Care

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2008-09-06

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0309113695

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Drawing on the work of the Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine, the 2007 IOM Annual Meeting assessed some of the rapidly occurring changes in health care related to new diagnostic and treatment tools, emerging genetic insights, the developments in information technology, and healthcare costs, and discussed the need for a stronger focus on evidence to ensure that the promise of scientific discovery and technological innovation is efficiently captured to provide the right care for the right patient at the right time. As new discoveries continue to expand the universe of medical interventions, treatments, and methods of care, the need for a more systematic approach to evidence development and application becomes increasingly critical. Without better information about the effectiveness of different treatment options, the resulting uncertainty can lead to the delivery of services that may be unnecessary, unproven, or even harmful. Improving the evidence-base for medicine holds great potential to increase the quality and efficiency of medical care. The Annual Meeting, held on October 8, 2007, brought together many of the nation's leading authorities on various aspects of the issues - both challenges and opportunities - to present their perspectives and engage in discussion with the IOM membership.


Book Synopsis Evidence-Based Medicine and the Changing Nature of Health Care by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Evidence-Based Medicine and the Changing Nature of Health Care written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2008-09-06 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the work of the Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine, the 2007 IOM Annual Meeting assessed some of the rapidly occurring changes in health care related to new diagnostic and treatment tools, emerging genetic insights, the developments in information technology, and healthcare costs, and discussed the need for a stronger focus on evidence to ensure that the promise of scientific discovery and technological innovation is efficiently captured to provide the right care for the right patient at the right time. As new discoveries continue to expand the universe of medical interventions, treatments, and methods of care, the need for a more systematic approach to evidence development and application becomes increasingly critical. Without better information about the effectiveness of different treatment options, the resulting uncertainty can lead to the delivery of services that may be unnecessary, unproven, or even harmful. Improving the evidence-base for medicine holds great potential to increase the quality and efficiency of medical care. The Annual Meeting, held on October 8, 2007, brought together many of the nation's leading authorities on various aspects of the issues - both challenges and opportunities - to present their perspectives and engage in discussion with the IOM membership.


Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru

Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru

Author: Adam Warren

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2010-10-24

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0822973871

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

By the end of the eighteenth century, Peru had witnessed the decline of its once-thriving silver industry and had barely begun to recover from massive population losses due to smallpox and other diseases. At the time, it was widely believed that economic salvation was contingent upon increasing the labor force and maintaining as many healthy workers as possible. In Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru, Adam Warren presents a groundbreaking study of the primacy placed on medical care to generate population growth during this era. The Bourbon reforms of the eighteenth century shaped many of the political, economic, and social interests of Spain and its colonies. In Peru, local elites saw the reforms as an opportunity to positively transform society and its conceptions of medicine and medical institutions in the name of the Crown. Creole physicians, in particular, took advantage of Bourbon reforms to wrest control of medical treatment away from the Catholic Church, establish their own medical expertise, and create a new, secular medical culture. They asserted their new influence by treating smallpox and leprosy, by reforming medical education, and by introducing hygienic routines into local funeral rites, among other practices. Later, during the early years of independence, government officials began to usurp the power of physicians and shifted control of medical care back to the church. Creole doctors, without the support of the empire, lost much of their influence, and medical reforms ground to a halt. As Warren’s study reveals, despite falling in and out of political favor, Bourbon reforms and creole physicians were instrumental to the founding of modern medicine in Peru, and their influence can still be felt today.


Book Synopsis Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru by : Adam Warren

Download or read book Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru written by Adam Warren and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-10-24 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the end of the eighteenth century, Peru had witnessed the decline of its once-thriving silver industry and had barely begun to recover from massive population losses due to smallpox and other diseases. At the time, it was widely believed that economic salvation was contingent upon increasing the labor force and maintaining as many healthy workers as possible. In Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru, Adam Warren presents a groundbreaking study of the primacy placed on medical care to generate population growth during this era. The Bourbon reforms of the eighteenth century shaped many of the political, economic, and social interests of Spain and its colonies. In Peru, local elites saw the reforms as an opportunity to positively transform society and its conceptions of medicine and medical institutions in the name of the Crown. Creole physicians, in particular, took advantage of Bourbon reforms to wrest control of medical treatment away from the Catholic Church, establish their own medical expertise, and create a new, secular medical culture. They asserted their new influence by treating smallpox and leprosy, by reforming medical education, and by introducing hygienic routines into local funeral rites, among other practices. Later, during the early years of independence, government officials began to usurp the power of physicians and shifted control of medical care back to the church. Creole doctors, without the support of the empire, lost much of their influence, and medical reforms ground to a halt. As Warren’s study reveals, despite falling in and out of political favor, Bourbon reforms and creole physicians were instrumental to the founding of modern medicine in Peru, and their influence can still be felt today.


Healthcare in Latin America

Healthcare in Latin America

Author: David S. Dalton

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2022-08-16

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1683403134

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Illustrating the diversity of disciplines that intersect within global health studies, Healthcare in Latin America is the first volume to gather research by many of the foremost scholars working on the topic and region in fields such as history, sociology, women’s studies, political science, and cultural studies. Through this unique eclectic approach, contributors explore the development and representation of public health in countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and the United States. They examine how national governments, whether reactionary or revolutionary, have approached healthcare as a means to political legitimacy and popular support. Several essays contrast modern biomedicine-based treatment with Indigenous healing practices. Other topics include universal health coverage, childbirth, maternal care, forced sterilization, trans and disabled individuals’ access to care, intersexuality, and healthcare disparities, many of which are discussed through depictions in films and literature. As economic and political conditions have shifted amid modernization efforts, independence movements, migrations, and continued inequities, so have the policies and practices of healthcare also developed and changed. This book offers a rich overview of how the stories of healthcare in Latin America are intertwined with the region’s political, historical, and cultural identities. Contributors: Benny J. Andrés, Jr. | Javier Barroso | Katherine E. Bliss | Eric D. Carter | David S. Dalton | Carlos S. Dimas | Sophie Esch | Renata Forste | David L. García León | Javier E. García León | Jethro Hernández Berrones | Katherine Hirschfeld | Emily J. Kirk | Gabriela León-Pérez | Manuel F. Medina | Christopher D. Mellinger | Alicia Z. Miklos | Nicole L. Pacino | Douglas J. Weatherford Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.


Book Synopsis Healthcare in Latin America by : David S. Dalton

Download or read book Healthcare in Latin America written by David S. Dalton and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrating the diversity of disciplines that intersect within global health studies, Healthcare in Latin America is the first volume to gather research by many of the foremost scholars working on the topic and region in fields such as history, sociology, women’s studies, political science, and cultural studies. Through this unique eclectic approach, contributors explore the development and representation of public health in countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and the United States. They examine how national governments, whether reactionary or revolutionary, have approached healthcare as a means to political legitimacy and popular support. Several essays contrast modern biomedicine-based treatment with Indigenous healing practices. Other topics include universal health coverage, childbirth, maternal care, forced sterilization, trans and disabled individuals’ access to care, intersexuality, and healthcare disparities, many of which are discussed through depictions in films and literature. As economic and political conditions have shifted amid modernization efforts, independence movements, migrations, and continued inequities, so have the policies and practices of healthcare also developed and changed. This book offers a rich overview of how the stories of healthcare in Latin America are intertwined with the region’s political, historical, and cultural identities. Contributors: Benny J. Andrés, Jr. | Javier Barroso | Katherine E. Bliss | Eric D. Carter | David S. Dalton | Carlos S. Dimas | Sophie Esch | Renata Forste | David L. García León | Javier E. García León | Jethro Hernández Berrones | Katherine Hirschfeld | Emily J. Kirk | Gabriela León-Pérez | Manuel F. Medina | Christopher D. Mellinger | Alicia Z. Miklos | Nicole L. Pacino | Douglas J. Weatherford Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.


For All of Humanity

For All of Humanity

Author: Martha Few

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2015-10-22

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0816531870

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Smallpox, measles, and typhus. The scourges of lethal disease—as threatening in colonial Mesoamerica as in other parts of the world—called for widespread efforts and enlightened attitudes to battle the centuries-old killers of children and adults. Even before edicts from Spain crossed the Atlantic, colonial elites oftentimes embraced medical experimentation and reform in the name of the public good, believing it was their moral responsibility to apply medical innovations to cure and prevent disease. Their efforts included the first inoculations and vaccinations against smallpox, new strategies to protect families and communities from typhus and measles, and medical interventions into pregnancy and childbirth. For All of Humanity examines the first public health campaigns in Guatemala, southern Mexico, and Central America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Martha Few pays close attention to Indigenous Mesoamerican medical cultures, which not only influenced the shape and scope of those regional campaigns but also affected the broader New World medical cultures. The author reconstructs a rich and complex picture of the ways colonial doctors, surgeons, Indigenous healers, midwives, priests, government officials, and ordinary people engaged in efforts to prevent and control epidemic disease. Few’s analysis weaves medical history and ethnohistory with social, cultural, and intellectual history. She uses prescriptive texts, medical correspondence, and legal documents to provide rich ethnographic descriptions of Mesoamerican medical cultures, their practitioners, and regional pharmacopeia that came into contact with colonial medicine, at times violently, during public health campaigns.


Book Synopsis For All of Humanity by : Martha Few

Download or read book For All of Humanity written by Martha Few and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smallpox, measles, and typhus. The scourges of lethal disease—as threatening in colonial Mesoamerica as in other parts of the world—called for widespread efforts and enlightened attitudes to battle the centuries-old killers of children and adults. Even before edicts from Spain crossed the Atlantic, colonial elites oftentimes embraced medical experimentation and reform in the name of the public good, believing it was their moral responsibility to apply medical innovations to cure and prevent disease. Their efforts included the first inoculations and vaccinations against smallpox, new strategies to protect families and communities from typhus and measles, and medical interventions into pregnancy and childbirth. For All of Humanity examines the first public health campaigns in Guatemala, southern Mexico, and Central America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Martha Few pays close attention to Indigenous Mesoamerican medical cultures, which not only influenced the shape and scope of those regional campaigns but also affected the broader New World medical cultures. The author reconstructs a rich and complex picture of the ways colonial doctors, surgeons, Indigenous healers, midwives, priests, government officials, and ordinary people engaged in efforts to prevent and control epidemic disease. Few’s analysis weaves medical history and ethnohistory with social, cultural, and intellectual history. She uses prescriptive texts, medical correspondence, and legal documents to provide rich ethnographic descriptions of Mesoamerican medical cultures, their practitioners, and regional pharmacopeia that came into contact with colonial medicine, at times violently, during public health campaigns.


Colonial Pathologies

Colonial Pathologies

Author: Warwick Anderson

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2006-08-21

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0822388081

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Colonial Pathologies is a groundbreaking history of the role of science and medicine in the American colonization of the Philippines from 1898 through the 1930s. Warwick Anderson describes how American colonizers sought to maintain their own health and stamina in a foreign environment while exerting control over and “civilizing” a population of seven million people spread out over seven thousand islands. In the process, he traces a significant transformation in the thinking of colonial doctors and scientists about what was most threatening to the health of white colonists. During the late nineteenth century, they understood the tropical environment as the greatest danger, and they sought to help their fellow colonizers to acclimate. Later, as their attention shifted to the role of microbial pathogens, colonial scientists came to view the Filipino people as a contaminated race, and they launched public health initiatives to reform Filipinos’ personal hygiene practices and social conduct. A vivid sense of a colonial culture characterized by an anxious and assertive white masculinity emerges from Anderson’s description of American efforts to treat and discipline allegedly errant Filipinos. His narrative encompasses a colonial obsession with native excrement, a leper colony intended to transform those considered most unclean and least socialized, and the hookworm and malaria programs implemented by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout, Anderson is attentive to the circulation of intertwined ideas about race, science, and medicine. He points to colonial public health in the Philippines as a key influence on the subsequent development of military medicine and industrial hygiene, U.S. urban health services, and racialized development regimes in other parts of the world.


Book Synopsis Colonial Pathologies by : Warwick Anderson

Download or read book Colonial Pathologies written by Warwick Anderson and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-21 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colonial Pathologies is a groundbreaking history of the role of science and medicine in the American colonization of the Philippines from 1898 through the 1930s. Warwick Anderson describes how American colonizers sought to maintain their own health and stamina in a foreign environment while exerting control over and “civilizing” a population of seven million people spread out over seven thousand islands. In the process, he traces a significant transformation in the thinking of colonial doctors and scientists about what was most threatening to the health of white colonists. During the late nineteenth century, they understood the tropical environment as the greatest danger, and they sought to help their fellow colonizers to acclimate. Later, as their attention shifted to the role of microbial pathogens, colonial scientists came to view the Filipino people as a contaminated race, and they launched public health initiatives to reform Filipinos’ personal hygiene practices and social conduct. A vivid sense of a colonial culture characterized by an anxious and assertive white masculinity emerges from Anderson’s description of American efforts to treat and discipline allegedly errant Filipinos. His narrative encompasses a colonial obsession with native excrement, a leper colony intended to transform those considered most unclean and least socialized, and the hookworm and malaria programs implemented by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout, Anderson is attentive to the circulation of intertwined ideas about race, science, and medicine. He points to colonial public health in the Philippines as a key influence on the subsequent development of military medicine and industrial hygiene, U.S. urban health services, and racialized development regimes in other parts of the world.


Law and Medicine in Revolutionary America

Law and Medicine in Revolutionary America

Author: Linda S. Myrsiades

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1611461022

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Law and Medicine in Revolutionary America: Dissecting the Rush v. Cobbett Trial, 1799 offers the first deep analysis of the most important libel trial in post-revolutionary America and an approach to understanding a much-studied revolutionary figure, Benjamin Rush, in a new light as a legal subject. This libel trial faced off the new nation's most prestigious physician-patriot, Benjamin Rush, against its most popular journalist, William Cobbett, the editor of Porcupine's Gazette. Studied by means of a rare and substantial surviving transcript, the trial features six litigating counsel whose narrative of events and roles provides a unique view of how the revolutionary generation saw itself and the legacy it wished to leave to its progeny. The trial is structured by assaults against medical bleeding and its premier practitioner in yellow fever epidemics of the 1790s in Philadelphia, on the one hand, and castigates the licentiousness of the press in the nation's then-capital city, on the other. As it does so, it exemplifies the much-derided litigiousness of the new nation and the threat of sedition that characterized the development of political parties and the partisan press in late eighteenth-century America.


Book Synopsis Law and Medicine in Revolutionary America by : Linda S. Myrsiades

Download or read book Law and Medicine in Revolutionary America written by Linda S. Myrsiades and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Law and Medicine in Revolutionary America: Dissecting the Rush v. Cobbett Trial, 1799 offers the first deep analysis of the most important libel trial in post-revolutionary America and an approach to understanding a much-studied revolutionary figure, Benjamin Rush, in a new light as a legal subject. This libel trial faced off the new nation's most prestigious physician-patriot, Benjamin Rush, against its most popular journalist, William Cobbett, the editor of Porcupine's Gazette. Studied by means of a rare and substantial surviving transcript, the trial features six litigating counsel whose narrative of events and roles provides a unique view of how the revolutionary generation saw itself and the legacy it wished to leave to its progeny. The trial is structured by assaults against medical bleeding and its premier practitioner in yellow fever epidemics of the 1790s in Philadelphia, on the one hand, and castigates the licentiousness of the press in the nation's then-capital city, on the other. As it does so, it exemplifies the much-derided litigiousness of the new nation and the threat of sedition that characterized the development of political parties and the partisan press in late eighteenth-century America.


Medical Apartheid

Medical Apartheid

Author: Harriet A. Washington

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2008-01-08

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 076791547X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book. "[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust.


Book Synopsis Medical Apartheid by : Harriet A. Washington

Download or read book Medical Apartheid written by Harriet A. Washington and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book. "[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust.