art, academic and non-fiction books
publishers’ Eastern and Central European representation

Name your list

Log in / Sign in

ta strona jest nieczynna, ale zapraszamy serdecznie na stronę www.obibook.com /// this website is closed but we cordially invite you to visit www.obibook.com

ISBN: PB: 9780226017631

ISBN: HB: 9780226017464

University of Chicago Press

April 2013

328 pp.

23x15 cm

4 tables, 1 map, 7 halftones

PB:
£25,50
QTY:
HB:
£78,00
QTY:

Categories:

Knowledge in the Time of Cholera

The Struggle over American Medicine in the Nineteenth Century

Vomiting. Diarrhea. Dehydration. Death. Confusion. In 1832, the arrival of cholera in the United States created widespread panic throughout the country. For the rest of the century, epidemics swept through American cities and towns like wildfire, killing thousands. Physicians of all stripes offered conflicting answers to the cholera puzzle, ineffectively responding with opiates, bleeding, quarantines, and all manner of remedies, before the identity of the dreaded infection was consolidated under the germ theory of disease some sixty years later. These cholera outbreaks raised fundamental questions about medical knowledge and its legitimacy, giving fuel to alternative medical sects that used the confusion of the epidemic to challenge both medical orthodoxy and the authority of the still-new American Medical Association. In "Knowledge in the Time of Cholera", Owen Whooley tells us the story of those dark days, centering his narrative on rivalries between medical and homeopathic practitioners and bringing to life the battle to control public understanding of disease, professional power, and democratic governance in nineteenth-century America.

About the Author

Owen Whooley is assitant professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico.

Reviews

"Owen Whooley has gone after big game! 'Knowledge in the Time of Cholera' is bold and assertive, forcing a reconsideration of the historical and sociological relationships between medicine and science, and providing an impressive analysis of the deeply intertwined development of these two professions" – Thomas Gieryn, author of "Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line"

"There are books on the history of cholera, on the laboratory and scientific networks, and on epistemology and science, but none like this one. Owen Whooley has produced a truly original book, an important intervention in science studies, history of medicine, and nineteenth-century American society and culture" – Alexandra Minna Stern, author of "Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America"