Description
In the preface to his 1852 Dictionary of Domestic Medicine and Household Surgery, Spencer Thompson wrote: "But health will fail, either in old or young, and accidents will happen, in spite of the most careful precaution." With this concise statement, Thompson summarized the universal human desire to combat illness, injury, and hurt with action and knowledge. The more efficient ability to spread ideas and technology in nineteenth-century Britain led to increased production and use of home remedy books. Although women traditionally represented the agents of remedy and care within the domestic sphere (centuries prior to the nineteenth century), a struggle between the supposed inherent nurturing capabilities of womanhood and the professional medical realm occurred within the rhetoric of the home remedy genre during this period. Cultural mores allowed and pushed women to take up duties of nursing in the home, regardless of advice given by male physicians like Thomas John Graham, W.B. Kesteven, and Ralph Gooding. Despite remedy book physician-authors' attempts to dictate appropriate medical care in the home through the writing of home remedy books, British women read, interpreted, and used home remedy books in ways that undermined medical control.
Details
Title
- Home remedy books in Britain: medicine and the female reader, 1800-1867
Contributors
- Jacobson, Emily (Author)
- Green, Monica (Thesis advisor)
- Szuter, Christine (Thesis advisor)
- Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2011
Subjects
- medicine
- Gender Studies
- European History
- 19th century
- Book History
- British
- home remedy
- medicine
- Publishing
- Traditional medicine--Great Britain--Textbooks--History--19th century.
- traditional medicine
- Women--Health and hygiene--Great Britain--History--19th century.
- Women
- Women caregivers--Great Britain--History--19th century.
- Women caregivers
Resource Type
Collections this item is in
Note
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thesisPartial requirement for: M.A., Arizona State University, 2011
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bibliographyIncludes bibliographical references (p. 97-103)
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Field of study: History
Citation and reuse
Statement of Responsibility
by Emily Jacobson