Sickness and Health in America

An invaluable resource for students, scholars, and general readers, this highly regarded and widely used social history of medicine and public health in the United States is now available in a third edition. Extensively revised and updated, it includes twenty-one new essays; graphs illustrating the rise in deaths caused by HIV, homicide, and suicide; and a greatly expanded Guide to Further Reading. Entirely new sections on Sickness and Health, Early American Medicine, Therapeutics, the Art of Medicine, and Public Health and Personal Hygiene have been added, supplementing updated sections on the Science of Medicine, Education, the Allied Health Professions, Image and Income, Institutions, Race and Medicine, Epidemics, Public Health Reform, and Public Health and Medical Theory. An introductory essay and a series of historical photographs complement the articles.

Judith Walzer Leavitt is professor of history of medicine, history of science, and women’s studies and the associate dean for faculty at the medical school, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her many books include The Healthiest City and Women and Health in America, both also available from the University of Wisconsin Press, and Typhoid Mary.  Ronald L. Numbers is William Coleman Professor of the History of Science and Medicine, University of Wisconsin–Madison. His many books include The Creationists, God and Nature, and Caring and Curing.