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Author: Thomas A. Horrocks
ISBN : 1558496564
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Download Free Download Popular Print and Popular Medicine: Almanacs and Health Advice in Early America (Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book) [Hardcover] from 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
In this innovative study of the relationship between popular print and popular attitudes toward the body, health, and disease in antebellum America, Thomas A. Horrocks focuses our attention on a publication long neglected by scholars the almanac. Approaching his subject as both a historian of the book and a historian of medicine, Horrocks contends that the almanac, the most popular secular publication in America from the late eighteenth century to the first quarter of the nineteenth, both shaped and was shaped by early Americans beliefs and practices pertaining to health and medicine.
Analyzing the astrological, therapeutic, and regimen advice offered in American almanacs over two centuries, and com-paring it with similar advice offered in other genres of popular print of the period, Horrocks effectively demonstrates that the almanac was a leading source of health information in America prior to the Civil War. He contends that the almanac was an integral component of a complicated, fragmented, semi-vernacular health literature of the period, and that the genre played a leading role in disseminating astrological health advice as well as shaping contemporary and future perceptions of astrology.
In terms of therapeutic and regimen advice, Horrocks asserts that the almanac performed a complementary role, confirming and reinforcing traditional beliefs and practices. By analyzing the almanac as a cultural artifact that represents a time, a place, and a certain set of assumptions and beliefs, he demonstrates that the genre can provide a lens through which scholars may examine early American attitudes and practices concerning their health in particular and American popular culture in general.
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- Series: Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book
- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Univ. of Massachusetts Press; Library Ed edition (July 31, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1558496564
- ISBN-13: 978-1558496569
- Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 6.1 x 9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free Download Popular Print and Popular Medicine: Almanacs and Health Advice in Early America
Thomas A. Horrocks (associate librarian of Houghton Library for Collections, Harvard University) presents Popular Print and Popular Medicine: Almanacs and Health Advice in Early America, a historical study of the role that American almanacs and their health advice played in affecting popular views of the body, health, and disease in antebellum America. Extensively scrutinizing the astrological, therapeutic, and regimen advice given in a wide variety of American almanacs across the span of two centuries, Popular Print and Popular Medicine suggests that the almanac emphasized and ingrained the contemporary assumptions, beliefs, and medical practices. "Though it was attacked by clergymen as the work of the devil, ridiculed by many of the learned as a practice of the ignorant and the superstitious, and even scorned by numerous almanac makers, astrology survived and continued to attract a strong following among ordinary Americans, both white and black, and even elicited some interest (in natural astrology) from the learned. When the first almanacs appeared in colonies outside of New England during the first decades of the eighteenth century, astrology and astrological health advice were regular features." A deeply scholarly scrutiny of the connections between almanacs and popular culture, and a welcome supplement to college library and early American history shelves.
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