Description: During the period of the professionalization of American medicine, many authors were concerned with a concurrent urge to use their work as a means to convey their views about the meaning of the body and the origin and cure of disease. This book studies a range of these authors, including Louisa May Alcott, Charles W. Chesnutt, Margaret Fuller, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and William Dean Howells, among others.
Review Quotes: "Davis' connection of the medical and the literary is exciting, and her knowledge of the texts she investigates and the history of American medicine is impressive. . . ."--Virginia Quarterly Review