Includes physicians, as well as those persons important in the development of american medicine and public health. Also, includes persons outside the mainstream of American medicine, such as health faddists, patent medicine manufacturers, unorthodox practitioners.

American medicine defies simple characterization. Its history is filled with as much triumph as controversy, which may explain why the delivery of health care in America is described as both the best and the worst of any industrialized country in the world. This book examines the convoluted course of medical practice in America from its roots in rural colonial society to the end of the 20th century. This story is chronicled through narratives of major events, famous individuals, and professional organizations and institutions. Unlike most historical treatises on medicine, the stories in this book evenly explore accomplishment and misadventure. In many ways, mishap and calamity have done more to steer American medicine to its current position than the exploitation of science and technology. The diversity of medical practice from the conflict over smallpox inoculation and the building of the Mayo Clinic to the disgrace of the Tuskegee affair are brough to life in 26 chapters. These narratives also place in perspective the conflicting tenets of American medicine: humanitarianism and commercialism.

At times mirroring and at times shockingly disparate to the rise of traditional white American medicine, the history of African-American health care is a story of traditional healers; root doctors; granny midwives; underappreciated and overworked African-American physicians; scrupulous and unscrupulous white doctors and scientists; governmental support and neglect; epidemics; and poverty. Virtually every part of this story revolves around race. More than 50 years after the publication of An American Dilemma, Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 classic about race relations in the USA, An American Health Dilemma presents a comprehensive and groundbreaking history and social analysis of race, race relations and the African-American medical and public health experience. Beginning with the origins of western medicine and science in Egypt, Greece and Rome the authors explore the relationship between race, medicine, and health care from the precursors of American science and medicine through the days of the slave trade with the harrowing middle passage and equally deadly breaking-in period through the Civil War and the gains of reconstruction and the reversals caused by Jim Crow laws. It offers an extensive examination of the history of intellectual and scientific racism that evolved to give sanction to the mistreatment, medical abuse, and neglect of African Americans and other non-white people. Also included are biographical portraits of black medical pioneers like James McCune Smith, the first African American to earn a degree from a European university, and anecdotal vignettes,like the tragic story of "the Hottentot Venus", which illustrate larger themes. An American Health Dilemma promises to become an irreplaceable and essential look at African-American and medical history and will provide an invaluable baseline for future exploration of race and racism in the American health system.