Southern Folk Medicine, 1750-1820

Southern Folk Medicine, 1750-1820

  • Auteur: Moss, Kay K.
  • Éditeur: University of South Carolina Press
  • ISBN: 9781570039515
  • eISBN Pdf: 9781643362915
  • Lieu de publication:  South Carolina , United States
  • Année de publication électronique: 2021
  • Mois : Décembre
  • DDC: 615.8/82/097509032
  • Langue: Anglais

Explores homespun remedies and medicinal herbs

Southern Folk Medicine, 1750-1820 explores methods of cure during a time when the South relied more heavily on homespun remedies than on professionally prescribed treatments. Bringing to light several previously unpublished primary sources, Kay K. Moss inventories the medical ingredients and practices adopted by physicians, herb women, yeoman farmers, plantation mistresses, merchants, tradesmen, preachers, and quacks alike. Moss shows how families passed down cures as heirlooms, how remedies crossed cultural and ethnic boundaries, and how domestic healers compounded native herbs and plants with exotic ingredients. Moss assembles her picture of domestic medical practice largely from an analysis of twelve commonplace books—or repositories of information, medical and otherwise—kept by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century southerners. She reveals that men and women of all social classes collected medical guidance and receipts in handwritten journals. Whether well educated or unlettered, many preferred home remedies over treatment by the region's few professional physicians.

Of particular interest to natural historians, an extensive guide to medicinal plants, their scientific names, and their traditional uses is also included.

  • Cover
  • Southern Folk Medicine 1750–1820
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Part 1: Domestic Medicine in the Eighteenth Century
    • Chapter 1 Much That May Be Called Domestic: Every Man His Own Doctor
    • Chapter 2 The Sources: From the Pens of Eighteenth-Century Folk
    • Chapter 3 The Distempers: Disease in the Eighteenth Century
  • Part 2: The Remedies
    • Chapter 4 General Therapies
    • Chapter 5 Patent Medicines and Famous Nostrums
    • Chapter 6 Acute Diseases
    • Chapter 7 Chronic Internal Complaints
    • Chapter 8 Common External Complaints
    • Chapter 9 Disorders of the Senses
    • Chapter 10 Poisoning
    • Chapter 11 Women's Disorders
    • Chapter 12 Nervous Diseases
    • Chapter 13 Surgery
    • Chapter 14 Sympathetic Medicine: Signs, Charms, Incantations, and Spells
  • Part 3: A Domestic Materia Medica
    • Introduction
    • Key to Sources
    • Simples and Medicinal Preparations Fit for Home Practice
  • Appendix A Weights and Measures
  • Appendix B Classes of Medicinal Preparations
  • Appendix C The Southern Frontier and the Eighteenth Century
  • Appendix D A Blaze of Medical Knowledge: The Eighteenth Century
  • Appendix E The Professional Practitioner: Physician, Surgeon, Preacher, or Quack
  • Notes
  • Selected List of Works Consulted
  • General Index
  • Index of Scientific Names
  • About the Author

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

By subscribing, you accept our Privacy Policy