Inner Hygiene

Nature Cures

The History of Alternative Medicine in America

James C. Whorton

From reflexology and rolfing to shiatsu and dream work, we are confronted today by a welter of alternative medical therapies. But as James Whorton shows in Nature Cures, the recent explosion in alternative medicine actually reflects two centuries of competition and conflict between mainstream medicine and numerous unorthodox systems. This is the first comprehensive history of alternative medicine in America, examining the major systems that have emerged from 1800 to the present. Writing with wit and with fairness to all sides, Whorton offers a fascinating look at alternative health systems such as homeopathy, water cures, Mesmerism, Christian Science, osteopathy, chiropractic, naturopathy, and acupuncture. He highlights the birth and growth of each system (including European roots where appropriate) and vividly describes both the theories and the therapies developed within each system, including such dubious practices as hour-long walks barefoot in snow or Samuel Thompson's "puking and steaming" regimen. In particular, Whorton illuminates the philosophy of "natural healing" that has been espoused by alternative practitioners throughout history and the distinctive interpretations of "nature cure" developed by the different systems. Though he doesn't hesitate to point out the failings of these systems, he also shows that some "cult medicines" have eventually won recognition from practitioners of mainstream medicine. Throughout, Whorton writes with a light touch and quotes from contemporary humorists such as Mark Twain. His book is an engaging and authoritative history that highlights the course of alternative medicine in the U.S., providing valuable background to the wide range of therapies available today.

Crusaders for Fitness

The History of American Health Reformers

James C. Whorton

To reveal the importance of a subject that has long suffered from scholarly neglect, Professor Whorton demonstrates that health reform campaigns were not mere fads but ideologies composed of a mixture of religious and scientific ideas and themes from the popular culture. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Arsenic Century

How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play

James C. Whorton

Arsenic is rightly infamous as the poison of choice for Victorian murderers. Yet the great majority of fatalities from arsenic in the nineteenth century came not from intentional poisoning, but from accident. Kept in many homes for the purpose of poisoning rats, the white powder was easily mistaken for sugar or flour and often incorporated into the family dinner. It was also widely present in green dyes, used to tint everything from candles and candies to curtains, wallpaper, and clothing (it was arsenic in old lace that was the danger). Whether at home amidst arsenical curtains and wallpapers, at work manufacturing these products, or at play swirling about the papered, curtained ballroom in arsenical gowns and gloves, no one was beyond the poison's reach. Drawing on the medical, legal, and popular literature of the time, The Arsenic Century paints a vivid picture of its wide-ranging and insidious presence in Victorian daily life, weaving together the history of its emergence as a nearly inescapable household hazard with the sordid story of its frequent employment as a tool of murder and suicide. And ultimately, as the final chapter suggests, arsenic in Victorian Britain was very much the pilot episode for a series of environmental poisoning dramas that grew ever more common during the twentieth century and still has no end in sight.

Crusaders for Fitness

The History of the American Health Reformers

James C. Whorton

Description unavailable for this volume in the current provider response.

Crusaders for Fitness

A History of American Health Reformers

James C. Whorton

Description unavailable for this volume in the current provider response.

Before Silent Spring

Pesticides and Public Health in Pre-DDT America

James C. Whorton

Modern consumers are well aware that the food they eat is tainted by pesticidal residues; they are less aware that their great-grandparents faced the same hazard. James C. Whorton's history of this public health menace emphasizes that insecticides have been contaminating produce since the introduction of chemical pesticides in the 1860s. The book examines the period before the publication of Rachel Carson's famous Silent Spring, tracing the origins of the residue problem and exploring the complicated network of interest groups that formed around the issue. The author shows how economic necessities, technological limitations, and pressures on regulatory agencies have brought us to "our present dilemma of seemingly having to poison our food in order to protect it." In Part I, the agricultural and medical literature of the past century is used to analyze the emergence by 1920 of a public health danger of serious proportions. Part II draws heavily on the unpublished records of the Food and Drug Administration to document how the ineffective handling of this danger established precedents for present pesticide abuses. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan

"Outstanding . . . a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our eating habits." —The New Yorker One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year and Winner of the James Beard Award Author of This is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind and the #1 New York Times Bestseller In Defense of Food and Food Rules What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species. In the years since, Pollan’s revolutionary examination has changed the way Americans think about food. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world. Ten years later, The Omnivore’s Dilemma continues to transform the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating.

Fast Food Nation

The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Eric Schlosser

An exploration of the fast food industry in the United States, from its roots to its long-term consequences.

Discovering Nutrition

Paul M. Insel, Don Ross, Kimberley McMahon, Melissa Bernstein

Rev. ed. of: Discovering nutrition / Paul Insel, R. Elaine Turner, Don Ross. 3rd ed. c2010.

Mindless Eating

Why We Eat More Than We Think

Brian Wansink

In this illuminating and groundbreaking new book, a food psychologist will help readers change the way they look at food, and the facts needed to easily make smarter, healthier, more mindful and enjoyable choices at the dinner table, in the supermarket, in restaurants, at the office--even at a vending machine.

Food, Cuisine, and Cultural Competency for Culinary, Hospitality, and Nutrition Professionals

Sari Edelstein

Food, Cuisine, and Cultural Competency for Culinary, Hospitality, and Nutrition Professionals comprehensively covers unique food traditions as they apply to health. The text explores the critical importance of cultural sensitivity and competency in today's work setting, addresses health literacy issues of diverse client bases, and helps readers identify customer communication techniques that enable professionals to establish trust with clients of ethnicity not their own. Written and peer reviewed by experts in the culture discussed, each chapter in this groundbreaking text covers a distinct region or culture and discusses the various contexts that contribute to nutrition and health: lifestyles, eating patterns, ethnic foods, menu planning, communication (verbal and non-verbal), and more. This book is consistent with The American Dietetic Association’s Cultural Competence Strategic Plan.

The Blue Zones Solution

Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People

Dan Buettner

Dan Buettner's The Blue Zones (2008) identified the healthiest, longest-living societies on the planet. In this follow-up, he outlines methods for replicating their healthy lifestyles.

Nationalizing the Body

The Medical Market, Print and Daktari Medicine

Projit Bihari Mukharji

This book seeks to move emphasis away from the over-riding importance given to the state in existing studies of ‘western’ medicine in India, and locates medical practice within its cultural, social and professional milieus. Based on Bengali doctors writings this book examines how various medical problems, challenges and debates were understood and interpreted within overlapping contexts of social identities and politics on the one hand, and their function within a largely unregulated medical market on the other.

A Social History of Medicines in the Twentieth Century

To Be Taken Three Times a Day

John Crellin, Dennis B Worthen

Get a fresh perspective on the day-to-day use of medicine! A Social History of Medicines in the Twentieth Century explores the most perplexing issues concerning the uses of prescriptions and other medicines on both sides of the Atlantic. The book equips you with a thorough understanding of the everyday use of medicine in the United States, Canada, and Britain, concentrating on its recent past. Dr. John K. Crellin, author of several influential books on the history of medicine and pharmacy, addresses vital topics such as: the emergence of prescription-only medicines; gate-keeping roles for pharmacists; the role of the drugstore; and the rise of alternative medicines. A Social History of Medicines in the Twentieth Century adds the historical perspective missing from most medical and pharmaceutical literature about trends in the day-to-day use of medicines in society. The book is essential reading for anyone taking regular medication, either as self-care or by a physician’s prescription. Topics discussed include the non-scientific factors that validate medicines, the relevance of the control of narcotics, marketing strategies used by the pharmaceutical industry, the changing authority of physicians and pharmacists, over-the-counter medicines, tonics and sedatives, and patient complianceand non-compliance. A Social History of Medicines in the Twentieth Century also addresses: medicines for weakness (health foods, fortifiers, digestives/laxatives) poison and pharmacy legislation placebos tranquilizers and antidepressants hormones side-effects psychoactive medications herbal medicines a brief history of the use of medicines from the 17th to 19th centuries suggestions for future policies and much more! A Social History of Medicines in the Twentieth Century is equally vital as a professional resource for physicians, pharmacists, and health care administrators, as a classroom guide for academics working in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, and as a resource for patients.

Why Wellness Sells

Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture

Colleen Derkatch

How and why the idea of wellness holds such rhetorical—and harmful—power. In Why Wellness Sells, Colleen Derkatch examines why the concept of wellness holds such rhetorical power in contemporary culture. Public interest in wellness is driven by two opposing philosophies of health that cycle into and amplify each other: restoration, where people use natural health products to restore themselves to prior states of wellness; and enhancement, where people strive for maximum wellness by optimizing their body's systems and functions. Why Wellness Sells tracks the tension between these two ideas of wellness across a variety of sources, including interviews, popular and social media, advertising, and online activism. Derkatch examines how wellness manifests across multiple domains, where being "well" means different things, ranging from a state of pre-illness to an empowered act of good consumer-citizenship, from physical or moral purification to sustenance and care, and from harm reduction to optimization. Along the way, Derkatch demonstrates that the idea of wellness may promise access to the good life, but it serves primarily as a strategy for coping with a devastating and overwhelming present. Drawing on scholarship in the rhetoric of health and medicine, the health and medical humanities, and related fields, Derkatch offers a nuanced account of how language, belief, behavior, experience, and persuasion collide to produce and promote wellness, one of the most compelling—and harmful—concepts that govern contemporary Western life. She explains that wellness has become so pervasive in the United States and Canada because it is an ever-moving, and thus unachievable, goal. The concept of wellness entrenches an individualist model of health as a personal responsibility, when collectivist approaches would more readily serve the health and well-being of whole populations.

The Discourse of Hygiene in French Fascist Literature

Ian Hamilton Offord

Description unavailable for this volume in the current provider response.

Masculinity in the Modern West

Gender, Civilization and the Body

Christopher E. Forth

Across the Western world "crisis" is the word most commonly used to describe the state of masculinity today, but how new is this idea? Can we identify a time when masculinity was actually stable and secure? Masculinity in the Modern West engages with these questions by examining how traditional ideals about male physical prowess have clashed with the lifestyle changes that accompanied the rise of modern civilization since 1700. In countries like America, Britain, France, Germany and Russia, modernity bolstered male dominance in commerce, politics, technology and the world of ideas; yet images of masculinity have continued to be haunted by the negative effects that polite, cerebral, consumerist and sedentary lifestyles might have on the minds and bodies of men. Modernity thus exercises a double logic that supports male privilege while diminishing the physical difference used to legitimate that privilege. By focusing on the male body, this wide-ranging study proposes that "crises" of masculinity may be structural, and thus inescapable, features of life in our world.

Magill's Medical Guide

Karen E. Kalumuck, Nancy A. Piotrowski, Tracy Irons-Georges, Connie Rizzo

A comprehensive general encyclopedia of medical information for all users. Although there are numerous encyclopedias for the professional, and numerous consumer guides that offer brief information, this edition of "Magill's Medical Guide" bridges the gap between the highly technical and the very general.