Description
Book SynopsisJames Harvey Young, the foremost expert on the history of medical frauds, finds quackery in the 1990s to be more extensive and insidious than in earlier and allegedly more naive eras. The modern quack isn't an outrageous-looking hawker of magic remedies operating from the back of a carnival wagon, but he knows how to use antiregulatory sentiment an
Trade ReviewOne of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1993 "This wonderful book contains collected essays of America's foremost historian of the patent medicine and health quackery industries... These essays demonstrate Young's excellent scholarship as well as his marvelous sense of humor and his witty use of the language... A fitting testimony to the excellent research and writing of the author."--Choice
Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPt. ITelling WhyPrologue: A Quota of Quotations on Quackery3Ch. 1Getting into Quackery6Pt. IISeeking PatternsCh. 2Quackery and the American Mind23Ch. 3"The Foolmaster Who Fooled Them"32Ch. 4Folk into Fake50Pt. IIIGiving CounselCh. 5Health Quackery: A Historian's Advice81Ch. 6The Regulation of Health Quackery89Pt. IVConsidering ThemesCh. 7The Long Struggle against Quackery in Dentistry107Ch. 8"Even to a Sucking Infant": Nostrums and Children125Ch. 9The Marketing of Patent Medicines in Lincoln's Springfield158Ch. 10Nutritional Eccentricities165Pt. VNarrating CasesCh. 11"Euclid + Lincoln = Kent"187Ch. 12When Folk Medicine Flourished in the Shadows of Grady Hospital199Ch. 13Laetrile in Historical Perspective205Ch. 14AIDS and Deceptive Therapies256Index287
