Health and wellness in colonial America / Rebecca Tannenbaum.

Santa Barbara, California : Greenwood, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, [2012]

xii, 249 pages ; 25 cm.

1. Factors in health and wellness : The disease environment -- Living conditions and life expectancies -- Health and disease in a transformed America -- 2. Education and training, learned and nonlearned : The training of Native American and African American practitioners -- Anglo-American traditions -- Changes in the eighteenth century -- The first American medical schools -- 3. Faith, religion, and medicine : Christianity and healing -- Native American practices -- African American religion and healing -- Witchcraft and demonic possession -- 4. Women's health : Beliefs about women's bodies : menstruation, sexuality, and conception -- Pregnancy -- Childbirth -- Breastfeeding and breast health -- Fertility and infertility -- 5. Infants' and children's health : Infant and child care in Native American cultures -- Infant and child care in Anglo-American cultures -- Infant and child care in African American cultures -- Accidents and injuries -- Infectious disease -- 6. Infectious disease : First contact epidemics -- Infectious disease and colonial settlement -- Fighting epidemic disease in the colonial city -- 7. "Dangerous trades" and occupational health : The maritime trades -- Female sex workers -- Enslaved workers -- 8. Surgery, dentistry, and orthopedics : Science, surgery, and anatomy in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe -- Who were the surgeons in America? -- Treating trauma -- Cutting for the stone -- Breast cancer and mastectomy -- Dentists and dental care -- 9. The brain and mental disorders : Understandings of the brain in European American culture -- Neurological disease -- Intellectual disability -- Mental illness -- Eighteenth century changes -- 10. The apothecary and his pharmacopeia : Native American traditions -- Native American medicines and Europeans -- African American traditions -- African American exchanges of knowledge -- Anglo-American apothecaries and medicines -- 11. War and health : Colonial era warfare and weapons -- Treating battlefield injuries -- Infectious disease during wartime -- Germ warfare? -- Military hygiene, physicians, and hospitals -- 12. Institutional facilities : Almshouses -- The first American hospitals -- 13. Disease, healing, and the arts : Almanacs and popular print -- Home health guides -- Cotton Mather's Angel of Bethesda -- The poetry of Anne Bradstreet -- Health and medicine in colonial era diaries -- The arts in Native American and African American medicine.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-232) and index.