Knowledge in the Time of Cholera: The Struggle over American Medicine in the Nineteenth Century

by Owen Whooley

Vomiting. Diarrhea. Dehydration. Death. Confusion. In 1832, the arrival of cholera in the United States created widespread panic throughout the country. For the rest of the century, epidemics swept through American cities and towns like wildfire, killing thousands. Physicians of all stripes offered conflicting answers to the cholera puzzle, ineffectively responding with opiates, bleeding, quarantines, and all manner of remedies, before the identity of the dreaded infection was consolidated under the germ theory of disease some sixty years later.These cholera outbreaks raised fundamental questions about medical knowledge and its legitimacy, giving fuel to alternative medical sects that used the confusion of the epidemic to challenge both medical orthodoxy and the authority of the still-new American Medical Association. In Knowledge in the Time of Cholera, Owen Whooley tells us the story of those dark days, centering his narrative on rivalries between medical and homeopathic practitioners and bringing to life the battle to control public understanding of disease, professional power, and democratic governance in nineteenth-century America.

Genres: History

322 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

To my surprise, I was highly engaged in this book, though it took me some time to figure out all of the abstract actors. It would have been beneficial to have a character list at the beginning of the text for reference since the history of medicine isn't my field. The narrative structure of the book itself captures the story of the struggle over the jurisdiction of medical knowledge well, veiling the more mundane details in good writing.

[Yisu Z. · Rating 3 out of 5]

把职业和知识社会学结合在一起的作品。一方面是职业的生态理论，另一方面是认识论对于不同医疗派别之间turf war（医治霍乱大流行）的影响。从大体结论上来说没有特别出彩的地方：对抗疗法派最终成为了AMA，并且将「霍乱微生物说」纳入自己的话语／知识系统里，从而完成了epistemic closure。但turf war有很多不同打法，认识论争议甚至可能算不上必要条件（pp.230）。突出知识的一面确实有新意，但对于大图景，以及其他职业化过程的作用，我还是心存疑虑。