Right Living ─ An Anglo-American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene

During the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth century, most Americans healed themselves at home, as their ancestors had done for centuries. They relied upon books and pamphlets addressing health and diseases, diet, exercise, sex, mental health—everything one needed to know about how to avoid illness and what to do if illness or injury should strike.

In Right Living: An Anglo-American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene, Charles E. Rosenberg and his co-authors analyze these early health-oriented books, pamphlets, and broadsides—their origins, content, role, and authorship—and contribute to our understanding of their role in everyday life. Right Living also offers insight into the world views and bedside practices of another time by examining the shaping and transmission of the English and continental tradition, the persistent interest in sexual relations and their consequences, and the changing uses of print as a commodity and as a product of specific, time-bound technologies.

Contributors: Kathleen Brown, Mary E. Fissell, William H. Helfand, Thomas A. Horrocks, Ronald L. Numbers, Charles E. Rosenberg, Steven Shapin, Jean Silver-Isenstadt, Steven Stowe.

Charles E. Rosenberg is the Ernest E. Monrad Professor in the Social Sciences in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. He is the author of No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought and The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System, both available from Johns Hopkins.