Tag: Remedia

In her insightful book, “This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War,” Drew Faust shows how the Civil War forever changed America’s experience of death. Never before had the country seen such a large fatality toll within such a short period of time: 750,000 people are believed to have died during the war, a number, according to Faust, “approximately equal to the total American fatalities in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War combined.”[1] Such a scale of carnage introduced imminent challenges in handling the dead bodies of soldiers and civilians.

Yet the profound changes in Americans’ outlook on death persisted even in the aftermath of the war. Anxieties about infection and the desire to honor and commemorate the dead culminated in a debate about the practice of and location for disposing of corpses. Like in the Civil War, what was at stake in this debate was nothing less than the future of America. Continue reading

Remedianetwork is a group blog project that tries to bring the history of medicine into dialogue with its present. This piece is the first in a semi-regular series of cross-posted content.

Obesity is often thought to be a twenty-first century disease. Our “modern lifestyle,” so the theory goes, with its rich diet, lack of exercise, and sedentary occupations, has led to the spread of a fatal condition. How far back would you date the beginning of this new epidemic? 20 years? 30? 50? Turns out, obesity was a concern as early as 1816. These medical tracts, held by the Center for the History of Medicine at the Countway Library, and published online in the Medical Heritage Library attest to longstanding anxiety. Go on, leaf through! Continue reading