Precarious Prescriptions

In Precarious Prescriptions, Laurie B. Green, John Mckiernan-González, and Martin Summers bring together essays that place race, citizenship, and gender at the center of questions about health and disease. Exploring the interplay between disease as a biological phenomenon, illness as a subjective experience, and race as an ideological construct, this volume weaves together a complicated history to show the role that health and medicine have played throughout the past in defining the ideal citizen.

By creating an intricate portrait of the close associations of race, medicine, and public health, Precarious Prescriptions helps us better understand the long and fraught history of health care in America.

Contributors: Jason E. Glenn, U of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; Mark Allan Goldberg, U of Houston; Jean J. Kim; Gretchen Long, Williams College; Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, Cornell U; Lena McQuade-Salzfass, Sonoma State U; Natalia Molina, U of California, San Diego; Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College; Jennifer Seltz, Western Washington U.

Laurie B. Green is associate professor of history at University of Texas at Austin.

John Mckiernan-González is assistant professor of history at Texas State University. 

Martin Summers is associate professor of history and African and African diaspora studies at Boston College.

Contents

IntroductionLaurie Green, John Mckiernan-González, and Martin Summers

1. Curing the Nation with Cacti: Native Healing and State Building before the Texas RevolutionMark Allan Goldberg2. “We Were Promised Medicines”: Health and Illness around the Salish Sea, 1853–1878Jennifer Seltz3. “I Studied and Practiced Medicine without Molestation”: African American Doctors in the First Years of FreedomGretchen Long4. At the Nation’s Edge: African American Migrants and Smallpox in the Mexican-American BorderlandsJohn Mckiernan-González5. Diagnosing the Ailments of Black Citizenship: African American Physicians and the Dilemma of Mental Illness, 1895–1940Martin Summers6. “An Indispensable Service”: Midwives and Medical Officials after New Mexico StatehoodLena McQuade-Salzfass7. Professionalizing “Local Girls”: Nursing and U.S. Colonial Rule in Hawai’i, 1920–1948Jean J. Kim8. Borders, Laborers, and Racialized Medicalization: Mexican Immigration and U.S. Public Health Practices in the Twentieth CenturyNatalia Molina9. “A Transformation for Migrants”: Mexican Farmworkers and Federal Health Reform During the New Deal EraVerónica Martínez-Matsuda10. “Hunger in America” and the Power of Television: Poor People, Physicians, and the Mass Media in the War against PovertyLaurie B. Green11. Making Crack Babies: Race Discourse and the Biologization of BehaviorJason E. Glenn12. Suffering and Resistance, Voice and Agency: Thoughts on History and the “Tuskegee” Syphilis StudySusan M. Reverby

ContributorsIndex