Women and Health in America: Historical Readings, 2nd Edition - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299159647 ISBN 13: 9780299159641

Publisher: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1999

Synopsis

In this thoroughly updated second edition, Judith Walzer Leavitt, a leading authority on the history of women's health issues, has collected thirty-five articles representing important scholarship in this once-neglected field. Timely and fascinating, this volume is organized chronologically and then by topic, covering studies of women and health in the colonial and revolutionary periods and the nineteenth century through the Civil War. The remainder of the book concentrates on the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and addresses such controversial issues as body image and physical fitness, sexuality, fertility, abortion and birth control, childbirth and motherhood, mental illness, women's health care providers (midwives, nurses, physicians), and health reform and public health.

About this title

About the Author:

Judith Walzer Leavitt is Ruth Bleier Professor of History of Medicine, History of Science, and Women’s Studies and the associate dean of faculty at the medical school, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her many books include The Healthiest City and Sickness and Health in America, both also available from the University of Wisconsin Press, as well as Typhoid Mary and Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America 1750–1950.

Review:

"Superb."—Isis


"Highly recommended for everyone interested in women's health."—Journal of the American Medical Women's Association


"Should be on everyone's reference shelf."—Women's Studies in Indiana


"Leavitt is to be commended for selecting pieces which highlight the major debates."—Women's Review of Books


"It's a pleasure, as well as useful, to have such a range of excellent work in one book."—Journal of the History of Medicine



"[Leavitt's] approach ensures that women's history will meet high standards and, in fact, raises the standards of historical scholarship."—Bulletin of the History of Dentistry


"This anthology may be just the prescription to cure a current deficiency disease, to supply in one place the information that has been sadly lacking in historical treatments of women as patients and practitioners."—Mobius

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0299159647
• ISBN 13: 9780299159641
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 560
• Editor: Judith Walzer Leavitt