"That mountain is like a drug store": Knowledge and Medicine in Southern Appalachia, 1900-1933

This thesis argues that although historians treat the relationship between professional medicine and folk medicine in Southern Appalachia as a competition and place Appalachian folk medicine as a victim of professionalization, the two forms of medicine are best understood as systems of knowledge. Through interviews, medical journals and administrative records, medical school records, and other archival sources, I trace how gender, race, and class shaped knowledge in Appalachian folk medicine and professional medicine during Prohibition and the early twentieth century. Despite the characterization of folk medicine as a victim to professionalization, I find that people in Southern Appalachia actively understood and engaged with shifting ideas of health and constant concerns over the high costs of medicine and limited accessibility to doctors throughout the twentieth century.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Department dc:contributor.department

History

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Boggs, Eleanor Louise

Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair

• Dufour, Monique S.
• Heaton, Matthew M.

Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember

• Christensen, Danille

• medicine
• health
• knowledge
• Prohibition
• Appalachia

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:16027

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/84342