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OverviewIn The Province of Affliction, Ben Mutschler explores the surprising roles that illness played in shaping the foundations of New England society and government from the late seventeenth century through the early nineteenth century. Considered healthier than people in many other regions of early America, and yet still riddled with disease, New Englanders grappled steadily with what could be expected of the sick and what allowances were made to them and their providers. Mutschler integrates the history of disease into the narrative of early American social and political development, illuminating the fragility of autonomy, individualism, and advancement . Each sickness in early New England created its own web of interdependent social relations that could both enable survival and set off a long bureaucratic struggle to determine responsibility for the misfortune. From families and households to townships, colonies, and states, illness both defined and strained the institutions of the day, bringing people together in the face of calamity, yet also driving them apart when the cost of persevering grew overwhelming. In the process, domestic turmoil circulated through the social and political world to permeate the very bedrock of early American civic life. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Ben MutschlerPublisher: The University of Chicago Press Imprint: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 9780226714424ISBN 10: 022671442 Pages: 368 Publication Date: 06 August 2020 Audience: General/trade , General Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Out of stock  The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available. Table of ContentsIntroduction Overviews 1. A Tour of the Province: October 18, 1769 2. Illness in the Social Credit and Money Economies of Eighteenth-Century New England Competency 3. Family Competency: Scenes from the Life Course of Illness 4. Household Competency: Work, Responsibility, and Belonging Dependency 5. Smallpox, Public Health, and Town Governance 6. The Domestic Costs of War: Wartime Afflictions Agency 7. Colonial Pensioners, the Revolutionary Invalid Corps, and the Advent of Decisive Disability 8. State Paupers and Patients Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes IndexReviewsTimely for its historical reflections on the challenges posed by disease, The Province of Affliction documents the resilient responses of early New Englanders to the regular occurrences of serious illness. Mutschler provides a poignant and pointed account of a world in which colonial settlers regularly stretched their capacities to tend to the sick and dying. -- Kathleen Brown, University of Pennsylvania Families struggling to care for loved ones. Governments determined to cut back on medical costs. Populations quarantined to stop the spread of disease. These scenes from colonial New England are as current as today's news. TheProvince of Affliction reveals a world surprisingly familiar, yet profoundly different from our own. In depicting this world, Mutschler is original, ambitious, masterful in his command of diverse sources, and a lively and fluent writer. He also forecasts the ideological origin of our current plight: the ethos of individualism that emerged in the wake of the Revolution, which built a new world of freedom and risk without a social safety net. -- Robert A. Gross, University of Connecticut The Province of Affliction provides a new lens into the experiences of New England colonists that broadens and deepens past scholarship. While New Englanders may have lived a long time, boy, did they suffer! Mutschler's fascinating book is an eye-opening examination and raises a host of questions about how we measure and evaluate medical progress. -- David K. Rosner, Columbia University ... a work noteworthy for both what it has to teach about its designated historical period as well as about some of the most pressing challenges of that time that we continue to face today. -- The Well-Read Naturalist Timely for its historical reflections on the challenges posed by disease, The Province of Affliction documents the resilient responses of early New Englanders to the regular occurrences of serious illness. Mutschler provides a poignant and pointed account of a world in which colonial settlers regularly stretched their capacities to tend to the sick and dying. -- Kathleen Brown, University of Pennsylvania Families struggling to care for loved ones. Governments determined to cut back on medical costs. Populations quarantined to stop the spread of disease. These scenes from colonial New England are as current as today's news. TheProvince of Affliction reveals a world surprisingly familiar, yet profoundly different from our own. In depicting this world, Mutschler is original, ambitious, masterful in his command of diverse sources, and a lively and fluent writer. He also forecasts the ideological origin of our current plight: the ethos of individualism that emerged in the wake of the Revolution, which built a new world of freedom and risk without a social safety net. -- Robert A. Gross, University of Connecticut The Province of Affliction provides a new lens into the experiences of New England colonists that broadens and deepens past scholarship. While New Englanders may have lived a long time, boy, did they suffer! Mutschler's fascinating book is an eye-opening examination and raises a host of questions about how we measure and evaluate medical progress. -- David K. Rosner, Columbia University Author InformationBen Mutschler is associate professor of history at Oregon State University. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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