Quack Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth-Century America

by Eric W. Boyle

Overview

Throughout the 20th century, anti-quackery crusaders investigated, exposed, and attempted to regulate allegedly fraudulent therapeutic approaches to health and healing under the banner of consumer protection and a commitment to medical science. Quack Medi

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313385681
Publisher:	ABC-CLIO, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/09/2013
Series:	Healing Society: Disease, Medicine, and History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	239
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Eric W. Boyle, PhD, is guest researcher in the Office of History at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword ix

Acknowledgments xi

Abbreviations xiii

Introduction xv

Chapter 1 Quackery Unmasked 1

Chapter 2 Rationalizing and Regulating the Therapeutic Marketplace 17

Chapter 3 Marketing Medicines in an Age of Reform 39

Chapter 4 Propaganda for Reform 61

Chapter 5 A New Deal for Quackery 91

Chapter 6 Redefining Quackery in the Age of Wonder Drugs 111

Chapter 7 Reviving the Antiquackery Crusade in the 1950s and 1960s 127

Chapter 8 Redefining Quackery in the Closing Decades of the Twentieth Century 151

Notes 179

Selected Bibliography 219

Index 231

What People are Saying About This

Ronald L. Numbers

"Simply put, Eric Boyle’s Quack Medicine is the best historical survey of “quackery” in America. Focusing on efforts to control—indeed, squash—quackery, which included most patent medicines and the various incarnations of sectarian practice, he even-handedly explores the dominant and sometimes hypocritical role played by the American Medical Association, which condemned alternative forms of treatment while greedily publishing their advertisements in its journal. In the latter decades of the twentieth century government agencies increasingly eclipsed the AMA in attempting to regulate the diverse medical marketplace."

Gregory J. Higby

"Boyle pulls few punches in Quack Medicine and lands many. His cogent analysis of the history and impact of quackery in the USA should be required reading for policy makers. He supports well his contention that education is not enough to protect the public from fraudulent purveyors of 'health.'"

Editorial Reviews

The quality of this work, part of the Health Society: Disease, Medicine, and History series, is exceptional; it will be a useful historical resource for library collections. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.” —Choice

From the Publisher