{"product_id":"medicine-by-the-people-how-ordinary-people-changed-american-healthcare-9781324086604","title":"Medicine by the People: How Ordinary People Changed American Healthcare","description":"\u003cp\u003eMost histories of medicine center doctors: the standard-bearers of expertise and innovation. Yet these narratives underplay the role that ordinary people have, and always have had, on medicine and public health.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThroughout early American history, everyday people--from enslaved individuals to village midwives to cowboys--have been caring for their communities. In colonial Boston, Black people's knowledge led to smallpox inoculations, stymieing that epidemic. Midwives, more plentiful than doctors, also delivered babies more successfully. During the Civil War, women served, taking care of the wounded, making nutritious food, and keeping hospitals clean.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOnce doctors professionalized in the later 1800s, they protected their domain. Still, the Black community of the early 1900s created a public campaign to prevent tuberculosis. In the last half of the twentieth century, the Young Lords fought for better sanitation and increased medical infrastructure in their East Harlem neighborhood. In the face of HIV\/AIDS, queer people pushed the federal government for research with their activism.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrassroots community care has always been at the cutting edge of medicine, a hidden tradition of meeting need with dignity. \u003cem\u003eMedicine by the People\u003c\/em\u003e reveals that the history of American healthcare is, at its heart, a struggle over who gets to tell the story of illness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e W. W. Norton \u0026amp; Company\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/13\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781324086604\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 192\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 08\/03\/2026\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Jim Downs","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52983012294837,"sku":"9781324086604","price":20.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/9781324086604.jpg?v=1787063057","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/medicine-by-the-people-how-ordinary-people-changed-american-healthcare-9781324086604","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}