The Doctor in Colonial America - Softcover

Friedenberg, Zachary B.

9781887750936: The Doctor in Colonial America

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1887750932 ISBN 13: 9781887750936

Publisher: Netsource Dist Services, 1998

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Book by Friendenberg, Zachary B., Friedenberg, Zachary

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From the Back Cover:

Can you imagine a time when "antiseptic" was a new word, when the relationship between symptom and disease was only a glimmer in a physician's eye and when, regardless of the diagnosis, bleeding was likely to be the prescribed cure?

Step into the world of Dr. Zachary Friedenberg, as he re-creates medicine in the Colonial past. Here you'll find a world where surgeons, working at military hospitals, received one and one-third dollars a day for their efforts; where operations, most frequently amputations, were performed without benefit of anesthesia; and where nostalgia was deemed a legitimate diagnosis and was treated as an organic disease during the Revolutionary War. You'll learn about how a puritanically minded people were resistant to smallpox inoculations as being against the will of God; about physicians forced to experiment with new vaccines on their own family members for want of other subjects; and even about how best to treat an outbreak of scurvy aboard a slave ship.

So much more than just a historical work, The Doctor in Colonial America is an intelligent, thought-provoking, accessible and fun look at the medical theories and surgical practices that provided the groundwork for modern medicine. Peopled with the quacks and charlatans of yesteryear, as well as the heroes, The Doctor in Colonial America is a must read for anybody interested in how we got to be where we are today.

About the Author:

During Dr. Friedenberg's education, the war clouds thickened, and when he graduated medical school, Hitler's blitzkrieg had subdued the European Continent. He soon found himself in North Africa, an army surgeon in a forward surgical hospital, advancing through Italy, France, and Germany.

After discharge, as a well experienced military surgeon, Dr. Friedenberg continued his interrupted medical education to become an orthopaedic surgeon in an academic center.

Surgical research, teaching, and surgical practice engulfed his life for many years. Yet in spite of diversions such as underwater photography, sailing, and worldwide travel, something in his soul was not requited. He yearned to be enlightened. Dr. Friedenberg had no choice but to retreat to centuries past, and repeat the slow and painful ascent of medicine up the ladder of time with his predecessors.

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