Making Sense of Self: Medical Advice Literature in Late Nineteenth-Century America

Seeking the key to good living through physical well-being, the American public since at least the 1830s has devoured literature proffering medical advice. Making Sense of Self is an historical analysis of the ideological content of a broad sample of late nineteenth-century popular advice literature concerning the body and the mind. At a time when the middle class was threatened with tumultuous social and economic change, such publications offered blueprints for self-regulation, teaching su...