Medicine by the People: How Ordinary People Changed American Healthcare

A grassroots history of American medicine that shows how regular people were architects of medical knowledge and care.

Most 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.

Throughout early American history, everyday people—from enslaved individuals to village midwives to cowboys—have been caring for their communities. In colonial Boston...