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...