Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers

In a work that spans the twentieth century, Nancy Tomes questions the popular — and largely unexamined — idea that in order to get good health care, people must learn to shop for it. Remaking the American Patient explores the consequences of the consumer economy and American medicine having come of age at exactly the same time. Tracing the robust development of advertising, marketing, and public relations within the medical profession and the vast realm we now think of as “health care,” Tom...