The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land

Conevery Bolton Valenčius

Basic Books, 2002 - History - 388 pages

In this vivid history of American western expansion, Conevery Bolton Valencius captures the excitement, romanticism, and confusion of the frontier experience as well as another, less renowned reality of settling: how terrifying the untamed wilderness of the West was to its homesteaders. In a time when good health was thought to involve perfectly balanced humors, settlers thought that the wild extremes of the borderlands disrupted the delicate equilibrium of their bodies. Valencius is the first historian to show that the settlers' primary criterion for uncharted land was its perceived health or sickliness. This is a beautifully written, fresh account of the gritty details of American expansion, animated by the voices of the settlers themselves.

Contents

• New Country: 15
• Body: 53
• Places: 85
• Airs: 109
• Waters: 133
• Local Knowledge Medical Geography and the Intellectual Hinterland: 159
• Cultivation: 191
• Racial Anxiety: 229
• Conclusion: 259
• AFTERWORD: 265
• Archival Information and Abbreviations: 271
• Notes: 275
• Bibliography: 339
• Permissions: 373
• Index: 375

Popular passages

Page 351 - This book points out, in plain language, free from doctors' terms, the diseases of men, women, and children, and the latest and most approved means used in their cure, and is intended expressly for the benefit of families in the western and southern states.‎

About the author

Conevery Bolton Valencius received her Ph.D. from Harvard. In 2000 she won the prestigious Allan Nevins Prize, awarded by the Society of American Historians for best-written dissertation in American history. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where she is an assistant professor at Washington University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land
• Author: Conevery Bolton Valenčius
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Basic Books, 2002
• ISBN: 0465089879, 9780465089871
• Length: 388 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / 19th Century; History / United States / General; Medical / History