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+Beddoes's Hygeia comes from hygiene, and Greek theology.
+
+At time of publication, 1802, doctors were often ineffective and
+illegitimate because of muddiness between real physicians and quacks and
+limited scientific study of new medical treatment. Writer was interested
+in increasing scientific interest and legitimacy of medicine.
+
+Medical Manuals were popular at the time and tried to give the literate
+middle class ability to manage their own health (because useful doctors
+charged exorbitantly). Beddoes criticizes the majority of the genre, but
+is itself a medical manual.
+Thesis: health is a social ideal of individual habits ("rules and
+regulations") for preventive medicine. 
+
+Beddoes aligns with modern cultural pressure that health is a moral
+issue.
+
+Health is also a relative, sliding scale. The only way to determine
+healthfulness is by comparing to an unhealthy person. Also, acquiring
+health is a difficult path to determine.
+
+Pre-germ theory medicine is similar to modern neuromedicine, because the
+causes and absolute diagnostics are unclear. But Beddoes's and other
+contemporary doctors' missions were to "make disease visible." Medical
+tools that make disease more visible change how we understand health and
+how to become healthy.
+
+This course will cover some of these changes and developments in the
+19-20th centuries.