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diff --git a/markley/hygeia b/markley/hygeia new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9d92196 --- /dev/null +++ b/markley/hygeia @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +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. |