About the Book:This history of health, illness, and medical care in one downstateIllinoiscounty offers a richly detailed account, spanning more than a century of health care, from the perspectives of county residents,nurses, doctors, and public health professionals. Drawing on a wealth of oral history interviews, hospital records, and other primary documents, Lucinda McCray Beier provides insight into home management of ill health, birth, and death; nurses training and practices; the experiences of African American healers and patients;public health provision;and other topics. By observing the history of medicine and public health throughthe eyes of practitioners and laypeople over an extended period in one Midwestern county, this volume offers insight into broad American experience as well asan important counterweight to metropolitan-oriented, physician-centered studies.Table of Contents: Acknowledgments viii Introduction: A Matter of Life and Death ix 1. Living and Dying in Nineteenth-Century McLean County 1 2. No Place Like Home: Hospitals and the Development of Institutional Care 22 3. Nursing, Gender, and Modern Medicine 44 4. Doctors and Organized Medicine 73 5. An Ounce of Prevention: Public Health Services 117 6. Matters of Life and Death: Experience and Expectations of Health, Illness, and Medical Care in the Twentieth Century 136 Conclusion: Health Culture in Transition 179 Appendix: Oral History Informants 191 Notes 195 Bibliography 223 Index 233Illustrations follow page 116