Health in early America was generally good. The food was plentiful, the air and water were clean, and people tended to enjoy strong constitutions as a result of this environment. Practitioners of traditional forms of health care enjoyed high social status, and the cures they offered—from purging to mere palliatives—carried a powerful authority. Consequently, most American doctors felt little need to keep up with Europe’s medical advances relying heavily on their traditional depletion methods. However, in the years following the American Revolution as poverty increased and America’s water and air became more polluted, people grew sicker. Traditional medicine became increasingly ineffective. Instead, Americans sought out both older and newer forms of alternative medicine and people who embraced these methods: midwives, folk healers, Native American shamans, African obeahs and the new botanical and water cure advocates.

In this overview of health and healing in early America, Elaine G. Breslaw describes the evolution of public health crises and solutions. Breslaw examines “ethnic borrowings” (of both disease and treatment) of early American medicine and the tension between trained doctors and the lay public. While orthodox medicine never fully lost its authority, Lotions, Potions, Pills, and Magic argues that their ascendance over other healers didn’t begin until the early twentieth century, as germ theory finally migrated from Europe to the United States and American medical education achieved professional standing.

"[Breslaw] provides a powerful and cautionary reminder that understanding those practices is impossible without close attention to power." - Journal of American History

"Many histories chronicle American medicine's transformation from its chaotic and disorganized beginnings into 'scientific medicine' in the late nineteenth and twentiethcenturies. By synthesizing secondary sources in a tightly packed two hundred pages, Elaine Breslaw resists retelling this triumphalist narrative and instead focuses much needed attention on medicine and health in America before the Civil War." - Journal of the History of Medicine

"Breslaw offers a concise, masterful study of early American medical historical literature and charts the complicated record of early American health care, focusing on the decline of the physician in a newly democratic society." - The North Carolina Historical Review

"Lotions, Potions, Pills, and Magic: Health Care in Early Americaby Knoxville writer Elaine Breslaw, who taught at the University of Tennessee History Department for many years, has been hailed by critics as being of special interest to medical and professional historians." - The Knoxville News-Sentinel

"The practice of inoculation, along with other locally derived remedies, receives considerable attention in Elaine G. Breslaws Lotions, Potions, Pills, and Magic.Breslaw argues that American physicians and healers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were immersed in local knowledge systems and activities, often at the expense of new medical practice." - William and Mary Quarterly

"In Lotions, Potions, Pills, and Magic, Elaine Breslaw takes an intriguing backward look at the history of healthcare in early American and finds parallels between the current disillusionment with physicians and the former 'gloomy picture of the early state of health care and the medical profession' (p. 193). Breslaw offers an accessible synthesis of scholarly works on the history of medicine. Her overarching goal is to chart the longstanding tensions between doctors and the public." - Social History

"Breslaws book is an important compilation of authoritative research, giving the subject a longer reach and shedding light on a little-known and not-so-pretty subject." - Library Journal

"There is a nice balance between particular stories and wide overviews, and readers meet care-givers who have become famous over the decades, from long-time figures such as Cotton Mather and Benjamin Rush to newer but now indispensable actors such as the New Hampshire midwife Martha Ballard . . . . The book's breadth is valuable." - Journal of Social History

"By synthesizing secondary sources in a tightly packed two hundred pages, Elaine Breslaw resists retelling [a] triumphalist narrative and instead focuses much needed attention on medicine and health in America before the Civil War . . . . For those looking for an overview of this period in medical history, Breslaw's book and bibliographical essay provide a starting point." - Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

"A highly readable and entertaining volume filled with anecdotes and gripping stories." - History in Review

"Deliciously titled, 'Lotions, Potions, Pills, and Magic' is an extremely well-written introduction to American health care." - Choice