Synopses & Reviews
Throughout the 20th century, anti-quackery crusaders investigated, exposed, and attempted to regulate allegedly fraudulent therapeutic approaches to health and healing under the banner of consumer protection and a commitment to medical science.
Quack Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth-Century America reveals how efforts to establish an exact border between quackery and legitimate therapeutic practices and medications have largely failed, and details the reasons for this failure.
Digging beneath the surface, the book uncovers the history of allegedly fraudulent therapies including pain medications, obesity and asthma cures, gastrointestinal remedies, virility treatments, and panaceas for diseases such as arthritis, asthma, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. It shows how efforts to combat alleged medical quackery have been connected to broader debates among medical professionals, scientists, legislators, businesses, and consumers, and it exposes the competing professional, economic, and political priorities that have encouraged the drawing of arbitrary, vaguely defined boundaries between good medicine and "quack medicine."
Review
"Boyle pulls few punches in Quack Medicine and lands many. His cogent analysis of the history and impact of quackery in the USA should be required reading for policy makers. He supports well his contention that education is not enough to protect the public from fraudulent purveyors of 'health.'" < p="">Gregory J. Higby, Executive Director, American Institute of the History of Pharmacy <>
Review
"Simply put, Eric Boyle's Quack Medicine is the best historical survey of "quackery" in America. Focusing on efforts to control—indeed, squash--quackery, which included most patent medicines and the various incarnations of sectarian practice, he even-handedly explores the dominant and sometimes hypocritical role played by the American Medical Association, which condemned alternative forms of treatment while greedily publishing their advertisements in its journal. In the latter decades of the twentieth century government agencies increasingly eclipsed the AMA in attempting to regulate the diverse medical marketplace." < p="">Ronald L. Numbers, Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison <>
Synopsis
This timely volume illustrates how and why the fight against quackery in modern America has largely failed, laying the blame on an unlikely confluence of scientific advances, regulatory reforms, changes in the medical profession, and the politics of consumption.
Synopsis
• Analyzes the evolution of trends in marketing and consumerism that have created tension between protecting the freedom of the individual and ensuring the public's wellbeing
• Investigates the relationship between medical quackery and alternative therapies such as acupuncture, homeopathic remedies, herbal supplements, and chiropractic adjustments
• Explains how legislative, economic, philosophical, and professional dynamics have shaped drug marketing and the consumption patterns of Americans
• Uncovers the origins of many ongoing challenges in the fields of health and medicine
Synopsis
• Previously unpublished images from medical almanacs and drug advertisements sent directly to doctors
• Images of materials used by "quackbusters" in their public educational campaigns, including posters used by the AMA and anti-quackery pamphlets produced by governmental agencies