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KINDLY MEDICINE. PHYSIO-MEDICALISM IN AMERICA, 1836-1911.
By John S. Haller, Jr., Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1997, 207 pp., illustrated, $35.00 (hard cover).
In this well-researched volume, John Haller explores the establishment of PhysioMedicalism in the early nineteenth century and its gradual demise less than a century later. Very much an American phenomenon, Physio-Medicalism encompassed beliefs in an inherent vital force in the human body to heal itself and in the efficacy of botanical medicines. The leaders of this movement established...