Is There a Southern Doctor in the House?

Abstract

Doctoring the South does not go down easily, but a patient reader will benefit immeasurably from this brilliantly conceived and thoroughly researched book. Stephen Stowe has penetrated the scientific and cultural world of southern physicians during the mid-nineteenth century, showing how white doctors made meaning of their lives as they struggled to gain mastery of the sickly bodies of others. The confrontation between patient and physician, between sickness and health, reveals what Stowe calls the country orthodoxy style of southern practitioners. Country orthodoxy inextricably tied a doctor’s understanding of what it meant to be a professional to his local community. It was within a specific locale that the day-to-day reality of practicing medicine gave shape and meaning to the art of healing. [excerpt