Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-273) and index.

Unwashed groins and child labor: cancer in the early industrial age -- George Washington's toothbrush -- The age of the vaccine -- No wrong way to eat -- A pioneering operation -- Healing by a higher power -- Morton's ether inhaler and the advent of anesthesia -- Bitters and irregulars: alternative healing in the nineteenth century -- Blood shed after the battle: bleeding cups -- Under the surgeon's tent: the physician in the Civil War -- "Inflammatory mischief" meets antiseptic techniques -- Answering the milk question -- Skull shape and scientific racism -- "Health and comfort of body, with grace and beauty of form" -- East meets West in the medicine cabinet: a Chinese doctor in America -- The "cure" that wasn't -- Cocaine the medicine and the drug -- Don Pedrito, a legendary healer -- A wooden leg in a mechanized world -- A community doctor's legacy -- Carville, the "Louisiana leper home" -- The professional nurse only -- The pandemic of the century: the 1918 flu -- The Bubonic plague meets bacteriology -- Safe, simple, sure? The power of x-rays -- "Are you playing the health game?" -- The problem with "good" genes -- Machinery and machinations -- Diabetes: a fatal disease becomes chronic -- The tools of a contested trade: a midwife's kit -- Sipping on the sunshine vitamin -- Preemie care beyond the World's Fair -- The penicillin revolution -- Blood transfusion comes of age -- Insuring and ensuring health -- Nursing at war -- The science and politics of inhaling dust -- Health uplifted, health upended -- DDT: the double-edged sword -- The iron lung and the polio epidemics -- Two eras of change in pharmacy -- More than a metaphor: the straitjacket -- Changing ways of looking at the gut -- The pill's new era of choice (for some) -- Smoking under scrutiny -- Ed Roberts and the independent living movement -- Bypassing the heart -- False hopelessness or false hope: the early years of AIDS -- September 11 and emergency response -- Saving lives amid the opioid crisis.