Medical History of Michigan

by Michigan State Medical Society

1930

This illustrated volume presents information about medical developments in Michigan in the early and middle nineteenth century in loosely-organized chapters. The material is drawn from reminiscences, historical chronicles, anecdotes, scholarly journals, letters, and biographical as well as autobiographical accounts. Topics include Native American medicine; physicians who accompanied the European and early American explorers of the upper Northwest; the development of Michigan's medical education and public health resources; diseases and epidemics; insects; homeopathy; diagnostic aids; medical equipment; and therapeutic practice. Many physicians are remembered in short factual entries or sketches. A few, like the pioneer physiologist William Beaumont (who conducted digestive research by monitoring a patient's exposed entrails), receive entire articles. The emphasis in v. 2 is on the latter half of the nineteenth century, a time when Michigan physicians were developing a professional code of ethics, standards, and regulatory mechanisms. Topics include the re-organization of the State Medical Society, the controversy over homeopathy, and how hospitals became the preferred setting for major medical procedures. This second volume of Medical History of Michigan continues the format established in the first volume and includes an index for both (p. 83). The emphasis here is upon the latter half of the nineteenth century, a time when Michigan physicians were developing a professional code of ethics, standards, and regulatory mechanisms. Topics include the re-organization of the State Medical Society, the controversy over homeopathy, and how hospitals became the preferred setting for major medical procedures.