This is a study of physicians and medical practice in the southern United States
during the mid-nineteenth century. It seeks to describe and interpret the work
of ordinary practitioners who struggled to understand disease and care for the
sick. For those readers who know little about medical care in this era, I hope to
show why it was an important aspect of social and cultural life. For those
acquainted with medical history, I hope to defamiliarize, and thus illuminate,
features of ordinary practice in this time and place, which will deepen our
understanding of what everyday doctoring signified in the medical past.