A Literate South
A Literate South

Author: Beth Barton Schweiger

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2019-06-25

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0300245394

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A provocative examination of literacy in the American South before emancipation, countering the long-standing stereotype of the South’s oral tradition Schweiger complicates our understanding of literacy in the American South in the decades just prior to the Civil War by showing that rural people had access to a remarkable variety of things to read. Drawing on the writings of four young women who lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Schweiger shows how free and enslaved people learned to read, and that they wrote and spoke poems, songs, stories, and religious doctrines that were circulated by speech and in print. The assumption that slavery and reading are incompatible—which has its origins in the eighteenth century—has obscured the rich literate tradition at the heart of Southern and American culture.

An Annotated Catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine and Health Reform
An Annotated Catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine and Health Reform

Author: Christopher Hoolihan

Publisher: University Rochester Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 784

ISBN-13: 9781580462846

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This is a catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of rare books dealing with 'popular medicine' in early America which is housed at the University of Rochester Medical School library. The books described in the catalogue were written by physicians and other professionals to provide information for the non-medical audience. The books taught human anatomy, hygiene, temperance and diet, how to maintain health, and how to cope with illness especially when no professional help was available. The books promoted a healthy lifestyle for the readers, giving guidance on everything from physical fitness and recreation to the special health needs of women. The collection consists of works dealing with reproduction (from birth control to delivering and caring for a baby), venereal disease, home-nursing, epidemics, and the need for public sex education.