Healing the Republic

In this study Joan Burbick interprets 19th-century narratives of health written by physicians, social reformers, lay healers and literary artists in order to expose the conflicts underlying the creation of an American national culture. Including annual reports of mental asylums, the home physician manuals, social reform books, and middle-class novels, these fictions of health engage in a counterpoint of voices competing to construct the hegemonic values of the emerging republic. Exploring the notion that political values flow from the daily exigencies of survival and enjoyment, the narratives of health presented here address the demands and desires of everyday life and construct a national discourse of control, authority, and subordination. The text examines the structures of authority found in health narratives and analyzes how specific knowledges about the brain, heart, nerves, and eye provides indices that reveal conflicts basic to American nationalism. The language of health and the culture of nationalism in 19th-century America confronts what Burbick sees as a certain fundamental uneasiness about democracy in America.