Non-sectarian health guides of post-Revolutionary America

Elite physicians were not intent of eliminating lay practitioners (=self-help). This was not the overriding issue before the 1830s. “Rather, beginning in the 1770s, they sought to induct the population into a learned medical ethos in which self-help occupied an integral but newly auxiliary role.” This reflected the determination of elite physicians to raise professional standards, as well as the republicanism of the Revolutionary era, “which mandated a well-educate citizenry to ensure social health and national survival (L. Murphy, 5-6).