Doctoral Dissertation Research: Medicine, Magic, Mirage: Redefining the Boundaries of Medical Therapies in Modern America

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What constitutes a scientific approach to medical inquiry and who determines what is scientific medicine and what is not? How does the definition of medical science influence the development and application of medical therapies? These questions form the basis for inquiry in the Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant, which will use NSF funding to collect relevant data at U.S. based archives. The process of defining boundaries between scientific and unscientific approaches to medicine remains highly contested. A variety of stakeholders have been involved in forming these boundaries including regulators, advertisers, consumers, professionals, and philanthropists by altering the parameters of and definitions for therapeutic legitimacy, acceptability, and legality. The dissertation explores how institutional structures, professional objectives, legislative reforms, and consumer demand shaped the development of a scientifically based medical orthodoxy in the early twentieth century United States. In doing so, the dissertation makes a crucial contribution to existing literature in the medical humanities which provides an analytical framework designed to test hypotheses about how unorthodox medical movements arise, develop, and affect the delivery of health services but fails to synthetically examine various stakeholders involved in the process of boundary formation between the dominant and peripheral medical paradigms. Drawing from a broad range of perspectives, the dissertation is framed by case studies illustrating the roles of various interest groups or stakeholders. These case studies are designed to illustrate the historical development of the dynamic and complex relationships between orthodox and unorthodox medicine over time, in the fashion of existing scholarly work on the cultural boundaries of science. This type of analysis involves distinguishing between effective and ineffective ways of acquiring, formulating, and providing reliable and scientific medical knowledge while examining how and where cultural credibility is determined. The dissertation contributes to this literature, and the broader literature in science studies, by identifying and illustrating the techniques used in promoting multiple and contested meanings of health and medicine, by defining the role of science in each area. The manuscript will also make at least two additional major contributions to the broader disciplines of the history of science and the history of medicine. First, by identifying the historical boundaries between orthodox and unorthodox medical therapies, it will explain how a nexus of legislative, economic, philosophical, and professional dynamics were involved in defining and disseminating what constitutes medical science. Second, by placing these developments in their social and cultural contexts, the dissertation will assess the factors that determine the status of therapies by discussing their relationship not only to science but also to values, beliefs, and philosophical orientations toward health and life. Because unorthodox therapeutic systems have often been defined by their deviation from scientific knowledge, support of unconventional metaphysical systems, and commitment to the empirical tradition, historicizing the dialogue between alternative and mainstream medical systems and treatments facilitates redefining the contemporary social and medical influence of each while providing a broader understanding of medicine and society. This research will allow for the completion of the dissertation, facilitate the publication of drafted articles in scholarly journals, and provide the basis for an eventual book manuscript. The researcher's experience with online publications and working discussions with on-site archivists also allow for additional broad dissemination of research findings. The proposed research also represents an unprecedented effort to broadly incorporate unpublished archival material from private and professional organizations, demonstrating the breadth of efforts to define the boundaries of scientific medicine in the early twentieth century.