Center of the American West Event Podcast

Lunch with Limerick – Getting Sick and Getting Well: How Americans Have Understood Disease and Health

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Sinopse

In 2020, only a pathologically cheerful individual could say that the United States is a nation in a state of health. Between the malady of the coronavirus and the affliction of divisive polarization, the current state of affairs puts a premium on the chance to talk with an accomplished historian of American attitudes toward health and disease. A professor at Boston College, Conevery Valencius teaches courses on environmental history and the history of science and medicine. In her book, The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land, Professor Valencius uncovers a close tie between the ways that mid-nineteenth-century Americans understood the landscapes and communities where they settled, and the ways they thought about their own bodies. Her conversation with Patty Limerick did not deliver a comprehensive diagnosis of the nation's condition, but proposed new interpretations and raised insightful questions addressing ideas about health and disease that many Americans now