Semester Award Granted
Spring 2025
Submission Date
May 2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
Sandra Norman
Abstract
This thesis argues that, from 1600 to 1800, healers in both England and America conceptualized quackery through an evolving understanding of what made a medical practitioner “acceptable.” Through a close examination of vernacular medical print published in both England and America throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this thesis complicates earlier understandings of quackery as being disconnected from politics and social biases. Instead, medical authors used social position—specifically gender, race, and religion—and medical philosophy as ways to identify quacks. In England, the Royal College of Physicians used quackery to delegitimize their opponents, while critics of the College did the same. As Enlightenment thought grew in popularity, anti-quack critics in England and America emphasized the efficacy of medical treatments over any overt issues with a practitioner’s social position. Throughout this period, quackery in England and America was dependent on physicians’ biases against various identities or medical philosophies.
Recommended Citation
Horan, Katherine Rose, "QUACKERY UNMASK’D: DEFINING QUACKERY IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN VERNACULAR MEDICAL WORKS, C. 1600-1800" (2025). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 63.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general/63