| Abstrakt: |
Central Appalachia experienced profound transitions during industrialization as modern scientific medicine, led by male doctors, actively displaced midwives and other folk healers. Medical reforms targeted company-controlled coalmining towns, which offered the latest care and first aid, hygiene, and scientific house-holding instruction. Residents of Jenkins, Kentucky, enthusiastically availed themselves of professional medical services, but patent medicine use and folk care continued. Century-old stereotypes about isolation and provincialism portray mountaineers as "hillbillies" resistant to change and modernity; however, medicines from the Shop Hollow Dump (ca. 1911-30s trash dump) suggest women creatively took charge of their bodies by self-administering products that simultaneously referenced scientific medicine and women-led "folk" traditions. Women consumers created new space for the work of feminine healing, destabilizing the patriarchal medical establishment's hegemony which had radically altered gendered relationships of care. Studies of medicine reveal the historical importance of women-led care, providing crucial antidotes to Appalachia's perpetual representation as medically underserved, impoverished, and backwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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