Medicating Modern America

Andrea Tone is Canada Research Chair in the Social History of Medicine at McGill University. She is the author, most recently, of Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America.Elizabeth Siegel Watkins is associate professor of the History of Health Sciences at the University of California at San Francisco and the author of On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970.

• Introduction Andrea Tone and Elizabeth Siegel WatkinsPart I1. Antibiotics From Germophobia to the Carefree Life and Back Again: The Lifecycle of the Antibiotic BrandRobert Bud2. Mood Stabilizers Folie to Folly: The Modern Mania for Bipolar Disorders and Mood StabilizersDavid Healy3. Hormone Replacement "Educate Yourself": Consumer Information about Menopause and Hormone Replacement TherapyElizabeth Siegel WatkinsPart II4. Oral Contraceptives Women over Who Smoke: A Case Study in Risk Management and Risk Communications, 1960-1989Suzanne WhiteJunod5. Stimulants Not Just Naughty: Years of Stimulant Drug AdvertisingIlina Singh6. Tranquilizers Tranquilizers on Trial: Psychopharmacology in the Age of AnxietyAndrea TonePart III7. Statins The Abnormal and the Pathological: Cholesterol, Statins, and the Threshold of DiseaseJeremy A. Greene8. Viagra Making Viagra: From Impotence to Erectile DysfunctionJennifer R. FishmanAbout the Contributors Index

A set of fascinating case studies. . . . Anyone who has taken prescription medications can benefit by reading it. (Metapsychology Online Reviews) A well-edited collection of eight timely and provocative essays about the key prescription drugs that have, for better or worse, helped shape American consumer culture and health since World War I. (Journal of the History of Medicine) These challenging essays mark the transformation of medication from a tradition of need assessed by physicians, to a culture that far exceeds a basic threshold for drugs on demand on the part of the public. (Choice) Nowhere do pharmaceutical companies sell more drugs, make more money, affect more lives, or wield more power than in the United States. These sophisticated but accessible essays trace the history of eight types of prescription blockbusters, from antibiotics to Viagra, and show how they have changed Americans thinking about disease, consumer rights, and normality itself. They force us to confront the paradox of a pill-taking society that wages war on some drugs but avidly seeks out others to economically profitable if not always therapeutically benign effect. - David Courtwright,author of Forces of Habit and Dark Paradise Their excellent example of balanced analysis should inspire other scholars to pursue further work in the new pharmaceutical history. - Gregory J. Higby (The Journal of American History) &;The most valuable role of Medicating Modern America is as a teaching text. There are currently very few texts available for undergraduate teachers that offer digestible and critical assessments of the role of prescription drugs in the history of twentieth-century biomedicine; Medical Modern Americaby providing a series of highly accessible and engaging analyses of prescriptions drugssuperbly fills this gap. (Social History of Medicine) Provides a series of highly accessible and engaging analyses of prescriptions drugs. (Social Hiistory of Medicine)