Author’s Note
Introduction
Chapter 1: Quackery
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- Quacks and Their Deceptive Allies
- Hippocrates and Humors: The Long Life of Ancient Medical Theories
- Revolutions in Science and Medicine
- The Medical Marketplace: A Bewildering Array of Choices
- Quackery before and after Scientific Medicine
- Science or Pseudoscience?
- Quackery and Medicine in the Twenty-First Century
- Why Do We Fall for Quackery?
- In the Classroom
Chapter 2: Caveat Emptor: Let the Buyer Beware
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- Natural Cures: Samuel Thomson and Botanic Physicians
- Hydropathy: Reforming Body and Spirit
- Electrical Devices: New Technology for the New Urban Lifestyle
- Radium: The Popular Poison
- Patent Medicine
- Selling Snake Oil: Patent Medicine Advertising and Traveling Medicine Shows
- Regulating Drugs in the Twentieth Century
- In the Classroom
- The Primary Sources
Chapter 3: Imagining Utopia
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- Ancient Utopian Dreams
- Utopias of Escape: The Land of Cockaigne
- Utopias in the Era of Exploration
- In the Classroom
- The Primary Sources
Chapter 4: Utopian Communities
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- Utopian Communities: Key Themes
- The Diggers or True Levellers
- The Shakers, or The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing
- John Humphrey Noyes and The Oneida Community
- Robert Owen and New Harmony
- Nashoba, Fanny Wright’s Owenite Community
- In the Classroom
- The Primary Sources
Chapter 5: Cemeteries and Tombstones
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- In the Ancient World
- In the Middle Ages
- American Burial Customs
- Rural or Garden Cemeteries: New Styles for a New Era
- From Cemeteries to Memorial Parks
- Modern Cemetery Trends
- Wealth, Status, Sex, and Gender in Cemeteries
- Funeral Planning Then and Now
- In the Classroom
Chapter 6: Remembering the Dead: Symbols and Scrapbooks
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- Tombstone Symbols: Remembering in Stone
- The Culture of Mourning in the Nineteenth Century
- Scrapbooks: Remembering with Scissors and Paper
- In the Classroom
Works Cited
About the Author
Index
Discovering Quacks, Utopias, and Cemeteries: Modern Lessons from Historical Themes explores two enduring issues – our age-old pursuit of better lives and how the media impacts our choices. Each chapter opens with essential questions asking the reader to consider these issues in historical and modern life. The histories of fake cures or snake oil, imaginary and real utopias, cemeteries, tombstone symbols, and scrapbooks are explored from ancient times through the transformations caused by the Industrial Revolution into the twentieth century.
Quacks, Utopias, and Cemeteries, the third in the daily life series by Cynthia Resor, is an ideal book for history enthusiasts, especially social studies teachers, education or humanities professors, museum educators, and anyone wanting to know about the lives of average people in the past.
Each chapter includes excerpts from key historical/primary source texts, historical images, essential or compelling questions to focus inquiry, and suggestions for learning activities. Critical analysis and media literacy skills are addressed through the suggested primary source excerpts and activities.
This unique approach to teaching history and social studies in the elementary, middle, or secondary classroom supports thematic instruction. Thematic teaching or thematic instruction highlights a theme through a thematic unit, or a course, or a series of courses within the social studies, or across disciplinary lines to make connections to other classes. Thematic teaching of social history themes connects the past to the daily lives of students, creating more interest in the past and encouraging students to more closely analyze their own lives and culture.
Media literacy, the ability to analyze the content and understand the purpose of media, is addressed throughout. Each themed chapter also includes suggestions for extending each theme to current events, the local community through place-based education.
- Table of Contents
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