Medical Encounters by Kelly Wisecup - 9781625340573

Medical EncountersKnowledge and Identity in Early American Literatures\nAuthor(s): Kelly Wisecup\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University of Massachusetts Press, United States\nImprint: University of Massachusetts Press\nISBN-13: 9781625340573, 978-1625340573\nSynopsis\nThe conquest and colonisation of the Americas resulted in all kinds of exchanges, including the transmission of diseases and the sharing of medicines to treat them. In this book, Kelly Wisecup examines how European settlers, Native Americans, and New World Africans communicated medical knowledge in early America, and how the colonists represented what they learned in their literatures.\n\nAgainst the prevailing view that colonial texts provide insight only into their writers perspectives, Wisecup demonstrates that Europeans, Natives, and Africans held certain medical ideas in common, including a conception of disease as both a spiritual and a physical entity, and a belief in the power of special rituals or prayers to.