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This remarkable book connects medical history and women's history in path breaking ways. All students of American women's health history will benefit from its comprehensive and careful analysis.
Kathryn Kish Sklar, Author of Women and Power in American History Distinguished Professor of History, State University of New York, Binghamton

Martha Libster has written a wonderfully well-researched book that deftly examines the "domestic sphere" of women healers in a manner unique from the "public sphere" dominated by male physicians and most frequently depicted by historians. By examining a diverse set of women who worked under the rubric of Botanic, Thomsonian, Eclectic, Physio-medical, Shaker, and Sisters of Charity, the author has ably documented both the transmission and feminization of health and healing in nineteenth century society through women's contributions to the botanical medical movement. The book brings a new perspective to the neglected sphere of sickroom management in America. Libster's scholarship is excellent and her argument compelling.
John S. Haller Ph.D., Author of The People’s Doctors: Samuel Thomson and the American Botanical Movement. 1790-1860 Professor of History, Southern Illinois University

This very readable book provides an innovative historical perspective on the complexity inherent in the internal and external expectations assigned or assumed by community women and their creative use of the borderland between their private and public lives. The work of Shaker, Latter-Day Saints nurses, and the American Sisters of Charity as influenced by their specific cultural environments as well as the general cultural impositions of 19th century American society is explored. Gender differences such as, societal restraints on female ambition and education clearly played a part in the ultimate contributions of each of these groups. Those contributions tempered by society's slowly changing views of woman's proper place resulted in the degree of cultural integration of their remedies. The notion of cultural integration and the diplomacy required to achieve it is relevant today as nurses face the mounting health care crisis with a depleted workforce. Historically nurses have encouraged enlightened self-care in their education of and advocacy for patients and their families. As described here the healing networks established by these mid nineteenth century nurses provided for the tradition of open exploration of multiple forms of healing. Today in the ongoing age of consumerism, nurses continue to broker the attainment of the best level of health and illness care for their patients and their families. The development and determination of those nurses who first approached the "borderland" is an interesting and inspiring story worth telling. The author offers a refreshing account of overlooked contributions to the historiography of health care and as such offers a refreshing perspective for students and scholars alike.
Olga Maranjian Church, PhD, RN,FAAN
Founding Member of the American Association for the History of Nursing