| The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern American Subjects: Quacks and quackery -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Quacks and quackery -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Medical instruments and apparatus -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Medical instruments and apparatus -- United St; Between the years 1850 and 1950, Americans became the leading energy consumers on the planet, expending tremendous physical resources on energy exploration, mental resources on energy exploitation, and monetary resources on energy acquisition. A unique combination of pseudoscientific theories of health and the public's rudimentary understanding of energy created an age in which sources of industrial power seemed capable of curing the physical limitations and ill health that plagued Victorian bodies. Licensed and "quack" physicians alike promoted machines, electricity, and radium as invigorating cures, veritable "fountains of youth" that would infuse the body with energy and push out disease and death. Pena Carolyn Thomas de la : Carolyn Thomas de la Peña is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of California at Davis. |