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Conclusion In the late nineteenth century and over the course of the twentieth, men, women, and children in the anthracite coal region sought medical care in spaces that were closely aligned to gender, ethnicity, religion, and age. As certain spaces became less significant in American society, as gender roles changed, as ethnic affiliation gave way to an acceptance of a regional identity and an American identity, and as people aged and generational interests shifted, medical caregiving altered. Transformations in American medicine in the twentieth century likewise influenced space, gender, ethnicity, religion , and age. The provision of medical care in Pennsylvania coal country was closely aligned to the spaces in which it occurred. Over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, domestic space held a special resonance for women and children, and when women and children were ill, doctoring took place in their homes. The sick were cared for in their own beds, and medicines were made in kitchens from plants grown in backyard gardens or from herbs collected in nearby woods. A short walk from one’s home to the corner market promised relief—patent medicines, foodstuffs, and the sage advice of friends and neighbors offered a respite from medical and psychological turmoil. The practitioners who offered this domestic care functioned in spaces that were close to home. Herbalists, midwives, passers, and powwowers stayed within neighborhood confines. Such women as Maria Bridi, Blanche Paul, Stada Gwiazdowska, and Helen Julio offered medical services to their neighbors. They entered the sickrooms of their relatives and friends and offered advice at corner stores. Passers and powwowers rendered care remotely by telephone or through thinking about the ailing person. Gloria Pupo assisted people suffering from the evil eye by simply phoning them. 148 Y medical caregiving and identity Company doctors as well as private physicians also visited the sick and dying in their own homes. Dr. Robert Allen showed up at the bedsides of children enduring a variety of childhood illnesses. The spaces from which men and boys operated differed markedly from the locations in which women and children worked, played, and socialized. The mines, the taverns, and the company stores were masculine spaces and they were areas where medical care took place. As the site of traumatic medical emergencies as well as minor cuts and bruises, the mines logically functioned as places where medical care was made available. Specially trained miners treated their fellow workers in designated first aid rooms deep below ground. On-the-spot care was offered—plugs of tobacco jammed into cuts stemmed bleeding. Alcohol from lunch pails and dinner cans provided sustenance and psychological relief. Like the mines, taverns represented masculine and medical spaces. Beer, whiskey, and bitters eased the dust-clogged throats of miners. These liquids allowed the stress of mine work to slowly dissipate with each sip, gulp, or guzzle. Finally, company stores provided alcohol, tobacco, and patent medicines, and the porches that enclosed them offered places to socialize and let go of physical and emotional stress. In addition, more formal masculine spaces existed in the medical world of men and boys in the anthracite coal region. Into the twentieth century, miners’ hospitals were just that—hospitals for miners. Men and boys went there to receive surgical help after suffering traumatic injuries at work. Women and children had to seek medical care elsewhere. Voluntary associations largely dedicated the medical benefits they offered to the men who made up the membership. Ethnic organizations, religious societies, and trade unions promised men sickness and death benefits in exchange for fees. Company doctors devoted their medical expertise to the men and boys who worked in the mines. As the roles of men and women changed in the twentieth century, largely with transformations in the industrial economy, the medical care that men and women sought was different from the domestic care and self-help on which they had depended in the past. Consumerism, suburbanization, and deindustrialization transformed gender and ethnicity and ultimately altered medicine. By the mid-twentieth century, large numbers of coal region women supported themselves and often their entire families through their work in local textile mills and at other paid positions. The closing of the mines had thrown their men out of work, and as they had done in the past, women shouldered the economic and social burdens that came in the wake of industrial change. With money in their pocketbooks, working mothers turned to family physicians when their sons and daughters were ill. As more [3...

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