Abstract

During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries rural Appalachian life was fundamentally challenged by the intrusion of industrial capitalism. While historians have illustrated the complexities of these developments in the areas of labor and economic history, little has been done to document the importance of gender in the reconstruction of Appalachian customs and traditions. By focusing on the role of women volunteers and settlement workers in the promotion of scientific medicine, this article argues for a recognition of women as active agents who labored to impart the expectations and presumptions of an increasingly professionalized and bureaucratized medical system to rural people. Driven by maternalist concerns and professional and class ambitions, women activists were key players in encouraging rural Appalachian residents to redefine their fundamental understandings of health and of their relationship to their healers.

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