“In the early days of the republic,” Bill J. Gurley writes in the foreword to A Family Practice, “health care was certainly not viewed as a right but rather as a service—a much-needed service that not all could access easily. Physicians and their services were often a rare commodity, particularly on the frontier. In those days, a doctor’s availability was almost as doubtful as his quality. An apprenticeship of a few months’ duration or attendance at a handful of ‘medical lectures’ was often enough to earn students the title of doctor. A few extra lectures or an additional month of observation might qualify one as a surgeon—a far cry from the extensive preparatory measures required today.”

Progress in medicine proceeded quite slowly. Certain medical practices, now considered the “barbarous acts of charlatanism,” like bloodletting, cupping, and the administration of powerful purgatives were state-of-the-art health care in the first half of the nineteenth century. Yet there was progress, including the discovery of ether anesthesia, vaccines, antibiotics, and cancer chemotherapy, as well as significant policy reforms. “The history of medicine in the United States has been a fascinating roller-coaster ride of remarkable discoveries,” Gurley writes. “As detailed in the pages of this unique narrative, patriarchs of the Russell family constituted a rare unbroken lineage of American physicians who were riders on this amazing roller coaster. Their stories provide a fascinating insight into the realities of American medical practice, most notably in the rural South from 1821–1989.”

A Family Practice is the sweeping saga of four generations of doctors, Russell men seeking innovative ways to sustain themselves as medical practitioners in the American South from the early nineteenth to the latter half of the twentieth century. The thread that binds the stories in this saga is one of blood, of medical vocations passed from fathers to sons and nephews. As the authors write in the introduction, “this study of four generations of Russell doctors is an historical study with a biographical thread running through it. It emphasizes historical points and employs historiographical techniques as it develops its multi-generational historical biographical study. This study has to employ a wide-ranging optic because it is examining lives whose birth years run from 1799 to 1915, of men who lived in places as diverse as the Carolinas, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Pennsylvania, and New York.”

The authors of A Family Practice take a wide-ranging look at the meaning of intergenerational vocations and the role of family, the economy, and social issues on the evolution of medical education and practice in the United States. The book is now available at 25% off when you order at uapress.com