A Southern Practice: The Diary and Autobiography of Charles A. Hentz, M.D.As a physician practicing in the rural South in the years leading up to and through the Civil War, Charles Arnould Hentz (1827-1894) lived in the midst of enormous changes in southern society and medicine. A Southern Practice includes the diary that Hentz kept for more than twenty years, beginning with the river journey his family took from Ohio to Alabama when Charles was eighteen. This vividly depicted trip--people, places, and sensory details--sets the stage for Hentz's record of his life through middle age: his apprenticeship and decision to pursue a medical career while a youth in Alabama; maturing as both a man and a doctor while at school in Kentucky; and establishing a general practice--and a large family--in the rough society of the Florida Panhandle. This edition also includes Hentz's autobiography, written at the end of his life, in which he reviews his past as doctor, southerner, and family man. Taken together, Hentz's diary and autobiography dramatize with unusual clarity and realism the demanding work of a physician in an age before medicine could reliably cure patients. The rural doctor's work plunged him into the center of his community's life. He attended patients enslaved and free; worked one day with the challenges of childbirth, another with desperately sick children; treated the victims of stabbings and shootings; and faced the looming threat of epidemic fever. By telling what he liked to call his "professional stories," Hentz also gives a relatively rare picture of the feelings and experiences of a middle-class southern white man. His work, religious faith, and social relations with neighbors, slaves, and strangers are described. In their frankness, sharp observation, and good humor, Hentz's writings illuminate nineteenth-century medicine in its full social setting, thus revealing a fresh portrait of the Old South. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 82
... poor student and that the Coe brothers drank too much . But their flaws did not take away from their loy- alty or imagination as friends . They talked about politics and crops and about revealed religion ; they shared beds , took cold ...
... poor col- lector " throughout his career , charged " light " fees ( two dollars on average for a routine call ) , and too often took promises and barter instead of cash . 30 Medical work was outdoor work . Hentz took pleasure in the ...
... poor swimmer , or had some damning quirk ( like the horse that unaccountably reared up every time they came to a certain place on a certain road ) , or became afflicted with horrible , fatal ailments like " Big Head . " But Hentz knew ...
... poor whites and implies that " low " character is responsible for their poverty . But such generalization is rare in Hentz's writing , significantly so . For the most part , he saw his patients as individuals needing help , people whose ...
... poor fellows - how many of them may never return . " Charles Hentz's sense of himself in both diary and autobiography longing first of all to a community , to a familiar , bounded reality that held his attention and inspired his words ...
Contents
1845 | 41 |
1846 | 77 |
1847 | 149 |
1848 | 177 |
1849 | 222 |
1850 | 267 |
1851 | 270 |
1852 | 272 |
1853 | 293 |
1854 | 302 |
1857 | 303 |
186O | 320 |
1861 | 353 |
1865 | 369 |
1869 | 388 |