Precarious Prescriptions: Contested Histories of Race and Health in North America

This work explores the complex relations between the institutions and ideologies of health and people of color in America. It brings together essays that place race, citizenship, and gender at the center of questions about health and disease. Exploring the interplay between disease as a biological phenomenon, illness as a subjective experience, and race as an ideological construct, this volume weaves together a complicated history to show the role that health and medicine have played throughout the past in defining the ideal citizen. By creating an intricate portrait of the close associations of race, medicine, and public health, the book helps us better understand the long and fraught history of health care in America. -- From publisher's website.