The Changing Humors of Portsmouth The Medical Biography of an American Town, 1623-1983

The story of medicine in Portsmouth, N.H., since its days as a British colonial village, mirrors the tale played out in many other American communities. It has been influenced not only by continually evolving changes in medical practices and techniques, but even more by the same social and economic forces that have shaped contemporary thinking about all aspects of health care in this country-especially how to pay for it. Portsmouth's physicians achieved an enviable collective reputation in the years following the revolution—only to lose it when the state's major medical institutions moved inland. The pivotal period for the town's medical development was the nineteenth century, as both imported and home-grown American healing systems began to compete successfully with traditional practices, as the town fathers became better able to ward off epidemics, and as scientific discoveries began to improve the chances that the average patient might actually benefit from professional treatment,