James Harvey Young (September 8, 1915 – July 29, 2006) was
social historian most well known as an expert on the history of medical frauds and
quackery
Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud, is the promotion of fraudulent or ignorant medical practices. A quack is a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, ...
.
Young was born in
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
. He received his Ph.D. in history from the
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...
. From 1941 he worked as a Professor of history at
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...
.
His ''The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America'' (1967) was a scholarly volume that documented many of the medical frauds in the United States.
[Anderson, Oscar E. (1968). ''The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America by James Harvey Young''. '']The American Historical Review
''The American Historical Review'' is a quarterly academic history journal and the official publication of the American Historical Association. It targets readers interested in all periods and facets of history and has often been described as the ...
''. Vol. 73, No. 5, p. 1665.
Publications
* ''
The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America before Federal Regulation'' (1961)
''The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America''(1967)
* ''American Self-Dosage Medicines: An Historical Perspective'' (1974)
* ''The Early Years of Federal Food and Drug Control'' (1982)
* ''Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906'' (1989)
* ''American Health Quackery: Collected Essays of James Harvey Young'' (1992)
References
External links
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library Emory University
James Harvey Young Papers, 1893–2004.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, James Harvey
1915 births
2006 deaths
Historians from New York (state)
American skeptics
Critics of alternative medicine
People from Brooklyn
Social historians
Emory University faculty