Marketplace of the Marvelous

Chiropractic care, herbal remedies, and the mantra “eight glasses of water a day” are commonplace today, but these and many other modern-day staples of healthy living were originally devised by the outcasts of nineteenth-century medicine, as Erika Janik reveals in Marketplace of the Marvelous: The Strange Origins of Modern Medicine. During a time when formal medicine was both elitist and often physically torturous, a newly independent America was hungry for medical innovation, and as Janik shows, advancements began emerging from the unlikeliest corners of society.  

Illustrating how culture-shifting advancement often comes from the margins, Janik’s narrative probes this chapter of American history to unearth a series of bizarre medical practices, and their colorful founders and practitioners. Janik demonstrates the direct influences that unorthodox nineteenth-century methods have had on modern-day medical theory and practice. As the debate over alternative medicine’s authority continues, Marketplace of the Marvelous illustrates that today’s irregular treatments may be tomorrow’s mainstream.  

This event is being held in partnership with the Wisconsin Science Festival.