Edgar Holden, M.D. of Newark, New Jersey: Provincial Physician on a National Stage

Edgar Holden, M.D., of Newark: Provincial Physician on a National Stage is a studyof medicine and health in Essex County, New Jersey, and its largest city, Newark, in thedecades following the Civil War. Th e book is structured around the multifaceted career ofEdgar Holden, a Newark physician who transcended the provinciality that characterizedEssex Countys medical community and institutions. Th e author demonstrates howinstitution building and new paradigms of medical authority funneled from burgeoningurban medical centers into the provincial and sluggish medical landscape of northernNew Jersey. Th e lack of a medical school within the state stymied the intellectualand professional ferment that the best nineteenth-century American medical schoolsattracted and fostered. New York City, with its medical institutions and elite practitionerscast a giant shadow over northern New Jersey, which consequently has been somewhatneglected by historians of medicine. An exploration of this lively community of welltrainedpractitioners, fl edgling institutions, and ailing citizens sheds light on similarmedical communities that found themselves importingbut rarely exportingmedicalknowledge and expertise.