The Health Seekers of Southern California, 1870-1900

Download or read book The Health Seekers of Southern California, 1870-1900 written by John E. Baur and published by . This book was released on 2010-01-04 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nineteenth-century notion that Southern California's sunny climate could cure tuberculosis, asthma, rheumatism, and a host of other diseases triggered a rush of health seekers to the region. By the end of the century, these settlers from the East had inflated land values, caused building booms, inaugurated new types of businesses, and founded such towns as Pasadena, Riverside, and Palm Springs. Baur investigates this migration's effect on the settlement and development of Southern California, focusing on boosterism, resort advertising, medicine and pseudomedicine, and sanitariums. When his study of the region's health-resort industry was originally published in 1959, he was hailed as the Herodotus of the health movement of Southern California.