"Elliott Bowen elegantly and concisely uses the history of Hot Springs, Arkansas, to reveal tensions over federal institutions and authority, the continued role of patient histories even in an era of laboratory testing, and the sharp racism that shaped white practitioners' responses to their patients and to African American doctors. This readable and well-organized book will be of great use to historians of medicine, environmental historians, and all those interested in how place and race have shaped the experience of sickness in America."