In this second edition, Judith Walzer Leavitt has collected 35 articles representing important scholarship in this once-neglected field. Organized chronologically and then by topic, this volume covers studies of women and health in the colonial and revolutionary periods and the 19th century through the Civil War. The remainder of the book concentrates on the late 19th and 20th centuries and addresses such controversial issues as body image and physical fitness, sexuality, fertility, abortion and birth control, childbirth and motherhood, mental illness, women's health care providers (midwives, nurses, physicians) and health reform and public health.