Download or read book The Province of Affliction written by Ben Mutschler and published by American Beginnings. This book was released on 2020 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As the first Europeans settled in America, they found themselves often sick, weak, and likely to die. Here, Ben Mutschler explores how illness shaped society and government in New England from roughly 1690 through 1820. He focuses on the building blocks of society and government-family, household, town, colony-and their multifaceted engagements with the problems that diseases caused. Illness both defined and strained early American institutions, bringing people together in the face of calamity yet also driving them apart when the costs of persevering became too high or were too unequally shared"--