Peter McCandless received his Ph.D. in Modern British and African History from the University of Wisconsin in 1974 and joined the history faculty of the College of Charleston that year. He received the college's Distinguished Teaching Award in 1985 and was named a Governor's Distinguished Professor in 1998. He is the author of Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial to the Progressive Eras (1996) and numerous journal articles.
Part I. Talk about Suffering: 1. Rhetoric and reality
2. From paradise to hospital
3. 'A scene of diseases'
4. Wooden horse
5. Revolutionary fever
6. Stranger's disease
7. 'A merciful provision of the creator'
Part II. Combating Pestilence: 8. 'I wish that I had studied physick'
9. 'I know nothing of this disease'
10. Providence, prudence, and patience
11. Buying the smallpox
12. Commerce, contagion, and cleanliness
13. A migratory species
14. Melancholy.
