Secondly, the rapid advance of urbanization throughout the country ended some but not all of the era of isolation experienced in earlier times by many of the settlers.

Thirdly, the striking improvements in medical science at the end of the 19th century meant that potential patients no longer had to fear the heroic medical treatments of harsh drugs and excessive bleeding, thus the parts of the public who had formerly avoided consulting physicians fearing their therapeutics now were more willing to seek the physicians’ advice.

Finally, the improvements in medical education after 1910 produced an increasing number of well trained physicians to treat the general public. After stating these reasons for the decline in self?help folk medicine in the early part of the 20th century, let me leave this topic with an open ended question?why are the older type of self-help medical cure texts making such a popular comeback today, as witnessed by their presence in popular bookstores and on the world wide web?