Join local author and professor Meghan Crnic as she discusses her new book, The Beach Cure, and the history of “marine medication” on the East Coast, with Dr. Mara Gordon.
Meghan Crnic is associate director of the Edward D. Viner Center for Humanism at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University and assistant professor of family medicine at Cooper University Health Care.
Dr. Mara Gordon is a writer and family physician at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. She has written about the culture of medicine for publications like National Public Radio, the New York Times, and the Atlantic. She also writes the Substack newsletter "Your Doctor Friend." She is at work on a book about body justice for Putnam, coming 2027.
For centuries, the ocean was seen as a place of danger and work, but by the late nineteenth century, northeastern shores of the United States became therapeutic destinations for the sick and weary. Doctors in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and other cities began prescribing time at the beach as a remedy for ailments such as tuberculosis, rickets, and exhaustion. In the decades that followed, seaside towns became health havens complete with hospitals that served urban families and children. Meghan Crnic’s The Beach Cure explores how physicians, tourists, and families transformed the coastline into a medical and cultural landscape. Crnic traces how beliefs in “marine medication”—the healing power of the sun, sea air, and saltwater—shaped the development of northeastern coastal tourist destinations and health institutions in Atlantic City, Coney Island, and beyond. Despite advances in germ theory and the rise of laboratory science, the conviction that nature can restore health and well-being persisted and continues to resonate with beachgoers today. This book uncovers the profound ways in which Americans tied health to place, showing how the underlying belief in nature’s therapeutic powers brought people to the seashore as a precursor to the beach becoming a destination for leisure and recreation. The Beach Cure offers fresh insight into the history of environmental health, urging readers to reflect on how landscapes shape well-being.
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