The book that made apple cider vinegar and honey a foundation tip of everyday health.

First published in 1958, Folk Medicine became an unexpected bestseller by advocating traditional New England remedies. Jarvis positions himself as a country doctor attentive to practice abstraction, blending anecdote, observation, and selective scientific reference.

The book sits in a particular mid-century American moment of pre-counterculture but suspicious of industrial medicine, gesturing toward what would later become the natural health movement. It is as much cultural artefact as medical manual, revealing how “folk” knowledge was repackaged for a postwar readership seeking autonomy over their bodies.