C. Pierce Salguero, Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Gyatso, J. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Patricia A. Baker, Han Nijdam and Karine van 't Land (eds), Medicine and Space: Body, Surroundings and Borders in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Horden, P. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Finding Historical Records at the National Institutes of Health
This article provides information on where records might be found, the ways in which such records might be obtained, and how the NIH manages the vast quantity of records it produces. (Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Cantor, D. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Sources and Resources Into the Dark Domain: The UK Web Archive as a Source for the Contemporary History of Public Health
This article reports the results of an invited pilot project that explores methodological issues surrounding use of this archive. It asks how the relationship between UK public health and local government was represented on the web, drawing on the ‘declinist’ historiography to frame its questions. It points up some difficulties in developing an aggregate picture of web content due to duplication of sites. It also highlights their potential for thematic and discourse analysis, using both text and image, illustrated through an argument about the contradictory rationale for public health policy under New Labour. (...
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Gorsky, M. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
The Quiet Time? Pay-beds and Private Practice in the National Health Service: 1948-1970
This article looks at the period characterised as the ‘Quiet Time’ when a political consensus seemingly emerged to retain some form of private provision within the service. This piece argues that rather than ‘a quiet time’ it was a period of intense activity and controversy as to the place and contribution of pay-beds when there were multiple attempts to rationalise and to make them cost effective. This article is an original study of a much-neglected subject in public policy history. (Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Williamson, C. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Prostitutes, Penicillin and Prophylaxis: Fighting Venereal Disease in the Commonwealth Division during the Korean War, 1950-1953
This article represents the first analysis of the Commonwealth experience of VD. It examines how widespread the problem became, as well as the efforts to which officials went to reduce levels of infection. It also explores the reasons why venereal disease was so prevalent at this time and place, and why the Commonwealth Division, and the Canadians in particular, were so affected by it. (Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Meghan Fitzpatrick, K. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
The Poison of Touch: Tracing Mercurial Treatments of Venereal Diseases in Tibet
This article explores the following questions: How were venereal diseases classified in Tibetan medical texts? Were mercurials mentioned to treat them? Were they intended to cause salivation? In answering these questions, the heterogeneity and exchange of medical practices in Tibet from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century, involving the use of mercury for venereal treatments, becomes apparent. (Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Gerke, B. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Inhaling Democracy: Cigarette Advertising and Health Education in Post-war West Germany, 1950s-1975
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the West German government was faced with the challenge of addressing a damaging health behaviour, smoking, in the context of an emerging late modern democracy, when the precedent for addressing that behaviour was set in the Nazi past. This paper details the two-pronged approach which the government took: seeking restrictions on cigarette advertising, whilst educating young people to adopt positive health behaviours in the face of pressure to smoke. This approach can be understood in the social and economic context of the time: an economic commitment to the social market economy worked ag...
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Elliot, R. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Ignored Disease or Diagnostic Dustbin? Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in the British Context
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) was defined in 1969 and incorporated into the International Classification of Diseases a decade later. To advocates of SIDS as a diagnosis, medical interest in sudden infant death was long overdue. However, the definition of SIDS lacked positive diagnostic criteria, provoking some to view it as a ‘diagnostic dustbin’ for the disposal of problematic cases where cause of death was unclear. This paper examines the development of medical interest in sudden infant death in Britain during the middle decades of the twentieth century. It highlights the importance of recognising the h...
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Ferguson, A. H. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
'Nature Concocts & Expels': The Agents and Processes of Recovery from Disease in Early Modern England
This article uncovers the meaning and significance of this forgotten axiom by investigating perceptions of the agents and physiological processes of recovery from illness in England, c.1580–1720. Drawing on sources such as medical texts and diaries, it shows that doctors and laypeople attributed recovery to three agents—God, Nature and the practitioner. While scholars are familiar with the roles of providence and medicine, the vital agency of Nature has been overlooked. In theory, the agents operated in a hierarchy: Nature was ‘God's instrument’, and the physician, ‘Nature's servant’; bu...
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Newton, H. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
'I would not feel the pain if I were with you': Catalina Micaela and the Cycle of Pregnancy at the Court of Turin, 1585-1597
Using the correspondence of Catalina Micaela (1567–97), Duchess of Savoy, with her husband, Carlo Emanuele I as evidence, this article examines an early modern aristocratic woman's experience of and attitudes about pregnancy, childbirth, lactation and menstruation. Her letters reveal that some early modern women closely monitored their bodies and from their observations were able to detect pregnancy early—earlier than many scholars have thought—and to calculate their delivery dates with some precision. Her example also shows that their husbands and fathers could be closely involved in the world of pregnan...
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Sanchez, M. S. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Medical Condition, Demon or Undead Corpse? Sleep Paralysis and the Nightmare in Medieval Europe
The aim of this article is to analyse the popular perception of the nightmare in medieval Europe. The first section will explore the ways in which the base experience of the nightmare (as documented in neuropsychological research) was interpreted according to Church doctrine, classical dream theories and Galenic medicine. Then, with reference to the remedies used to protect the body against the mara found in Anglo-Saxon medical manuals and the tales of demonic/ghostly assault from twelfth-century Anglo-Norman literature, it will be seen how the authoritative interpretations of the nocturnal assault were replicated, rejecte...
Source: Social History of Medicine - July 24, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Gordon, S. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Mark Jackson, The History of Medicine: A Beginner's Guide
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - April 27, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Waddington, K. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
John S. Haller Jr., Shadow Medicine: The Placebo in Conventional and Alternative Therapies
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - April 27, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Adams, J. M. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Francesca Scott, Kate Scarth and Ji Won Chung (eds), Picturing Women's Health (Warwick Series in the Humanities)
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - April 27, 2015 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Farkas, C.-A. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
