Sara Read, Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Sparey, V. Tags: Focus on Early Modern Medicine Source Type: research
Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Shaw, J. E. Tags: Focus on Early Modern Medicine Source Type: research
Kristy Wilson Bowers, Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Lopez-Terrada, M. Tags: Focus on Early Modern Medicine Source Type: research
Adrian Wilson, Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Astbury, L. Tags: Focus on Early Modern Medicine Source Type: research
Robert Weston, Medical Consulting by Letter in France, 1665-1789
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Brockliss, L. Tags: Focus on Early Modern Medicine Source Type: research
The Recent Wave of 'Spanish' Flu Historiography
This article surveys the surge of writing over the last 15 years by social and medical scientists on the topic of the devastating ‘Spanish’ influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, which it labels a ‘second wave’ of this pandemic's historiography. It views this work in three ways: by looking, first, at what wider, contextual factors triggered this explosion of writing; secondly, at the authors of these works and their specific motivations for taking up the subject; and thirdly, at how their labours have altered, refined or re-shaped our understanding of this great catastrophe's origin, its direct and ...
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Phillips, H. Tags: Second Opinion Source Type: research
Obesity and the Emergence of Mutual Aid Groups for Weight Loss in the Post-War United States
By the 1950s, American medical authorities declared obesity to be the nation's leading health care problem prompting a society, already familiar with the rigours of weight control, to extend the bounds of their diet consciousness. This manifested in a ‘self-help movement for fatties’ which witnessed the proliferation of weight loss groups with names such as, Take Off Pounds Sensibly and Fatties Anonymous, and introduced an eclectic blend of mutual aid inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous and psychoanalytic psychiatry. This paper explores the emergence of these mutual aid groups in response to the growing concern ab...
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Parr, J. M. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Mental Hygiene and Child Guidance in Post-war Greece: The Case of the Centre for Mental Health and Research, 1956-1970
This paper focuses on the Centre for Mental Health and Research, an organisation launched in Athens in 1956 and that is still operational today. Its story up to 1970 is analysed as a case study of the development of mental hygiene and child guidance in Greece, where international movements became relevant within the context of the social transformations of the post-war period. Seizing the opportunities created by the ‘modernisation’ of Greece and the anxiety around it, the Centre managed to secure funding and develop a number of services and activities. It is concluded that, although it was not successful in it...
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Kritsotaki, D. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Drugs, Race and Tuberculosis Control in Baltimore, 1950-1978
Two narratives dominate histories of post-WWII tuberculosis control. One emphasizes the successes of antibiotic therapy in the 1950s and 1960s, the subsequent decline in resources for tuberculosis management, and the resurgence of tuberculosis in the 1990s. The second centres on the development of the global DOTS strategy and privileges those aspects of earlier control efforts that appear to be precursors to DOTS. Both narratives underemphasize diverse efforts by public health authorities across the world to manage the possibilities and challenges of antibiotic therapy. These efforts were shaped by local social and politic...
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Cummiskey, J. R. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
'A Plentiful Crop of Cripples Made by All This Progress': Disability, Artificial Limbs and Working-Class Mutualism in the South Wales Coalfield, 1890-19481
This article, focusing on industrial south Wales, examines the efforts of working-class organisations to provide artificial limbs and a range of other surgical appliances to workers and their family members in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It finds that a distinctive, labourist conception of disability existed which envisaged disabled workers as an important priority and one to which significant time, effort and resources were devoted. (Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Curtis, B., Thompson, S. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
'Mortal in this season': Union Surgeons and the Narrative of Medical Modernisation in the American Civil War
The impact of the American Civil War on medical modernisation is increasingly being recognised, yet the ways in which the Civil War challenged and changed doctors' understanding of their professional role during the war remains underappreciated. By juxtaposing Union doctors' personal and professional responses to the Civil War with the wider public reaction to Union medical care, this paper explores the tensions that arose between the public and the professional perceptions of medicine as these developed on the battlefields of the nation's internecine conflict. It argues that the intersection between the positive and negat...
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Grant, S.- M. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Erudite and Honoured Artisans? Performers of Body Care and Surgery in Early Modern German Towns
This article investigates the interrelation between processes of professional transformation in an artisanal trade and the identity-building of barbers and surgeons in German-speaking parts of Europe. From the late fifteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century this interrelation included acting in various juridical and political functions, engaging in medical book-writing and, therefore, in knowledge transfer. Such findings are based on a combined analysis of administrative and corporative manuscript sources, and of printed books. Against this background the intention in pictorial representations and the meaning in bio...
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Kinzelbach, A. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Learning from the Common Folks. Academic Physicians and Medical Lay Culture in the Sixteenth Century
Drawing on some 4000 pages of personal notes on medical practice written by the little known Bohemian physician Georg Handsch, this paper studies the oral transmission of medical knowledge from laypersons to academically trained physicians in the sixteenth century. In marked contrast to learned physicians' attacks against ‘empirics’ and the ‘ignorance’ of the ‘vulgus’, numerous entries in Handsch's notebooks reveal that he and his teachers and colleagues were prepared to learn from the common folks, from patients and friends, from family members and even from ‘wise women’ and...
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Stolberg, M. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Wombs, Worms and Wolves: Constructing Cancer in Early Modern England
This essay examines medical and popular attitudes to cancer in the early modern period, c.1580–1720. Cancer, it is argued, was understood as a cruel and usually incurable disease, diagnosable by a well-defined set of symptoms understood to correspond to its etymological root, karkinos (the crab). It was primarily understood as produced by an imbalance of the humours, with women being particularly vulnerable. However, such explanations proved inadequate to make sense of the condition's malignancy, and medical writers frequently constructed cancer as quasi-sentient, zoomorphising the disease as an eating worm or wolf. ...
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Skuse, A. Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research
Editorial
(Source: Social History of Medicine)
Source: Social History of Medicine - October 28, 2014 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Chakrabarti, P., Mooney, G., Skinner, P. Tags: Editorial Source Type: research
