Social History of Medicine - recent issues

Editorial Note

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:40 PDT

History, Policy and the Social History of Medicine

Szreter, S. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:40 PDT

The History and Policy network at www.historyandpolicy.org is an initiative designed to make relevant aspects of historians' research accessible to those involved in deliberating over public policy. Originally founded as a website in 2002, it is now a growing network of professional historians who are assisted by a full-time external relations office. There are now over 80 policy papers on the website, from ancient to modern history, many of them derived from research in the social history of medicine. From the personal perspective of one of the network's founders, the article briefly outlines the nature and purpose of History and Policy and encourages historians of medicine to consider the opportunity of presenting more of their work before a wider public audience.

Diabetes in the Tropics: Race, Place and Class in India, 1880-1965

Arnold, D. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:40 PDT

A disease predominantly of India's urban middle class and increasingly common in modern India, diabetes attracted little state medical attention either before or in the decades immediately following Indian independence in 1947. It did, however, give rise to an extensive medical literature, generated by both Indian and British doctors, pathologists and medical researchers, who understood the disease not just in terms of class susceptibility and the consequences of colonial modernity, but also in relation to racial and environmental characteristics. The rise of ‘tropical diabetes’ in India thus reflected and exemplified a wider trend towards the racialisation and tropicalisation of Indian medical thought. Despite the discovery of insulin in the early 1920s, prophylaxis and treatment of the disease in India suggested a continuing belief in a culturally distinctive approach to the disease.

Confronting Rabies and Its Treatments in Colonial Madagascar, 1899-1910

Jennings, E. T. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:40 PDT

Rabies constituted a point of cultural tension and divergence over disease in late nineteenth-century, post-conquest Madagascar. The Pasteur Institute and colonial authorities ascribed an extraordinary importance to rabies, given the means at their disposal, and given the other epidemiological challenges facing them. Local peoples, in turn, met this expertise with some trepidation, and in some cases, outright defiance. This article considers, in turn, colonial health priorities, connections between Malagasy cures and Pasteurian remedies, as well as issues of accommodation, resistance and rumour in a colonial context.

But is it [History of] Medicine? Twenty Years in the History of the Healing Arts of China

Lo, V. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:40 PDT

This article sets out to give an account of changes to the map of the history of Chinese medicine in the last 20 years. Concentrating mainly on English language secondary sources, it charts shifting aspirations for social history of medicine in China, the impact of anthropology and the tensions between local and large-scale histories. On the one hand, there is a focus on cultural difference, and the articulation of unique styles of perception, where practitioner historians are seen to have an advantage. On the other, historians of China are shown to be facing the challenge of writing in a global context. The paper acknowledges the importance of the transmission of knowledge and practice across social, cultural and geographical boundaries as well as through time.

Public Health and Modernisation: The First Campaigns in China, 1915-1916

Bu, L. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:40 PDT

A nationwide movement of modern health campaigns developed in Chinese cities in 1915–16. They emphasised connections between good health, modernisation and the all-round progress of the Chinese people. The campaigns used lectures, exhibits, demonstrations and slide and film shows. This article focuses on the campaigns in three cities. It demonstrates how they championed the ideas of hygiene and sanitation and stimulated officialdom into creating new public health institutions. The campaigns became an essential element in the promotion of the idea of a modern state during a period in which China was characterised by a high degree of political instability.

Roy Porter Student Prize Essay * Boils, Pushes and Wheals: Reading Bumps on the Body in Early Modern England

Weisser, O. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:40 PDT

Bodily bumps in early modern England were not simply collections of humors that needed to be lanced and drained. Diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of skin swellings comprised a deeply rich semiotics that both patients and healers read according to a range of biographical factors, incidents, sensations, observations and experiences. Using diaries and case histories in seventeenth-century surgical texts, this article explores how both patients and healers read and treated bodily bumps. It then looks at patients and healers together during medical encounters in order to show how both parties' interpretations and observations of the body created a collaborative interpretation of health. The article shows that, long before the development of physical diagnosis in the nineteenth century, surgeons were pressing and prodding patients' bodies to discern the nature and severity of external ailments. Thus, in addition to the patient narrative, touching and manipulating the body were often significant aspects of medical diagnosis and practice in the early modern period.

Hospital Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa and Post-Colonial Development Impasse

McPake, B. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:40 PDT

The pattern of hospital development was set in colonised sub-Saharan countries in the early twentieth century on the basis of the demands of the colonial project and the strategies of missions. In the immediate post-independence period, democratic and egalitarian policy in some countries pointed to the expansion of health services to under-served areas. However, the idealism associated with independence waned and more pronounced tensions emerged. Plans for expanded primary health care systems were sacrificed in favour of hospital services for a privileged elite. Over the same period, a group of international agencies have been associated with the promotion of more egalitarian and primary health care-focused strategies. But there has been a failure to engage at the political level and a willingness to accept instead token assent to the strategy. The consequence for hospitals has been an impasse. Hospitals do not meet elite expectations but neither do resources reach the larger population.

'It was a bridge from life to death': Hospitals during the Food Crisis, Greece 1941-1944

Hionidou, V. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:40 PDT

The famine in occupied Greece between 1941 and 1943 was a deadly one with important short- and long-term effects on society at large. This paper focuses on the effect the famine had on the operation of two hospitals, those of Hios and Hermoupolis. The unique availability of patients' registers for both hospitals means that questions relating to the hospital's role and how they were utilised by the population during the famine can be addressed. Thus the paper examines the identity of patients, how long they stayed in the hospital, the outcomes of their stay and the diseases from which they suffered. Comparisons are made with the pre-famine period in an attempt to establish whether any of the parameters changed during the famine.

Notes on Contributors

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:40 PDT

Lovesickness and Gender in Early Modern English Literature

Williams, G. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

With Words and Knives: Learning Medical Dispassion in Early Modern England

Brockliss, L. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Medicine and Religion in Enlightenment Europe

Marshall, P. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

'A Cheap, Safe and Natural Medicine': Religion, Medicine and Culture in John Wesley's Primitive Physic

Shuttleton, D. E. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire

Popper, N. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

The Realities of Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cognition, and Everyday Life

Elmer, P. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition, 1600-1900

Mukharji, P. B. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge and the 'Opening' of Japan

Aldous, C. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico

Morfin, L. M. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Art, Sex and Eugenics: Corpus Delecti

Biernoff, S. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Breeding Contempt: The History of Coerced Sterilizations in the United States

Mezzano, M. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Racial Science and British Society, 1930-62

Hall, L. A. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Gesunder Leben: Die Lebensreformbewegung im 20. Jahrhundert

Hau, M. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Well-being: A Cultural History of Healthy Living

Forth, C. E. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Sexuality at the Fin de Siecle: The Making of a 'Central Problem'

Oosterhuis, H. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

The Sleep of Others and the Transformation of Sleep Research

Thomson, M. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:41 PDT

Making Women's Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology

Lee, B. R. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Unnatural History: Breast Cancer and American Society

Lowy, I. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Biomedical Ambiguity: Race, Asthma, and the Contested Meaning of Genetic Research in the Caribbean

Wald, P. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Curar, Sanar y Educar. Enfermedad y Sociedad en Mexico, Siglos XIX y XX

Eraso, Y. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

La Clinica: A Doctor's Journey Across Borders

Ablard, J. D. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Antimicrobial Drugs: Chronicle of a Twentieth-Century Medical Triumph

Hamilton-Miller, J. M. T. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Attending Madness: At Work in the Australian Colonial Asylum

Takabayashi, A. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD From Clinic to Campus

Mold, A. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine

Snelders, S. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival

Melling, J. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Population and Disease: Transforming English Society, 1550-1850

King, S. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Trauma and Memory: Reading, Healing, and Making Law

Neuner, S. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Films of Fact: A History of Science in Documentary Films and Television

Hayward, R. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Bringing Medicine to Virtual Life

Baur, N. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:42 PDT

Visualizing and Explaining Pregnancy

Zwijnenberg, R. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:43 PDT

Notes on Book Reviewers

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:30:43 PDT

From Poison Peddlers to Civic Worthies: The Reputation of the Apothecaries in Georgian England

Corfield, P. J. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Trust is not automatically granted to providers of professional services. The doctors of Georgian England were, by later standards, deficient in medical knowhow, particularly before the mid-nineteenth-century scientific understanding of antiseptics, and much satirised. Nonetheless, the emergence of a coherent medical profession indicates that the picture was far more intricate and positive than the satirists implied. Patients sought care as well as cure; and medical practitioners had no problems in finding custom. This essay reassesses the apothecaries’ role in the slow transition whereby reputable practitioners differentiated themselves from ‘quacks’. The change was propelled by three linked processes: firstly, the intersection of expanding medical supply with insistent consumer demand, noting that demand plays a key role alongside supply; secondly, the intersection of local power-broking within Britain's growing towns with an ethos of community service, whereby apothecaries joined the ranks of ‘civic worthies’ and trusted care-givers; and, lastly, the intersection of shared medical knowledge among practitioners at all levels with the creation of a distinctive professional identity. As public trust grew, so Parliament was emboldened in 1815 to license the Apothecaries Society as the regulatory body for the medical rank-and-file, so launching the distinctive Anglo-American system of arm's-length state regulation.

'Manchu Anatomy': Anatomical Knowledge and the Jesuits in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century China

Asen, D. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Beginning in the last decade of the seventeenth century, the French Jesuits Joachim Bouvet and Dominique Parrenin instructed the Kangxi Emperor in contemporary anatomical knowledge. Parrenin's instruction resulted in a Manchu anatomical atlas containing Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. This paper uses this case to examine the role of anatomy in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European understandings of China and its medicine. I argue that the authority which Bouvet and Parrenin afforded anatomical knowledge gained from dissection informed their comparisons of Chinese and European medical learning. I also examine ways in which illustrations of this atlas were made to demonstrate the certainty of European anatomy and its applicability to Chinese bodies. Production of the ‘Manchu Anatomy’ was thus an important moment in the process through which anatomy became a category in European understandings of China and its medicine during and after the eighteenth century.

Sex, Masturbation and Foetal Death: Filipino Physicians and Medical Mythology in the Late Nineteenth Century

Reyes, R. A. G. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

As a case study of the Filipino elite's engagement with western medicine, this article looks at the writings of two brothers who studied in Paris in the 1880s, Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera (1857–1925) and Félix Pardo de Tavera (1859–1932). It focuses first on Trinidad's observations on folk beliefs and popular medicine in the Philippines, and secondly on Félix's doctoral dissertation, in which he examined the causes of foetal death during early pregnancy. Both the Pardo de Tavera brothers found the methods of modern scientific medicine to be greatly superior in diagnosing and treating disease than the diverse practices followed in the Philippines. But in embracing western medicine, I shall argue, they and other young Filipino physicians of their generation simultaneously embraced western moral prejudices and proscriptions that had no basis in science.

Paul Ehrlich's Colonial Connections: Scientific Networks and Sleeping Sickness Drug Therapy Research, 1900-1914

Neill, D. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Between 1900 and 1914, a major sleeping sickness epidemic arose in many parts of Africa. Despite the competitive nature of European science in this period, the German immunologist Paul Ehrlich developed a collaborative transnational network of researchers and clinicians who worked together to carry out drug therapy trials on sleeping sickness patients in numerous African colonies. This kind of collaboration was possible when researchers shared complementary goals, and collectively this network played a significant role in shaping part of the European response to controlling an epidemic disease in Africa. Together with demonstrating how and why Ehrlich and his partners cooperated across nations and borders in their search for a drug that would cure the disease, this essay also explores what effect the drug trials had on African patients in Entebbe, British Uganda, and in Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa.

Shell-Shock and Psychological Medicine in First World War Britain

Loughran, T. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Historians have viewed the experience of shell-shock in First World War Britain as a crucial episode in the development of ‘modern’ psychological medicine, arguing doctors initially believed shell-shock was caused by the physical effects of shell explosions, and only gradually realised these were psychological disorders, treatable by psychotherapy. This article argues that conceptual frameworks of pre-war medicine provided models of mind-body relations which allowed doctors to recognise the emotional origins of shell-shock on the outbreak of war. Distinct schools of ‘physical’ and ‘psychological’ thought only emerged in 1916; physical theories persisted beyond 1918; and the war had an uneven effect on engagement with psychodynamic theories. Adoption of psychological vocabulary outstripped understanding, and widespread dissemination also resulted in hostility. Shell-shock marked an important moment in the emergence of the distinct disciplines of psychology and psychiatry in Britain, but this did not involve a radical departure from pre-war concepts of mental health.

Families and Institutions for Shell-Shocked Soldiers in Australia after the First World War

Larsson, M. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Since the 1980s, numerous historical studies have provided a complex picture of the relationship between families and psychiatric institutions. Historians of shell-shock have been slow to respond to this literature. Instead, their primary interest has been in the medical treatment of the condition, as well as state and cultural responses. This article offers a fresh perspective on the treatment of shell-shocked soldiers by examining families' involvement in their institutionalisation in Australia after the First World War. It explores how kin mobilised the repatriation discourse of ‘preference’ to secure treatment for veterans in segregated mental hospitals which separated military cases from ‘confirmed civilian lunatics’. This article argues that by asserting that ex-servicemen were a more deserving class of patient, veterans' kin strategically deployed the stigma of mental illness to ensure better quality care for ex-servicemen, preserve their heroic identity as soldiers, and deflect some of the eugenic shame of ‘madness’.

Strengthening the Will: Public Clinics for the Nervously Ill in Sweden in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Pietikainen, P. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

This article examines the development of state-run clinics for the nervously ill in Sweden in the interwar years. After the establishment of the Royal Board of Pensions in 1914, an institution for the care of the chronically neurotic was high on the agenda of this governmental agency. The Swedish state became actively involved in the fight against nervous illnesses, and the primary goal of these state-financed clinics was to turn neurotic patients into productive citizens. Neurotics were seen as a large group of potential invalids who might become a heavy burden on the national economy. They needed to be provided with effective therapy that would strengthen their will and restore their capacity so that they could be swiftly returned to normal life. It was this principle that characterised the clinical work at these institutions. The further development of the care of neuroses was the subject of a long and arduous debate that took place at the Swedish Society of Medicine in 1937. Neurosis was regarded as a national malady (folksjukdom) mainly because medical professionals—neurologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and internists—formulated it in terms of an extremely contagious diagnosis which, by the 1950s, seemed to affect everyone.

'That Won-Ton Soup Headache': The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, MSG and the Making of American Food, 1968-1980

Mosby, I. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

This paper examines the ‘discovery’ of the Chinese restaurant syndrome in 1968 and subsequent reactions by the medical community, scientists, public health authorities and the general public to dangers posed by the common food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) and by Chinese cooking more generally. It argues that Chinese restaurant syndrome was, at its core, a product of a racialised discourse that framed much of the scientific, medical and popular discussion surrounding the condition. This particular debate brought to the surface a number of widely held assumptions about the strangely ‘exotic’, ‘bizarre’ and ‘excessive’ practices associated with Chinese cooking which, ultimately, meant that few of those studying the Chinese restaurant syndrome would question the ethnic origins of the condition.

Public Health, Environment and Surveying

Mills, D. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

The object of this article is to draw the attention of public health historians to the importance of plans produced by engineers for Victorian sewerage schemes. These plans assist in the understanding of the complex and rapidly changing technical aspects of the subject. The topographical information displayed is valuable in the analysis of the problems facing contemporaries. The article includes simple explanations of engineering and cartographic points, partly through the use of three extracts from the plan prepared by George Giles for the Lincoln proposals of 1849–50. Relevant work on the history of town plans by Harley and Oliver is referred to, including some details from the latter's annotated list of towns surveyed for sanitary purposes by the Ordnance Survey in the early 1850s.

Epidemics and Infections in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Condrau, F., Worboys, M. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Notes on Contributors

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body

Giglioni, G. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Pestilential Complexities: Understanding Medieval Plague

Fabbri, C. N. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America

Taithe, B. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Mapping Out the Venereal Wilderness: Public Health and STD in New Zealand 1920-1980

Brookes, B. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Unimagined Community: Sex, Networks and AIDS in Uganda and South Africa

Whiteside, A. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Cholera and Nation: Doctoring the Social Body in Victorian England

de Almeida, J. R. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Tuberculosis and the Politics of Exclusion: A History of Public Health and Migration to Los Angeles

Bashford, A. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Saving Sickly Children: The Tuberculosis Preventorium in American Life, 1909-1970

Kirby, S. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

La Ciudad Impura: Salud, Tuberculosis y Cultura en Buenos Aires, 1870-1950

Di Liscia, M. S. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped our History

Greenwood, D. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Biomedicine in the Twentieth Century: Practices, Policies and Politics

Nicolson, M. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:46 PDT

Medicine by Design: The Architect and the Modern Hospital, 1893-1943

Kelly, J. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Hospitals and Healing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages

Totelin, L. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Galen and the Rhetoric of Healing

Petit, C. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Anatomy of Passions

Coffin, J.-C. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

A History of the Heart

Erickson, R. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

The History and Poetics of Scientific Biography

Reinarz, J. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Cancer in the Twentieth Century

Barnes, E. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

History of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology

Prior, P. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Madness to Mental Illness: A History of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Thalassis, N. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State, 1880-1983

Zulawski, A. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Sexual Inversion: A Critical Edition

Beccalossi, C. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Renovating Russia: The Human Sciences and the Fate of Liberal Modernity, 1880-1930

Healey, D. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Missionaries and Their Medicine: A Christian Modernity for Tribal India

Chatterjee, N. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Practising Colonial Medicine: The Colonial Medical Service in British East Africa

Wall, R. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Medicine's Moving Pictures: Medicine, Health and Bodies in American Film and Television

Butler, M. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

From Transmitted Deprivation to Social Exclusion: Policy, Poverty, and Parenting

Stewart, J. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure

Fitzgerald, M. — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Notes on Book Reviewers

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

Editorial Note

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:57:47 PDT

The NHS at 60: Perspectives on Health Care Systems

Moscucci, O. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

The British National Health Service 1948-2008: A Review of the Historiography

Gorsky, M. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

This article surveys historical writing on the British National Health Service since its inception in 1948. Its main focus is on policy-making and organisation and its principal concerns are primary care and the hospital sector, although public health, and psychiatric and geriatric care are briefly discussed. The over-arching narrative is one of transition from paternalism and technocratic planning to market disciplines and a discourse of choice, and of the ceding of professional autonomy by clinicians to managers and to the state. These issues are discussed in a chronological survey of policy-making from Bevan's ‘creation’ to the Blair era. Later sections consider evaluations of the service, starting with Webster's thesis that the NHS has been subject to prolonged under-funding, particularly under Conservative stewardship, then moving to assessments of the Thatcher, Major and Blair reforms. Much of the historical literature on the NHS is contentious and opinions are sharply divided on the reform era since the 1970s and the trajectories this has set for the future.

History and Health Policy in the United States: The Making of a Health Care Industry, 1948-2008

Stevens, R. A. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

The UK's National Health Service is approaching its sixtieth anniversary, an oppportune time perhaps to consider the case of the United States, where there is no national health service. Federal law requires hospitals to treat those who enter their emergency rooms, but not for free; military veterans are offered care in health facilities supported by federal tax dollars and the national Medicare programme provides government-sponsored health insurance for specified services to those over 65 years of age and to individuals certified as disabled. However, Medicare does not provide health services, which are predominantly purchased in the private sector. This article considers the history of American health care over the past 60 years, reflecting the diverse ways in which health care is embedded in the economy, politics, power structures and culture of the United States and discussing what it is like to have a health care industry without having a national health service or universal health insurance. The article concludes that, since the Second World War, the United States has been successful in achieving highly specialized, valued, life-improving health care for most—not for all—members of the population, but at a huge and rising cost. Notable achievements have been produced by the public–private mix of the American health enterprise. However, broad questions of social class, illness, insurance and the burden of payment for health care remain in a society with widening divisions of the population by socio-economic class, education, health literacy and computer skills.

'Vision and Vested Interests': National Health Service Reform in South Africa and Britain during the 1940s and Beyond

Digby, A. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Both Britain and South Africa considered major health reforms during the 1940s and there was mutual interest in the ideas being generated. In South Africa, the Report of the National Health Services Commission of 1944 advocated a national health service based on health centres that would integrate curative, preventive and promotive work. Parallel with this were plans by the provinces for free hospital treatment. Scarce finance, together with political and medical vested interests, meant that the health centre ideal only survived in minor form. In Britain, a free national health service was created in 1948, in which a reformed structure of hospitals was central, and early plans for health centres were marginalised. In each country, limited financial resources and vested interests—in the form of powerful medical professional associations or (in the case of South Africa) of provincial administrations—delayed, scaled down or reshaped the original reforming vision.

A National Health Service, By Comparison

Freeman, R. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

The National Health Service (NHS) has always been compared to other things, to other organisations and systems both at home and abroad. This paper explores those comparisons, beginning with the origins of national public health care in Lloyd George's study of German social insurance, and ending with Gordon Brown's claims for the NHS as ‘the best insurance policy in the world’. It considers the comparisons and contrasts made for and with the NHS at the time of its foundation and the comparison of state and market around 1990, before reviewing the contemporary function of comparison as form and basis of health governance. The paper presents three related patterns of thought: one prompted by encounter with the other, one sustained by metaphor and one developed in more formal, analytic comparison. It concludes by discussing why comparison itself is such a dangerous and contested thing.

The Languages of Science, the Vocabulary of Politics: Challenges to Medical Revival in Punjab

Sivaramakrishnan, K. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

This article examines the ideas and processes that shaped the construction of an alternative and complementary agenda for ‘indigenous’ Ayurvedic medicine in British colonial Punjab, in response to the consolidation of western medical authority and intervention. Located in the early twentieth century, this study analyses the growing movement amongst indigenous practitioners to recast and legitimise the moorings of their learning and practice as they addressed the political ideologies and structures that buttressed colonial medicine, such as its claims to represent a ‘scientific’ rational-critical tradition and its projection of the civilising and modernising claims of colonial rule. While Ayurvedic ‘revival’ has been broadly associated with a movement of Hindu political-cultural nationalism and revival, this study argues that there were important challenges in ethnic, cultural-political alignments that constantly undermined and punctuated the broader agenda of Hindu cultural-political mobilisation that was emerging in these years in urban centres across North India. Based on a cache of little-known vernacular tracts and pamphlets and with interviews with hereditary Ayurvedic practitioners, this study explores the ideas and vocabulary employed by a minority of Sikh practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine in Punjab, as they sought simultaneously to contest and reformulate the claims both of ‘western’, scientific medicine and that of ‘indigenous’ Hindu Ayurvedic learning.

Roy Porter Student Essay Prize Winner * Psychiatry Limited: Hyperactivity and the Evolution of American Psychiatry, 1957-1980

Smith, M. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Hyperactivity is the most commonly diagnosed childhood psychiatric disorder in north America. Most physicians believe that the disorder is a neurological dysfunction which is best treated with stimulants, such as ritalin. Accounts of the history of hyperactivity written by physicians, psychologists and even historians suggest that the disorder was always conceived as such. This paper argues that, on the contrary, the notion that hyperactivity was a neurological condition only emerged after vigorous debate during the 1960s between three competing fields within American psychiatry: specifically psychoanalysis, social psychiatry and biological psychiatry. Biological psychiatry won the debate, not because its approach to hyperactivity was more scientifically valid, but rather because its explanations and methods fit the prevailing social context more readily than that of its rivals. American psychiatry's refusal to draw pluralistic conclusions about hyperactivity undermined the development of a deeper understanding of the disorder. The history of hyperactivity provides an ideal lens through which to view the evolution of psychiatry from a field dominated by Freudian psychoanalysis to one rooted in the neurosciences.

Whatever Happened to Health Education? Mapping the Grey Literature Collection Inherited by NICE

Loughlin, K., Berridge, V. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) contracted public health historians to assess a collection of grey literature inherited from the Health Development Agency (HDA). The records stem mainly from the HDA's forerunners, the Health Education Authority and the Health Education Council. Material in the collection spans the period 1970–2004, although the majority of records date from the 1980s and 1990s. A broad range of health topics are covered and the main focus of the collection is public health education. The issue of smoking and health is strongly represented throughout the timeline of the collection. From the 1980s, material on HIV/AIDS is equally well represented. Indeed, the AIDS material held in this collection is particularly significant, as the Health Education Authority took responsibility for the national AIDS education campaign from the mid-1980s. The collection offers possibilities for research into the post-war history of public health but its future is currently uncertain.

Causes of Death in Nineteenth-Century New England: The Dominance of Infectious Disease

Noymer, A., Jarosz, B. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

This is a response to the recent contribution by Flurin Condrau and Michael Worboys on epidemics and infections in the nineteenth century. We present data from New England showing that infectious disease deaths were in the majority in the nineteenth century. In the data we examine, the epidemiologic transition is intact.

Notes on Contributors

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Marketing Health: Smoking and the Discourse of Public Health in Britain, 1945-2000

Pennock, P. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Global Efforts to Combat Smoking: An Evaluation of Smoking Control Policies

Elliot, R. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Heroin: The Treatment of Addiction in Twentieth-Century Britain

Campbell, N. D. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse Research

Mold, A. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Devil of the Domestic Sphere: Temperance, Gender and Middle Class Ideology, 1800-1860

Warner, J. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Medicating Modern America: Prescription Drugs in History

Tobbell, D. A. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

DNA: Promise and Peril

Scully, J. L. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Fundamentals of the Stem Cell Debate: The Scientific, Religious, Ethical and Political Issues

Ford, M. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

The Sterilization Movement and Global Fertility in the Twentieth Century

Largent, M. A. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Scottish Midwives: Twentieth-Century Voices

Nuttall, A. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Medical Records for the South Wales Coalfield c. 1890-1948: An Annotated Guide to the South Wales Coalfield Collection

Morrison, S. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Maritime Quarantine: The British Experience, c.1650-1900

McLean, D. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Public Health and Municipal Policy Making: Britain and Sweden, 1900-1940

Sheard, S. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Kissing Can Be Dangerous: The Public Health Campaigns to Prevent and Control Tuberculosis in Western Australia, 1900-1960

Greenlees, J. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

The Great Nation in Decline: Sex, Modernity and Health Crises in Revolutionary France c. 1750-1850

Smith, L. W. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Aghor Medicine: Pollution, Death and Healing in Northern India

Attewell, G. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

Diversity and Division in Medicine: Health Care in South Africa from the 1800s

Crozier, A. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:23 PST

States of Mind: Searching for Mental Health in Natal and Zululand, 1868-1918

Coleborne, C. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:24 PST

Notes on Book Reviewers

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:24 PST

Corrections, Volume 21

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:32:24 PST