Social History of Medicine Research Papers

In Renaissance Italy women played a more central role in providing health care than historians have thus far acknowledged. Women from all walks of life-from household caregivers and nurses to nuns working as apothecaries-drove the Italian... more

The Colonial Medical Service was the branch of the Colonial Service responsible for healthcare provision in the British overseas territories. In this first published history of the Colonial Medical Service, Anna Crozier profiles Colonial... more

The Colonial Medical Service was the branch of the Colonial Service responsible for healthcare provision in the British overseas territories. In this first published history of the Colonial Medical Service, Anna Crozier profiles Colonial medical officers serving in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania from the beginnings of British colonial rule to World War Two. Using both official and personal sources, the composition and experiences of this governmental cadre are profiled and analysed in a way that prioritises the experiences of colonial-medical life. The work is divided into two substantive parts: entering the Colonial Medical Service and experiencing the colonial medical career. The first looks at how doctors joined the Service, what the objective and subjective criteria for recruitment were and how these criteria influenced the types of individuals that were recruited. Then reasons for entering the Service are analysed, particularly looking at explanations from officers as well as examining broader contextual factors that may have stimulated recruitment. The second part of the work focuses upon the experiences specific to being a medical officer once arrived in East Africa. It outlines job descriptions and typical duties as well as the common experiences officers were likely to have and how these changed over time. Special attention is paid to the way colonial life demanded particular characteristics, ones stressed during the recruitment process and by the appointees themselves as defining the job as a 'different' choice for medical graduates. This reflection over the shared professional encounters moves to an argument for the development of distinct colonial medical identities, arguing that the sense of common mission and the shared experiences of this cohort bound officers together symbolically in a progressive British political and medical project. This formation of distinct colonial identities relied upon various (although also unifying) factors of race, situation, employer, profession and medical interests. The resulting sense of kinship, Crozier persuasively argues, both determined, and also to some degree regulated, colonial medical attitudes and behaviour.

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The tumultuous late Middle Ages provided the perfect conditions for the rise of the surgical craft not only in England, but Europe. This thesis shows the rise of an elite class of surgeons between the thirteenth and fifteenth century,... more

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En sannskyldig gudagåva"-Ramlösa brunn och det helande vattnet Den äldsta uppgift vi hafva rörande Ramlösa Hälsobrunn är hos författaren till Aschebergs lefverne. Vi finna här omtalat, hurusom Karl XI efter slaget vid Lund d. 4 Dec. 1676... more

En sannskyldig gudagåva"-Ramlösa brunn och det helande vattnet Den äldsta uppgift vi hafva rörande Ramlösa Hälsobrunn är hos författaren till Aschebergs lefverne. Vi finna här omtalat, hurusom Karl XI efter slaget vid Lund d. 4 Dec. 1676 med sin här dragit sig till trakten invid Helsingborg. Många af de svenska soldaterna voro starkt plågade af fältsjuka. Törsten, fältsjukans vanliga följeslagare, dref de sjuka i förtvifvlan ned till "källan i Ramlösa Vång" , som det då hette, i afsikt att släcka sin törst. Den välgörande verkan drycken medförde återskänkte åt många hälsa och krafter. Det var detta tillfälle , som gaf uppslag till källans användande såsom förträffligt mineralvatten (ur T. N-D, Ramlösa Brunn 1676-1902). Berättelsen ovan om soldaternas möte med källan i Ramlösa och dess hälsogivande vatten är en ganska klassisk skildring av källvattnet som något naturligt helande. I mitt arbete med att studera handböcker i hur man förlänger livet 1700-1930 har vatten i olika former trätt fram som en viktig källa för livets förlängning. Bad och vatten som medel att förbättra hälsa och till och med förlänga livet eller föryngra har varit populärt genom historien. Än idag finns det källor runt om i världen som anses ha föryngrande eller livsförlängande egenskaper. Källorna spelar på olika myter om ungdomens källa, en myt som kanske blev mest välkänt illustrerat av Lucas Cranach d.ä på femtonhundratalet. Själva ursprunget till moderna tiders myter om ungdomens källa är en legend i Rig-Vedaen, en av de äldre hinduiska skrifterna. Legenden handlar om den gamle prästen Cyavana och hans hustru Sukanyâ. Sukanyâ var mycket yngre än sin make och hade blivit honom tilldelad efter en konflikt mellan hennes fader och prästen. Vid ett tillfälle fick paret besök av två halvgudar tillika läkare. Sukanyâ bad de två halvgudarna föryngra hennes man. De gick alla tillsammans för att bada i en föryngrande flod. Upp steg de sedan som ynglingar och betraktade varandra. Nu var det nästan svårt att skilja mannen från de två halvgudarna men lyckligtvis lyckades ändå Sukanyâ välja rätt och få med sig sin Cyavana hem. Även Bibeln är full av positiva metaforer kopplade till vatten (syndafloden till trots). Framför allt hänvisas till vattnets renande förmåga, vilket det kristna dopet är ett ypperligt exempel på. Gemensamt för hälsobrunnarnas framväxt under 1600-1700-talet är således att de bygger på ovan nämnda myter om ungdomens källa och en föreställning om vissa utvalda

In 1873 George Ott committed his wife Dr. Anna B. Ott, a physician with a nearly twenty-year practice, to the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane. She remained there until her death in 1893. By diagnosing Ott with mania, state... more

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A collection of essays about the Colonial Medical Service of Africa in which a group of distinguished colonial historians illustrate the diversity and active collaborations to be found in the untidy reality of government medical... more

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Il contributo intende divulgare qualche informazione archivistica (corredata, quando ciò è stato possibile, di spunti bio-bibliografici) su alcuni medici che hanno operato nel XVIII secolo in due cittadine del Friuli poste presso il... more

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Ethnopharmacological relevance: Currently various scientific and popular sources provide a wide spectrum of ethnopharmacological information on many plants, yet the sources of that information, as well as the information itself, are often... more

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Currently various scientific and popular sources provide a wide spectrum of ethnopharmacological information on many plants, yet the sources of that information, as well as the information itself, are often not clear, potentially resulting in the erroneous use of plants among lay people or even in official medicine. Our field studies in seven countries on the Eastern edge of Europe have revealed an unusual increase in the medicinal use of Epilobium angustifolium L., especially in Estonia, where the majority of uses were specifically related to "men's problems". The aim of the current work is: to understand the recent and sudden increase in the interest in the use of E. angustifolium in Estonia; to evaluate the extent of documented traditional use of E. angustifolium among sources of knowledge considered traditional; to track different sources describing (or attributed as describing) the benefits of E. angustifolium; and to detect direct and indirect influences of the written sources on the currently documented local uses of E. angustifolium on the Eastern edge of Europe. Materials and methods: In this study we used a variety of methods: semi-structured interviews with 599 people in 7 countries, historical data analysis and historical ethnopharmacological source analysis. We researched historical and archival sources, and academic and popular literature published on the medicinal use of E. angustifolium in the regions of our field sites as well as internationally, paying close attention to the literature that might have directly or indirectly contributed to the popularity of E. angustifolium at different times in history. Results: Our results show that the sudden and recent popularity in the medical use of E. angustifolium in Estonia has been caused by local popular authors with academic medical backgrounds, relying simultaneously on "western" and Russian sources. While Russian sources have propagated (partially unpublished) results from the 1930s, "western" sources are scientific insights derived from the popularization of other Epilobium species by Austrian herbalist Maria Treben. The information Treben disseminated could have been originated from a previous peak in popularity of E. angustifolium in USA in the second half of the 19th century, caused in turn by misinterpretation of ancient herbals. The traditional uses of E. angustifolium were related to wounds and skin diseases, fever, pain (headache, sore throat, childbirth), and abdominal-related problems (constipation, stomach ache) and intestinal bleeding. Few more uses were based on the similarity principle. The main theme, however, is the fragmentation of use and its lack of consistency apart from wounds and skin diseases. Conclusions: Historical ethnobotanical investigations could help to avoid creating repeating waves of popularity of plants that have already been tried for certain diseases and later abandoned as not fully effective. There is, of course, a chance that E. angustifolium could also finally be proven to be clinically safe and cost-effective for https://doi. T treating benign prostatic hyperplasia, but this has not yet happened despite recent intensive research. Documented traditional use would suggest investigating the dermatological, intestinal anti-hemorrhagic and pain inhibiting properties of this plant, if any.

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- by Renata Sõukand and +3
  Valeria Kolosova
  Olga Belichenko
  Natalia Kuznetsova
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- 16
  Semiotics, European History, Botany, Communication

This essay addresses the relative scholarly neglect of the history of public health in Haiti through a close examination of the colonial public health system constructed and operated by the United States (US) during its occupation of... more

Internationale Tagung
„Hof- und Leibärzte in der Frühen Neuzeit“
26.-27.9.2019 Universität Innsbruck

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Lecture to be given at the Maplethorpe Lecture Theatre, UCL School of Pharmacy, 29-39 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AX on Monday 14 October 2019. In 1711 Dr John Addenbrooke, founder of the now famous Cambridge hospital, gave his... more

Social History of Medicine

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