Locating Medical History

Filimonova, Maria A. Anthropology of Disease in the United States in the Last Quarter of the XVIII Century // Up Close and From Afar: New World Anthropology from Russian and American Perspectives (Proceedings from the 1st and 2nd Russian-American Research Nexus Forums) / ed. by D.M. Bondarenko, R..., 2023

The eighteenth century was very optimistic about medical science. Benjamin Rush, who got his reputation as an “American Hippocrates”, was full of hopes. “The intermitting fever, which proved fatal to two of the monarchs of Britain, is now under absolute subjection to medicine. Continual fevers are much less fatal than formerly. The smallpox is disarmed of its mortality by inoculation, and even the tetanus and the cancer have lately received a check in their ravages upon mankind. But medicine has done more. – It has penetrated the deep and gloomy abyss of death, and acquired fresh honors in his cold embraces,” he once said ...

Hygiea Internationalis : An Interdisciplinary Journal for the History of Public Health, 2000

The emergence of global history has been one of the more notable features of academic history over the past three decades. Although historians of disease were among the pioneers of one of its earlier incarnations-world history-the recent "global turn" has made relatively little impact on histories of health, disease, and medicine. Most continue to be framed by familiar entities such as the colony or nation-state or are confined to particular medical "traditions." This article aims to show what can be gained from taking a broader perspective. Its purpose is not to replace other ways of seeing or to write a new "grand narrative" but to show how transnational and transimperial approaches are vital to understanding some of the key issues with which historians of health, disease, and medicine are concerned. Moving on from an analysis of earlier periods of integration, the article offers some reflections on our own era of globalization and on the emerging field of global health.

This special issue of the Low Countries Historical Review intends to show the potential of medical history to contribute to major historical debates, e.g. on the rise of the welfare state. Together, the articles in this issue make clear that medical history, for the twentieth century even more so than for earlier time periods, is strongly embedded in social, cultural and political history. The second goal of the special issue is methodological. It aims to highlight the conceptual work being done by medical historians in oral history, digital history and the study of material culture. These methodologies allow them to expand the range of actors in the medical field: architects, missionaries, ‘laypersons’, advertisers and drug users all extend the medical field beyond the established categories of ‘doctors’ and ‘patients’. Through their eyes, the particularities of twentieth-century health care become clear, such as the strong presence of mass media and public opinion, the role of international organisations, and the redefining of patients as consumers and citizens entitled to health care.

An excerpt: "A history of medicine as a history of medical science, pharmaceutics or institutions will never be irrelevant. But it is not the only history we need now. Humans have been ‘global’ for millennia and ‘emerging diseases’ are not a new phenomenon. Genomicists are reconstructing the histories that pathogens have left in their genomes, while palaeopathologists reconstruct their effects on human bodies. Historians’ skills as weavers of the fabric of historical narrative have never been more necessary if we are to make these fragile remnants of the past tell their full stories." A note on the illustrations: The illustrations accompanying this essay were chosen by the editors, without consulting me. Shockingly, they included a "plague" illustration that in fact depicts leprosy! The mislabeling and misuse of this image is a classic example of what's wrong with "retrospective diagnosis" in the old sense of using human cultural products (texts, works of art) as if they were direct windows onto the material realities of the past. For more on this "misdiagnosed plague image," see Green, Walker-Meikle, and Müller, "Diagnosis of a ‘Plague’ Image: A Digital Cautionary Tale" (2014).

Catalogue Description: Worldwide survey of medicine, disease, and health from prehistoric times to the present. Course Description: The study of medicine is a currently expanding field, but one that took a long time to form. Modern ideas about what medicine is, and about what premodern eras were, have often been at odds. Moreover, particularly in the modern period, class, race, and gender have all affected how medicine is conceptualized and accessed. We will be examining these tensions, and attempting to resolve them in our own work.

Critical Public Health, 2015

"The impact of US imperialism on health care is one of the most pressing and pervasive problems facing global public health today. So now is a good time to read Howard Waitzkin’s latest book, a scathing critique of US neocolonialism from a medical perspective." Medicine and public health at the end of empire, by Howard Waitzkin, Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, Pluto Press, 2011, 256 pp. $24.61 (paperback), ISBN 978-1- 59451-952-9

The emergence of global history has been one of the more notable features of academic history over the past three decades. Although historians of disease were among the pioneers of one of its earlier incarnations-world history-the recent "global turn" has made relatively little impact on histories of health, disease, and medicine. Most continue to be framed by familiar entities such as the colony or nation-state or are confined to particular medical "traditions." This article aims to show what can be gained from taking a broader perspective. Its purpose is not to replace other ways of seeing or to write a new "grand narrative" but to show how transnational and transimperial approaches are vital to understanding some of the key issues with which historians of health, disease, and medicine are concerned. Moving on from an analysis of earlier periods of integration, the article offers some reflections on our own era of globalization and on the emerging field of global health.

The Historical Journal, 2023

Histories of medicine and science in the colonies have, conceptually and theoretically, travelled some distance in the last three decades. While public health and epidemics in certain Asian contexts, 1 and mental health and medical stereotypes in the African case, 2 appear to have preoccupied historians

Latin American Research Review, 2019

In 1999 this journal published a book review article suggesting that Latin American scholarship on science and medicine appeared ready to "take off." 1 The prediction was just partially right. Although social studies on science in general have been growing in relevance, almost two decades later they are still in a sort of preliminary stage. However, with studies focused on health, disease, and medicine issues, the balance is significantly different, and there is no doubt about the consolidation of a vibrant subfield of historical inquiry. Only four years after the publication of the LARR article, the first collection of essays in English focused on the history of diseases in modern Latin America was published, anticipating a trend that over time would both gain strength and enhance its agenda. 2 Today monographic works, articles, bibliographies, state-ofthe-art reviews, and edited volumes as well as panels, conferences, and workshops on issues of health and disease in Latin America are recurrent features across the Anglo-American, European, and Latin American academic worlds, frequently in conversation. 3 Recreating, revising, or adjusting questions and problems also discussed in other academic milieus, Latin Americanists from many disciplinary backgrounds-historians, medical anthropologists, public health scholars, sociologists, and cultural critics-have unveiled a domain where health, medicine, healing practices, and disease meanings are contestable, debatable, and subject to controversy. They have increasingly been occupying a terrain previously monopolized by traditional historians of medicine, physicians, and antiquarians. Now, diseases and health issues are time and again discussed as slippery, ambiguous, and

2020

The study of medical history is a currently expanding field, but one that took a long time to form. Modern ideas about what medicine is, and about what premodern eras were, have often been at odds. Moreover, particularly in the modern period, class, race, and gender have all affected how medicine is conceptualized and accessed. We will be examining these tensions, and attempting to resolve them in our own work. Any historians--including, now, us--looking at medicine are faced with methodological difficulties, as for much of history, medical texts were not grouped or defined as such. In this course, we shall engage with such questions as: How do we define medicine? How do we talk about medicine? How do we decide, as individuals and societies, when to take it and how to give it? We shall also consider how illness and health are defined, and how they define the lives of the sick. We shall examine the ways in which medicine is shaped by social structures, cultural norms, and religious values.

Britain and the World, 2014

This paper was written to study the order of medical advances throughout history. It investigates changing human beliefs concerning the causes of diseases, how modern surgery developed and improved methods of diagnosis and the use of medical statistics. Human beliefs about the causes of disease followed a logical progression from supernatural causes, such as the wrath of the Gods, to natural causes, involving imbalances within the human body. The invention of the microscope led to the discovery of microorganisms which were eventually identified as the cause of infectious diseases. Identification of the particular microorganism causing a disease led to immunization against the disease. Modern surgery only developed after the ending of the taboo against human dissection and the discovery of modern anaesthesia and the discovery of the need for anti-septic practices. Modern diagnostic practices began with the discovery of x-rays and the invention of medical scanners. Improved mathematics, especially in probability theory, led to statistical studies which led to a much greater ability, to identify the causes of disease, and to evaluate the effectiveness of treatments. These discoveries all occurred in a necessary and inevitable order with the easiest discoveries being made first and the harder discoveries being made later. The order of discovery determined the course of the history of medicine and is an example of how social and cultural history has to follow a particular course determined by the structure of the world around us.

public health leader, defined Public Health as "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical health and efficiency through organized community efforts for the sanitation of the environment, the control of community infections, the education of the individual in principles of personal hygiene, the organization of medical and nursing service for the early diagnosis and preventive treatment of disease, and the development of the social machinery which will ensure to every individual in the community a standard of living adequate for the maintenance of health." (1920). This definition provided a base for the present WHO definition of health -"A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."