Plague in the Early Modern World presents a broad range of primary source materials from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, China, India, and North America that explore the nature and impact of plague and disease in the early modern world. During the early modern period frequent and recurring outbreaks of plague and other epidemics around the world helped to define local identities and they simultaneously forged and subverted social structures, recalibrated demographic patterns, dictated political agendas, and drew upon and tested religious and scientific worldviews. By gathering texts from diverse and often obscure publications and from areas of the globe not commonly studied, Plague in the Early Modern World provides new information and a unique platform for exploring early modern world history from local and global perspectives and examining how early modern people understood and responded to plague at times of distress and normalcy. Including source materials such as memoirs and autobiographies, letters, histories, and literature, as well as demographic statistics, legislation, medical treatises and popular remedies, religious writings, material culture, and the visual arts, the volume will be of great use to students and general readers interested in early modern history and the history of disease.

This book explores how madness was defined and diagnosed as a condition of the mind in the Middle Ages and what effects it was thought to have on the bodies, minds and souls of sufferers. Madness is examined through narratives of miraculous punishment and healing that were recorded at the shrines of saints. This study focuses on the twelfth century, which has been identified as a 'Medieval Renaissance': a time of cultural and intellectual change that saw, among other things, the circulation of new medical treatises that brought with them a wealth of new ideas about illness and health. With the expanding authority of the Roman Church and the tightening of papal control over canonisation procedures in this period, historians have claimed that there was a 'rationalisation' of the miraculous. In miracle records, illnesses were explained using newly-accessible humoral theories rather than attributed to divine and demonic forces, as they had been previously. The first book-length study of madness in medieval religion and medicine to be published since 1992, this book challenges these claims and reveals something of the limitations of the so-called 'medicalisation' of the miraculous. Throughout the twelfth century, demons continue to lurk in miracle records relating to one condition in particular: madness. Five case studies of miracle collections compiled between 1070 and 1220 reveal that hagiographical representations of madness were heavily influenced by the individual circumstances of their recording and yet were shaped as much by hagiographical patterns that had been developing throughout the twelfth century as they were by new medical and theological standards.

A notable surgeon and charismatic teacher himself, Professor Ellis has brought together in Operations that made History a fascinating collection of renowned surgical procedures each one illustrating a different aspect of the history of surgery.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

'Lucy Inglis has done a wonderful job bringing together a wide range of sources to tell the history of the most exciting and dangerous plants in the world. Telling the story of opium tells us much about our faults and foibles as humans - our willingness to experiment; our ability to become addicts; our pursuit of money. This book tells us more than about opium; it tells us about ourselves.' - Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads 'The only thing that is good is poppies. They are gold.' Poppy tears, opium, heroin, fentanyl: humankind has been in thrall to the 'Milk of Paradise' for millennia. The latex of papaver somniferum is a bringer of sleep, of pleasurable lethargy, of relief from pain - and hugely addictive. A commodity without rival, it is renewable, easy to extract, transport and refine, and subject to an insatiable global demand. No other substance in the world is as simple to produce or as profitable. It is the basis of a gargantuan industry built upon a shady underworld, but ultimately it is a farm-gate material that lives many lives before it reaches the branded blister packet, the intravenous drip or the scorched and filthy spoon. Many of us will end our lives dependent on it. In Milk of Paradise, acclaimed cultural historian Lucy Inglis takes readers on an epic journey from ancient Mesopotamia to modern America and Afghanistan, from Sanskrit to pop, from poppy tears to smack, from morphine to today's synthetic opiates. It is a tale of addiction, trade, crime, sex, war, literature, medicine and, above all, money. And, as this ambitious, wide-ranging and compelling account vividly shows, the history of opium is our history and it speaks to us of who we are.

The Face of AIDS film archive at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, consists of more than 700 hours of unedited and edited footage, shot over a period of more than thirty years and all over the world by filmmaker and journalist Staffan Hildebrand. The material documents the HIV/AIDS pandemic and includes scenes from conferences and rallies, and interviews with activists, physicians, people with the infection, and researchers. It represents a global historical development from the early years of the AIDS crisis to a situation in which it is possible to live a normal life with the HIV virus. This volume brings together a range of academic perspectives - from media and film studies, medical history, gender studies, history, and cultural studies - to bear on the archive, shedding light on memories, discourses, trauma, and activism. Using a medical humanities framework, the editors explore the influence of historical representations of HIV/AIDS and stigma in a world where antiretroviral treatment has fundamentally altered the conditions under which many people diagnosed with HIV live. Organized into four sections, this book begins by introducing the archive and its role, setting it in a global context. The first part looks at methodological, legal and ethical issues around archiving memories of the present which are then used to construct histories of the past; something that can be particularly controversial when dealing with a socially stigmatized epidemic such as HIV/AIDS. The second section is devoted to analyses of particular films from the archive, looking at the portrayal of people living with HIV/AIDS, the narrative of HIV as a chronic illness and the contemporary context of particular films. The third section looks at how stigma and trauma are negotiated in the material in the Face of AIDS film archive, discussing ideas about suffering and culpability. The final section contributes perspectives on and by the filmmaker as activist and auteur. This interdisciplinary collection is placed at the intersection of medical humanities, sexuality studies and film and media studies, continuing a tradition of studies on the cultural and social understandings of HIV/AIDS.

Medicine in Modern Britain 1780-1950 provides an introduction to the development of medicine - scientific and heterodox, domestic and professional - in Britain from the end of the early modern period and through modern times. Divided thematically, each chapter within this book addresses a different aspect of medicine, covering diseases, ideas, practices, institutions, practitioners and the state. This book centres on an era of rapid and profound change in medicine and gives students all they need to establish a solid understanding of the history of medicine in Britain, by offering a clear and coherent narrative of the changes and continuities in medicine, including names, dates, events and ideas. Each aspect of medicine discussed within the book is explored and contextualised, providing an overview of the wider social and political background that surrounded them. The chapters are followed by a documents section, containing important primary sources to encourage students to engage with original material. With a selection of images, tables, a who's who of all the key people discussed and a glossary of terms, Medicine in Modern Britain 1780-1950 is essential reading for all students of the history of medicine in Britian.

This book offers new insights into a largely understudied group of Greek texts preserved in selected manuscripts from the Library at Wellcome Collection, London. The content of these manuscripts ranges from medicine, including theories on diagnosis and treatment of disease, to astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. With texts dating from the ancient era to the Byzantine and Ottoman worlds, each manuscript provides its own unique story, opening a window onto different social and cultural milieus. All chapters are illustrated with black and white and colour figures, highlighting some of the most significant codices in the collection.

In the first book to chart late Imperial and Soviet health policy and its impact on the health of the collective in Russia's former capital and second "regime" city, Christopher Williams argues that in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg radical sections of the medical profession and the Bolsheviks highlighted the local and Tsarist government's failure to protect the health of poor peasants and the working class due to conflicts over the priority and direction of health policy, budget constraints and political division amongst doctors. They sought to forge alliances to change the law on social insurance and to prioritise the health of the collective. Situating pre- and post-revolutionary health policies in the context of revolutions, civil war, market transition and Stalin's rise to power, Williams shows how attempts were made to protect the Body Russian/Soviet and to create a healthier lifestyle and environment for key members of the new Soviet state. This failed due to shortages of money, ideology and Soviet medical and cultural norms. It resulted in ad hoc interventions into people's lives and the promotion of medical professionalization, and then the imposition of restrictions resulting from changes in the Party line. Williams shows that when the health of the collective was threatened and created medical disorder, it led to state coercion.

A moving collection of firsthand accounts of the HIV epidemic. Tremendous strides have been made in the prevention and treatment of HIV since the disease first appeared in the 1980s. But because many of the people who studied and battled the virus in those early days are now gone, firsthand accounts are at risk of being lost. In HIV Pioneers, Wendee M. Wechsberg collects 29 "first stories" from the outset of the AIDS epidemic. These moving personal narratives and critical historical essays not only shed light on the experiences of global health pioneers, prominent scientists, and HIV survivors, but also preserve valuable lessons for managing the risk and impact of future epidemics. With unprecedented access to many key actors in the fight against AIDS and HIV, Wechsberg brings to life the harrowing reality of those early days of the epidemic. The book captures the experiences of those still working diligently and innovatively in the field, elevating the voices of doctors, scientists, and government bureaucrats alongside those of survivors and their loved ones. Focusing on the impact that the epidemic had on careers, pieces also show how governments responded to HIV, how research agendas were developed, and how AIDS service agencies and case management evolved. Illuminating the multiple facets of the HIV epidemic, both in the United States and across the globe, HIV Pioneers is a touching and inspirational look into the ongoing fight against HIV. Contributors: Quarraisha Abdool Karim, Salim S. Abdool Karim, Lynda Arnold, Anne Jeanene Bengoa, Robert E. Booth, Barry S. Brown, Thomas Coates, Francine Cournos, James W. Curran, Don C. Des Jarlais, Jeffrey D. Fisher, William A. Fisher, Samuel R. Friedman, Robert C. Gallo, Mary Guinan, Gibbie Harris, Warren W. Hewitt Jr., Susan M. Kegeles, Rayford Kytle, Bishop Stacey S. Latimer, Robert Love, Duane C. McBride, Clyde B. McCoy, Carmen Morris, Willo Pequegnat, Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus, Jeffrey Samet, David Serwadda, Lorraine Sherr, James L. Sorensen, Jack B. Stein, Charles van der Horst, Wendee M. Wechsberg, Wayne Wiebel, William A. Zule

As a medical, economic, spiritual and demographic crisis, plague affected practically every aspect of an early modern community whether on a local, regional or national scale. Its study therefore affords opportunities for the reassessment of many aspects of the pre-modern world. This book examines the incidence and effects of plague in an early modern Scottish community by analysing civic, medical and social responses to epidemics in the north-east port of Aberdeen, focusing on the period 1500-1650. While Aberdeen's experience of plague was in many ways similar to that of other towns throughout Europe, certain idiosyncrasies in the city make it a particularly interesting case study, which challenges several assumptions about early modern mentalities.

Originally published in 1987, this book builds bridges between medical sociology and mainstream theory. It does so by demonstrating in new and important ways how selected theories of major thinkers like Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Freud, Parsons, Goffman, Foucault, Habermas and Offe stand to inform, and in turn be informed by the often highly focused and empirical studies of health, disease and health care found in contemporary medical sociology. The topics covered include doctor-patient interaction and the formation of health policy.

The social position of learning disabled people has shifted rapidly over the last 20 years, from long-stay institutions, first into community homes and day centres, and now to a currently emerging goal of "ordinary lives" for individuals using person-centred support and personal budgets. These approaches promise to replace a century and a half of "scientific" pathological models based on expert assessment, and of the accompanying segregated social administration which determined how and where people led their lives, and who they were. This innovative volume explains how concepts of learning disability, intellectual disability and autism first came about, describes their more recent evolution in the formal disciplines of psychology, and shows the direct relevance of this historical knowledge to present and future policy, practice and research. Goodey argues that learning disability is not a historically stable category and different people are considered "learning disabled" as it changes over time. Using psychological and anthropological theory, he identifies the deeper lying pathology as "inclusion phobia", in which the tendency of human societies to establish an in-group and to assign out-groups reaches an extreme point. Thus the disability we call "intellectual" is a concept essential only to an era in which to be human is essentially to be deemed intelligent, autonomous and capable of rational choice. Interweaving the author's historical scholarship with his practice-based experience in the field, Learning Disability and Inclusion Phobia challenges myths about the past as well as about present-day concepts, exposing both the historical continuities and the radical discontinuities in thinking about learning disability.

Through close readings of five Italian collections of novellas written over a 500-year period, Martin Marafioti explores the literary tradition of storytelling, and particularly its efficacy as a healing tool following traumatic visitations from the plague. In this study, Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron provides the framework for later authors. Although Boccaccio was not the first writer to deal with pestilence or epidemics in a literary work, he was the first to unite the topos of a life-threatening context with a public health disaster like the Black Death, and certainly the first author to propose storytelling as a means of prophylaxis in times of plague. Marafioti goes on to analyze Franco Sacchetti's Trecento Novelle, Giovanni Sercambi's Novelliere, Celio Malespini's Duecento Novelle, and Francesco Argelati's Decamerone, following in its longue-duree the ups and down, structurally and thematically, of the realistic novella as a genre.

First published in 1992, this book explores how we come to hold our present attitudes towards health, sickness and the medical profession. Roy Porter argues that the outlook of the age of Enlightenment was crucially important in the creation of modern thinking about disease, doctors and society. To illustrate this viewpoint, he focuses on Thomas Beddoes, a prominent doctor of the eighteenth century and examines his challenging, pugnacious, radical and often amusing views on a wide range of issues concerning the place of illness and medicine in society. Many modern debates in medicine continue to echo the topics which Beddoes himself discussed in his ever-trenchant and provocative manner. This book will be of interest to those studying the history of medicine, social history and the Enlightenment.

First published in 1991, this book charts the inception of the British National Health Service from 1911 to 1948. It pays specific attention to the struggle of doctors to achieve work control in the medical marketplace during this turbulent time. With particular focus on the medical profession, it discusses key themes such as restrictions to the inception of the Health Service under David Lloyd George's government and the relationship between the Beveridge report and the National Health Service Act in 1946. In its final analysis, the book asks what, if any, gains were made by the medical profession in the creation of Labour's crowning achievement. This book will be of interest to those studying the history of the British welfare state, social welfare and healthcare.

Winner of the Best First Monograph from the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England (ISSEME) 2021. An examination of the Old English medical collections, arguing that these texts are products of a learned intellectual culture. Four complete medical collections survive from Anglo-Saxon England. These were first edited by Oswald Cockayne in the nineteenth century and came to be known by the names Bald's Leechbook, Leechbook III, the Lacnunga, and the Old English Pharmacopeia. Together these works represent the earliest complete collections of medical material in a western vernacular language. This book examines these texts as products of a learned literary culture. While earlier scholarship tended to emphasise the relationship of these works to folk belief or popular culture, this study suggests that all four extant collections were probably produced in major ecclesiastical centres. It examines the collections individually, emphasising their differences of content and purpose, while arguing that each consistently displays connections with an elite intellectual culture. The final chapter considers the fundamentally positive depiction of doctors and medicine found within literary and ecclesiastical works from the period and suggests that the high esteem for medicine in literate circles may have favoured the study and translation of medical texts.

The Medicine Cabinet is a beautifully curated and expertly written compendium of over 100 astonishing objects related to the story of medicine. Each object is cared for by London's Science Museum, which houses one of the largest and most significant collections of medical artefacts in the world - including a Bronze Age trepanned skull, healing water from an Ancient Greek well, a seventeenth-century barber's pole, a pharmacist's ceramic leech jar, a gold memento mori ring, First World War blood transfusion apparatus and a prototype MRI scanner. Each object is a profound reminder of the fragility of human existence, but also of the extraordinary lengths gone to by scientists, medical professionals and ordinary people in the attempt to conquer mortality. Published in association with the Science Museum, The Medicine Cabinet is a rich visual exploration of life, death and everything in between.

As historians rediscover human society to be as much about desire, fantasy, and irrationality as it is about interest, reality, and reason, the history of psychoanalytic thought takes on an increasing significance. Its growth and interconnection with other fields appealed to the eclectic and holistic interests of historians so much so that the term "psychohistory" was coined, admiringly, ambivalently, or perjoratively. The methodological intersection of psychology and history also helped move us toward a more inclusive social history through investigation of the institutional history of medical sciences of the mind.Treating Mind and Body examines the recent history of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and medicine in Germany through a series of original essays by Geoffrey Cocks. The first section, "Psychotherapy," analyzes the history of psychotherapy in the Third Reich and includes such essays as "The Professionalization of Psychotherapy in Germany" and "The Nazis and C.G. Jung," which examines Jung's association with the Nazi regime and the rift between Jungians and Freudians.Section two, "Psychoanalysis," considers the repression of memory evident among German psychoanalysts, a more disturbing historical reality than the traditional view of a Nazi destruction of psychoanalysis. Essays include "Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Germany Since 1939," as well as a discussion of Heinz Kohut's "self psychology" in light of Kohut's life experience in Austria and America. In section three, Cocks treats medicine, the history of professions, and the increasing awareness among historians of the place of medicine hi Nazi plans and projects. Essays include "Jews and Medicine in Modern German Society" and "The Nuremberg Doctor's Trial and Medicine in Modern Germany."As a historian of Germany, psychoanalysis, and medicine, Cocks's writings reflect an abiding interest in the intersections of psychology and history. To his selection of previously published essays he adds a new introduction, placing the essays in newer, richer contexts. This book will be of interest to psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists, as well as those in the fields of medicine, history, and sociology.

At the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, amongst the first acts of Charles II's government was the abolition of the New Model Army and the sweeping away of the legislation and institutions that had supported it, including most of the medical provisions provided by the republican regime. Nevertheless, a small rump of the Commonwealth forces was retained to form a royal standing army, which rapidly expanded over the next sixty years to become a formidable fighting force. Inevitably, as this force grew, the new government was compelled to provide medical care for its soldiers and ex-servicemen. Taking a broadly chronological approach, this book explores the nature and the quality of medical, nursing and welfare facilities provided in hospitals for soldiers during the formative years of the British standing army between 1660 and 1714. It shows how, over the course of latter part of the seventeenth century, the British army adapted and developed its facilities in line with new advances in science, medicine and military theory. Increased involvement in continental wars and contact with European armies provided inspiration for the founding of the well-known Royal Hospitals at Chelsea and Kilmainham, based on Louis XIV's HAtel des Invalides. The work also provides an in-depth examination of the work of the hitherto sparsely documented field hospitals that provided acute casualty care to troops during the reigns of James II, William III and Queen Anne. Following on from his ground-breaking study of medical care during the English Civil Wars (Justice to the Maimed Soldier), Eric Gruber von Arni in this study shows how the British army of the Restoration period struggled to develop systems and institutions that could cope with the increasing scale of contemporary warfare. Through extensive archival research and a thorough understanding of military medical requirements, a lucid account is provided that will be of interest not only to military and medical historians, but also anyone interested in the development of early modern institutions and organisations.

Published in 1998, covering the period from the triumphant economic revival of Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, this book offers an examination of the state of contemporary medicine and the subsequent transplantation of European medicine worldwide.

At the turn of the twentieth century, medicine's imperative to cure disease increasingly took priority over the demand to relieve pain and suffering at the end of life. Filled with heartbreaking stories, The Inevitable Hour demonstrates that professional attention and resources gradually were diverted from dying patients. Emily K. Abel challenges three myths about health care and dying in America. First, that medicine has always sought authority over death and dying; second, that medicine superseded the role of families and spirituality at the end of life; and finally, that only with the advent of the high-tech hospital did an institutional death become dehumanized. Abel shows that hospitals resisted accepting dying patients and often worked hard to move them elsewhere. Poor, terminally ill patients, for example, were shipped from Bellevue Hospital in open boats across the East River to Blackwell's Island, where they died in hovels, mostly without medical care. Some terminal patients were not forced to leave, yet long before the advent of feeding tubes and respirators, dying in a hospital was a profoundly dehumanizing experience. With technological advances, passage of the Social Security Act, and enactment of Medicare and Medicaid, almshouses slowly disappeared and conditions for dying patients improved-though, as Abel argues, the prejudices and approaches of the past are still with us. The problems that plagued nineteenth-century almshouses can be found in many nursing homes today, where residents often receive substandard treatment. A frank portrayal of the medical care of dying people past and present, The Inevitable Hour helps to explain why a movement to restore dignity to the dying arose in the early 1970s and why its goals have been so difficult to achieve.

The subject of medicalisation of childbirth in colonial India has so far been identified with three major themes: the attempt to reform or 'sanitise' the site of birthing practices, establishing lying-in hospitals and replacing traditional birth attendants with trained midwives and qualified female doctors. This book, part of the series The Social History of Health and Medicine in South Asia, looks at the interactions between childbirth and midwifery practices and colonial modernities. Taking eastern India as a case study and related research from other areas, with hard empirical data from local government bodies, municipal corporations and district boards, it goes beyond the conventional narrative to show how the late nineteenth-century initiatives to reform birthing practices were essentially a modernist response of the western-educated colonised middle class to the colonial critique of Indian sociocultural codes. It provides a perceptive historical analysis of how institutionalisation of midwifery was shaped by the debates on the women's question, nationalism and colonial public health policies, all intersecting in the interwar years. The study traces the beginning of medicalisation of childbirth, the professionalisation of obstetrics, the agency of male doctors, inclusion of midwifery as an academic subject in medical colleges and consequences of maternal care and infant welfare. This book will greatly interest scholars and researchers in history, social medicine, public policy, gender studies and South Asian studies.

The British apprenticeship model of nurse training, developed under Florence Nightingale's influence from 1860 at St Thomas's Hospital, gained national and world-wide recognition. Its end was heralded with the publication of the last national syllabus from the General Nursing Council for England and Wales in 1977. This apprenticeship model, a crucial part of the history of British health care for over a century, is the subject of this book. Primary evidence, much of it original, is gained from Parliamentary debates and reports, syllabuses, long neglected nursing textbooks, major governmental and professional reports, and the voices of nurses themselves expressed through their professional journals. Primary sources are systematically re-examined and contextually interpreted in the light of new evidence. The study in particular interprets the contemporary attitudes and moral values underpinning the apprenticeship system, especially the place of vocation. The reasons for the ending of this system, arising in part from the cultural shifts of the 1960s, are explained in relation to this historical moral context. The reader sees how the self-understanding of the profession shifts, with much tension and disagreement, as mores change. The book fills a major gap in the history of nurse training, by giving a sustained account of the apprenticeship model of nursing in context, and charting changing values away from the historic vocational tradition. Its copious use of primary sources will make this a key text for nurses, historians and policy makers.

Science, technology, and medicine all contributed to the emerging modern Japanese empire and conditioned key elements of post-war development. As the only emerging non-Western country that was a colonial power in its own right, Japan utilized these fields not only to define itself as racially different from other Asian countries and thus justify its imperialist activities, but also to position itself within the civilized and enlightened world with the advantages of modern science, technologies, and medicine. This book explores the ways in which scientists, engineers and physicians worked directly and indirectly to support the creation of a new Japanese empire, focussing on the eve of World War I and linking their efforts to later post-war developments. By claiming status as a modern, internationally-engaged country, the Japanese government was faced with having to control pathogens that might otherwise not have threatened the nation. Through the use of traditional and innovative techniques, this volume shows how the government was able to fulfil the state's responsibility to protect society to varying degrees. The contributors push the field of the history of science, technology and medicine in Japan in new directions, raising questions about the definitions of diseases, the false starts in advancing knowledge, and highlighting the very human nature of fields which, on the surface, seem to non-specialists to be highly rational. Challenging older interpretative tendencies, this book highlights the vigour of the field and the potential for future development. Therefore, it will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese history, Asian history, the history of science and technology and the history of medicine.