This is the story of the extraordinary life of Claver Morris and the society in which he lived. After his marriage at Chelsea in 1685, Claver Morris moved to Somerset where he established an outstanding reputation for his work as a physician. His diaries show us how he worked with apothecaries and surgeons, and travelled widely to treat all kind of patients, from the children of the poor to those of the landed gentry. The diaries also tell us about the joys and pains of Claver's personal and family life, and of his various intrigues. Claver Morris was a man of many talents: immensely enterprising, knowledgeable, sociable and loving. His house was always filled with music, guests and entertainments. Yet he was often faced with disputes and troubles partly of his own making - as when he courted a bishop's daughter, or stole some land to build his Queen Anne house. The Doctor's World provides a unique portrait of a physician living and working through the political and religious turmoils that beset the nation at the turn of the eighteenth century. Tales of medical treatments, clandestine marriages and self-serving priests are entwined with famous acts of treason and rebellion, and the pleasures and tragedies of daily life. This meticulously researched book will appeal to all readers of social, political, medical and family history.

This volume describes important medical discoveries, from the introduction of the first antibiotic to the present, where serendipity, intuition, coincidence, or laboratory accident played an important role in bringing a discovery to light. Although chance is the principal determinant, the book emphasizes other factors, such as economic and political exigencies and being in the right place at the right time.

The seven medical manuscripts from Mawangdui tomb three unearthed in 1973 represent the richest cache of ancient medical manuscripts ever found in China. These manuscripts which comprise this book reveal for the first time the breadth of medical knowledge in third and early second century B.C. China. Included are discussions of physiological theories and pathology, recipe manuals for the treatment of ailments and for the practice of macrobiotic hygiene, sexual treatises, and illustrations of hygienic exercises.

Series Information:
The History of Civilization

This volume brings together for the first time a collection of essays, based on original research, which focus on the history of nutrition science in Britain. Each chapter considers a different episode in the development and application of nutritional knowledge during the twentieth century. The topics covered include: the chewing cult of Horace Fletcher, dietetic education, the popularization of milk, the Dunn Nutritional Laboratory, and wartime involvement in policy making.
The selection of essays in Nutrition in Britain provide valuable new insights into the social processes involved in the production and application of scientific knowledge of nutrition. This book will be fascinating reading to historians of science or medicine, as well as to medical sociologists, nutritionists, home economists, health educators, food activists and anyone with a professional or general interest in food and nutrition.

In antebellum society, women were regarded as ideal nurses because of their sympathetic natures. However, they were expected to exercise their talents only in the home; nursing strange men in hospitals was considered inappropriate, if not indecent. Nevertheless, in defiance of tradition, Confederate women set up hospitals early in the Civil War and organized volunteers to care for the increasing number of sick and wounded soldiers. As a fledgling government engaged in a long and bloody war, the Confederacy relied on this female labor, which prompted a new understanding of women's place in public life and a shift in gender roles.

Challenging the assumption that Southern women's contributions to the war effort were less systematic and organized than those of Union women, "Worth a Dozen Men "looks at the Civil War as a watershed moment for Southern women. Female nurses in the South played a critical role in raising army and civilian morale and reducing mortality rates, thus allowing the South to continue fighting. They embodied a new model of heroic energy and nationalism, and came to be seen as the female equivalent of soldiers. Moreover, nursing provided them with a foundation for pro-Confederate political activity, both during and after the war, when gender roles and race relations underwent dramatic changes.

"Worth a Dozen Men" chronicles the Southern wartime nursing experience, tracking the course of the conflict from the initial burst of Confederate nationalism to the shock and sorrow of losing the war. Through newspapers and official records, as well as letters, diaries, and memoirs--not only those of the remarkable and dedicated women who participated, but also of the doctors with whom they served, their soldier patients, and the patients' families--a comprehensive picture of what it was like to be a nurse in the South during the Civil War emerges.

In 2003 the role of government in the regulation of cannabis is as hotly debated as it was a century ago. In this lively study James Mills explores the historical background of cannabis legislation, arguing that the drive towards prohibition grew out of the politics of empire rather than scientific or rational assessment of the drug's use and effects.

This is a study of the work and life of district midwives from 1948 to 1972 in Nottingham, which was one of the last UK cities to build a central maternity unit. The author statistically examines the outcome of home births in the area, taking into account the Parliamentary Reports of 1992 and 1993 and demonstrating the safety and value to society of district midwives.

Renaissance anatomist Gabrielle Falloppia is best known today for his account of the eponymous fallopian tubes but he made numerous other anatomical discoveries as well, was one of the most famous surgeons of his time, and is widely believed to have invented the condom. Drawing on Falloppia's Observationes anatomicae of 1561 and on dozens of handwritten and published sets of student notes, this book not only looks at Falloppia's anatomical lectures and demonstrations. It also studies Falloppia's work on surgical topics - including the French disease and cosmetic surgery - on thermal waters, and on pharmacology. Last but not least, it uses student notes and the letters of contemporary scholars to throw a new light on Falloppia's biography, on his very special relationship with the botanist Melchior Wieland, who lived in his house for several years, and on his conflicts with his fellow professors in Padua, one of whom, Bassiano Landi, was murdered just ten days after his funeral - by Falloppia's disciples, as some believed. Written by one of the leading scholars in the field of early modern medicine, this book will appeal to all those interested in the teaching and practice of anatomy, surgery, and pharmacology in the Renaissance.

Medical Humanities may be broadly conceptualized as a discipline wherein medicine and its specialties intersect with those of the humanities and social sciences. As such it is a hybrid area of study where the impact of disease and healing science on culture is assessed and expressed in the particular language of the disciplines concerned with the human experience. However, as much as at first sight this definition appears to be clear, it does not reflect how the interaction of medicine with the humanities has evolved to become a separate field of study. In this publication we have explored, through the analysis of a group of selected multidisciplinary essays, the dynamics of this process. The essays predominantly address the interaction of literature, philosophy, art, art history, ethics, and education with medicine and its specialties from the classical period to the present. Particular attention has been given to the Medieval, Early Modern, and Enlightenment periods. To avoid a rigid compartmentalization of the book based on individual fields of study we opted for a fluid division into multidisciplinary sections, reflective of the complex interactions of the included works with medicine.

The debt medicine owes to botany is not commonly appreciated. In the past, medicine relied almost entirely on plants, and even today, many western medicines are plant derived. Despite this, historians have largely neglected the study of domestic medicine, practised by the ordinary person and passed down through generations, in favour of 'official medicine'. The History of Domestic Plant Medicine brings together manuscripts, letters, diaries, personal oral interviews and other primary evidence to produce a detailed picture of the medicinal use of native plants in Britain from 1700 to the present day. Recording for posterity this neglected aspect of our heritage, it is a valuable contribution to the study of the folklore of modern Britain and a fascinating piece of social history.

The opening up of the British medical profession to women was largely due to Sophia Jex-Blake. As a result of her crusade, women's rights to higher education, professional careers and financial independence were more generally accepted. In this modern biography of Sophia Jex-Blake, Shirley Roberts charts the career of this important pioneer. Her dedication to the cause of women in medicine began when she met two leading women doctors in the United States - Lucy Sewall and Elizabeth Blackwell. On returning to Great Britain, she embarked on a five-year battle with the authorities of the University of Edinburgh for the right of women to take examinations for medical degrees. Later, her campaign through the law courts and in parliament won increasing public support, and was instrumental in two key developments: the passing of legislation allowing women access to medical training, and the foundation of the London School of Medicine for Women. She became Scotland's first woman doctor, and conducted her own successful medical practice in Edinburgh. However, the medical school for women which she founded in 1874, collapsed in a chaos of acrimony ten years later.

Over the last two decades, the discipline of the history of medicine has been growing, and changing in its scope and nature. While traditional approaches - the history of epidemics, of medical theory and practice, of surgery and therapeutics, and of medical science - are today studied in greater depth than ever, the history of medicine now draws increasingly upon the techniques and findings of other, newer disciplines, and is more broadly integrated within the wider histories of science and society. The "Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine" is a comprehensive reference work which surveys all aspects of medical history, and aims to reflect the complementary approaches to the discipline. Its 72 essays are written by scholars from many different areas of expertise. The text provides an account of the development of medical science in its various branches, and includes discussions of the medical profession and its institutions, and the impact of medicine upon populations, economic development, culture, religions, and thought. It also considers the relations between health, medicine, society, and the state.

The tremendous changes in the role and significance of religion during Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation affected all of society. Yet, there have been few attempts to view medicine and the ideas underpinning it within the context of the period and see what changes it underwent. This study charts how both popular and official religion affected orthodox medicine as well as more popular healers. Illustrating the central part played by medicine in Lutheran teachings, the Calvinistic rationalization of disease, and the Catholic responses, the contributors offer new perspectives on the relation of religion and medicine in the early modern period. It should be of interest to social historians as well as specialists in the history of medicine.

The biggest challenges in public health today are often related to attitudes, diet and exercise. In many ways, this marks a return to the state of medicine in the eighteenth century, when ideals of healthy living were a much more central part of the European consciousness than they have become since the advent of modern clinical medicine. Enlightenment advice on healthy lifestyle was often still discussed in terms of the six non-naturals - airs and places, food and drink, exercise, excretion and retention, and sleep and emotions. This volume examines what it meant to live healthily in the Enlightenment in the context of those non-naturals, showing both the profound continuities from Antiquity and the impact of newer conceptions of the body. Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429465642

Towards the end of this century we celebrate three great discoveries of the last one - of X-rays in 1895, of radioactivity in 1896 and of radium in 1898 - and recall the pioneering achievements that founded the new science of radiology and changed the face of medicine forever. Dr Mould's comprehensive centennial history makes a unique contribution to the telling of this entertaining story - in the unusual and accessible style of a 'radiological photograph album'. Over 700 historical illustrations, with full and informative captions, are supported by short introductory essays to blow the dust off our fascinating radiological past in an easily readable style. The focus of this book is on the historically more interesting earlier years - of discovery and invention, diagnosis and therapy, dosimetry, risk and protection. The photographic record is complemented by archival accounts of the pioneer scientists and physicians, and of their early patients, and is interspersed with a variety of radiological anecdotes. In the several chapters on diagnostic techniques, radiotherapy and nuclear medicine the history is nevertheless brought up to date so that the old methodologies may be contrasted with newer technologies. The medical theme is itself complemented by two interesting chapters on museum and industrial applications of radiography. The predominantly photographic presentation of this book is derived from the author's earlier but smaller A History of X-rays and Radium, no longer available yet still of enduring interest. Research has been based on original source material which is fully cited and the illustrations and text are comprehensively indexed for easy retrieval of the wide variety ofpeople, techniques, apparatus and examples featured throughout this radiological journey.

Key Features: * Explores a highly topical concept of vaccines in a comprehensive and easy to read manner. * Engages the readers with relatable and interesting anecdotes. * Provides a balanced, factual counter to the huge amount of current vaccine misinformation.

In the early modern centuries disease was rampant, medicine had few powerful weapons in its armoury, and the provision of professional medical care was patchy. Under such circumstances it is no surprise that a body of popularised medical writings appeared, aiming to explain how ordinary people could best take care of their own health, in the absence of, or by way of supplement to, professional medical care. Often written by doctors, such books gave simple advice for home treatments, while commonly warning of the dangers of magic, quackery, old wive's tales and faith healing. "The Popularization of Medicine" explores the rise of this form of people's medicine, from the early days of printing to the Victorian age, focusing upon the different experiences of Britain and France, more marginal European nations like Spain and Hungary, and upon North America. It assesses the wider social and cultural history contexts of the tradition: its religious rationales in radical Protestantism, conflicts between elite and popular culture, challenges to medical monopoly, and the spread of medical hegemony. This book should be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates, academics and researchers con

The story of poison is the story of power... For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family's spoons, tried on their underpants and tested their chamber pots. Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications and filthy living conditions. Women wore makeup made with lead. Men rubbed feces on their bald spots. Physicians prescribed mercury enemas, arsenic skin cream, drinks of lead filings and potions of human fat and skull, fresh from the executioner. Gazing at gorgeous portraits of centuries past, we don't see what lies beneath the royal robes and the stench of unwashed bodies; the lice feasting on private parts; and worms nesting in the intestines. The Royal Art of Poison is a hugely entertaining work of popular history that traces the use of poison as a political - and cosmetic - tool in the royal courts of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Kremlin today.

This volume is a major contribution to the field of disability history in the ancient world. Contributions from leading international scholars examine deformity and disability from a variety of historical, sociological and theoretical perspectives, as represented in various media. The volume is not confined to a narrow view of 'antiquity' but includes a large number of pieces on ancient western Asia that provide a broad and comparative view of the topic and enable scholars to see this important topic in the round. Disability in Antiquity is the first multidisciplinary volume to truly map out and explore the topic of disability in the ancient world and create new avenues of thought and research.

In Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution, Sarah L. Swedberg examines how conceptions of mental illness intersected with American society, law, and politics during the early American Republic. Swedberg illustrates how concerns about insanity raised difficult questions about the nature of governance. Revolutionaries built the American government based on rational principles, but could not protect it from irrational actors that they feared could cause the body politic to grow mentally or physically ill. This book is recommended for students and scholars of history, political science, legal studies, sociology, literature, psychology, and public health.

Artificial hearts are seductive devices. Their promissory nature as a cure for heart failure aligned neatly with the twentieth-century American medical community's view of the body as an entity of replacement parts. In Artificial Hearts, Shelley McKellar traces the controversial history of this imperfect technology beginning in the 1950s and leading up to the present day. McKellar profiles generations of researchers and devices as she traces the heart's development and clinical use. She situates the events of Dr. Michael DeBakey and Dr. Denton Cooley's professional fall-out after the first artificial heart implant case in 1969, as well as the 1982-83 Jarvik-7 heart implant case of Barney Clark, within a larger historical trajectory. She explores how some individuals-like former US Vice President Dick Cheney-affected the public profile of this technology by choosing to be implanted with artificial hearts. Finally, she explains the varied physical experiences, both negative and positive, of numerous artificial heart recipients. McKellar argues that desirability-rather than the feasibility or practicality of artificial hearts-drove the invention of the device. Technical challenges and unsettling clinical experiences produced an ambivalence toward its continued development by many researchers, clinicians, politicians, bioethicists, and the public. But the potential and promise of the artificial heart offset this ambivalence, influencing how success was characterized and by whom. Packed with larger-than-life characters-from dedicated and ardent scientists to feuding Texas surgeons and brave patients-this book is a fascinating case study that speaks to questions of expectations, limitations, and uncertainty in a high-technology medical world.

In early modern medical texts, intense unfulfilled erotic desire is held to be a real and virulent disease: it is classified as a species of melancholy, with physical etiologies and cures. Lesel Dawson analyzes literary representations of lovesickness in relation to medical ideas about desire and wider questions about gender and identity, exploring the different ways that desire is believed to take root in the body, how gender roles are encoded and contested in courtship, and the psychic pains and pleasures of frustrated passion. She explores the relationship between women's lovesickness and other female maladies (such as hysteria and greensickness), and asks whether women can suffer from intellectual forms of melancholy generally thought to be exclusively male. Finally, she examines the ways in which Neoplatonism offers an alternative construction of love to that found in natural philosophy and considers how anxieties concerning love's ability to emasculate the male lover emerge indirectly in remedies for lovesickness.
With reference to the works of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Ford, and Davenant, Lovesickness and Gender in Early Modern English Literature investigates how early modern representations of lovesickness expose contemporary cultural constructions of love, revealing the relation of sexuality to spirituality and the creation and shattering of the impassioned subject. It offers an important contribution to the history of romantic love and will be of interest to students and scholars of literature, gender, and medical history.