Health is a gendered concept in Western cultures. Customarily it is associated with strength in men and beauty in women. This gendered concept was transmitted through visual representations of the ideal female and male bodies, and ubiquitous media images resulted in the absorption of universal standards of beauty and health and generalized desires to achieve them. Today, genuine or self-styled experts--from physicians to newspaper columnists to advertisers--offer advice on achieving optimal health.

Topics in this collection are wide ranging and include childbirth advice in Victorian Australia and Cold War America, menstruation films, Canadian abortion tourism, the Pap smear, the "Body Worlds" exhibition, and fat liberation. Masculinity is explored among drunkards in antebellum Philadelphia and family memoirs during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Seemingly objective public health advisories are shown to be as influenced by commercial interests, class, gender, and other social differentiations as marketing approaches are, and the message presented is mediated to varying degrees by those receiving it.

This book will be of interest to scholars in women's studies, health studies, marketing, media studies, social history and anthropology, and popular culture.

Booze, dope, smokes, and weed. Mind-altering, mood-changing substances have been part of human society for millennia. Pleasure and Panic reveals how attitudes toward drug and alcohol consumption have always been deeply embedded in cultural fears and social, political, and economic disparities. Contributors to this collection explore how drugs and alcohol intersect with diverse histories, including gender, medicine, popular culture, and business. Pleasure and Panic brings a dispassionate voice to current debates about liberalizing drug and alcohol laws and challenges existing ideas about how to deal with the so-called problems of drug and alcohol use.

The woman scientist who saved Americans from thalidomide In the early 1960s, Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration became one of the most celebrated women in America when she prevented a deadly sedative from entering the U.S. market. A Canadian-born pharmacologist and physician, Kelsey saved countless Americans from the devastating side effects of thalidomide, a drug routinely given to pregnant women to prevent morning sickness. As the FDA medical officer charged with reviewing Merrell Pharmaceutical's application for approval in 1960-61, Kelsey was unconvinced that there was sufficient evidence of the drug's efficacy and safety. Despite substantial pressure, she held her ground for nineteen months while the extent of the drug's worldwide damage became known-thousands of stillborn babies, as well as at least 10,000 children across 46 countries born with severe deformities such as missing limbs, arms and legs that resembled flippers, and improperly developed eyes, ears, and other organs. As a result of Kelsey's efforts, thalidomide was never sold in the United States. The incident led Congress to pass the 1962 Drug Amendment, which fundamentally changed drug regulation in America. Those regulations, still in force today, required pharmaceutical companies to conduct phased clinical trials, obtain informed consent from participants in drug testing, and warn the FDA of adverse effects, and it granted the FDA important controls over prescription-drug advertising. One of a small minority of women to earn an advanced degree in science in the 1930s, Kelsey faced challenges that resonate with women scientists to this day. Revered by the public as a “good mother of science,” she went on to act as a formidable gatekeeper against other suspect drugs, such as diesthylstilbestrol (DES) and laetrile. As part of the team that tested anti-malarial drugs on prisoner volunteers during World War II, she later was instrumental in the formulation of ethical protocols for drug testing on prisoners and the vulnerable, including the elderly and children. Yet behind the public adulation, she faced professional jealousies and glass ceilings, political interference with FDA's actions, and ongoing hostility from pharmaceutical industry officials. She was sustained and supported by family and friends, co-workers and mentors, and a lifetime commitment to good science. Based upon FDA archival records, private family papers, and interviews with family and colleagues, this biography brings to light the efforts and legacy of a pioneering woman of science whose contributions are still influential today.

Booze, dope, smokes, and weed. Mind-altering, mood-changing substances have been part of human society for millennia. Pleasure and Panic reveals how attitudes toward drug and alcohol consumption have always been deeply embedded in cultural fears and social, political, and economic disparities. Contributors to this collection explore how drugs and alcohol intersect with diverse histories, including gender, medicine, popular culture, and business. Pleasure and Panic brings a dispassionate voice to current debates about liberalizing drug and alcohol laws and challenges existing ideas about how to deal with the so-called problems of drug and alcohol use.

Moments of Unreason is the first detailed study of a private asylum in North America: the Homewood Retreat in Guelph, Ontario, established in 1883 as an early Canadian venture into corporate health care. Cheryl Krasnick Warsh studies the careers of its first two medical superintendents, Stephen Lett and Alfred Hobbs, which spanned the evolution of mental health theory from moral management to mental therapeutics and, later, neuro-psychiatry. This evolution did not make practical management of the Institute less complex: an under-paid, undertrained work force combined with an unruly patient population resulted in instances of neglect, abuse, and over-medication.