"Dangerous Motherhood" is the first study of the close and complex relationship between mental disorder and childbirth. Exploring the relationship between women, their families and their doctors reveals how explanations for the onset of puerperal insanity were drawn from a broad set of moral, social and environmental frameworks, rather than being bound to ideas that women as a whole were likely to be vulnerable to mental illness. The horror of this devastating disorder which upturned the household and turned gentle mothers into disruptive and dangerous, mad women, was magnified by its occurrence at a time when it was anticipated that women would be most happy in the fulfillment of their role as mothers.

This first book-length study of girls' health in modern Britain explores how debates and advice on healthy girlhood, invoking new visions and practices of health, shaped ideas about the lives and potential of adolescent girls from the 1870s to the 1920s. It demonstrates how the 'modern girl' with her 'modern body' was created during this period, as a range of new experts promoted innovative approaches to hygiene, diet and exercise. Theories concerning the biological limitations of female adolescence were challenged and replaced with a growing emphasis on the importance of behaviour in producing good health, and girls deemed responsible for taking care of their own wellbeing. New practices of health, though varying significantly across the social classes, enabled the extension of girls' roles in education, work, sport, and recreation, and fed into the creation of a new cultural category of 'girlhood' as a discrete and important phase between childhood and womanhood.

This volume examines the relationship between migration, health and illness in a global context from c.1820 to the present day. Bringing together leading scholars from the history of medicine and social policy, it assesses the changing health status of migrant groups in a period encompassing Imperial expansion, decolonisation and new waves of economic and political migration in the twentieth century. Focusing chiefly on the Anglophone world, the volume takes a wide range of case studies to explore the themes of epidemic disease and its containment, chronic illness and mental breakdown in Britain, the US, Israel and the Caribbean. The concerns of the volume echo and enable reflection upon the health challenges experienced by migrants and countries of destinations in recent years.

This first major study of girls' health in modern Britain explores how debates and advice on healthy girlhood shaped ideas about the lives of young women from the 1870s to the 1920s, as theories concerning the biological limitations of female adolescence were challenged and girls moved into new arenas in the workplace, sport and recreation.

The volume focuses on the relationship between migration, health and illness in a global context from c.1820 to the present day. It takes a wide range of finely-grained case studies to examine epidemic disease and its containment, chronic illness and mental breakdown and the health management of migrant populations in the modern world.

Dangerous Motherhood is the first study of the close and complex relationship between mental disorder and childbirth. Exploring the relationship between women, their families and their doctors reveals how explanations for the onset of puerperal insanity were drawn from a broad set of moral, social and environmental frameworks, rather than being bound to ideas that women as a whole were likely to be vulnerable to mental illness. The horror of this devastating disorder which upturned the household, turned gentle mothers into disruptive and dangerous mad women, was magnified by it occurring at a time when it was anticipated that women would be most happy in the fulfillment of their role as mothers.