The contributors to this collection look into the experiences of women in the Western world going through pregnancy and birth over the last hundred years.

This edited collection looks at the experiences of women going through pregnancy and birth over the last 100 years. The essays explore the impact of the professionalization of the medical services, the factors that influenced women's decisions over their choice of healthcare and whether childbirth was seen as a natural or a medical event.

Tuberculosis was perceived for the first time in the early twentieth century as a major problem warranting state involvement in a national campaign for its eradication. This book examines the rise of the anti-tuberculosis movement in Britain, and the development of a new public health service and medical specialism, discussing why the campaign took the particular form it did. The importance of the study lies in its conception of medical history not as a series of scientific discoveries and technological developments, but as an integral part of a broader social and political scene. The patient, often neglected in medical history, is given close attention in an attempt to understand how the disease has been viewed during this century, and the impact it has had on society. Below the Magic Mountain shows that medicine cannot be understood in isolation from the society of which it is a part.