While the statistics for obesity have been alarming in the twenty-first century, concern about fatness has a history. In Fighting Fat, Wendy Mitchinson discusses the history of obesity and fatness from 1920 to 1980 in Canada. Through the context of body, medicine, weight measurement, food studies, fat studies, and the identity of those who were fat, Mitchinson examines the attitudes and practices of medical practitioners, nutritionists, educators, and those who see themselves as fat. Fighting Fat analyzes a number of sources to expose our culture's obsession with body image. Mitchinson looks at medical journals, both their articles and the advertisements for drugs for obesity, as well as magazine articles and advertisements, including popular "before and after" weight loss stories. Promotional advertisements reveal how the media encourages negative attitudes towards body fat. The book also includes over 30 interviews with Canadians who defined themselves as fat, highlighting the emotional toll caused by the stigmatizing of fatness.

In this energetic new study, Wendy Mitchinson traces medical perspectives on the treatment of women in Canada in the first half of the twentieth century. It is based on in-depth research in a variety of archival sources, including Canadian medical journals, textbooks used in many of Canada's medical faculties, popular health literature, patient case records, and hospital annual reports, as well as interviews with women who lived during the period. Each chapter examines events throughout a woman's life cycle - puberty, menstruation, sexuality, marriage and motherhood - and the health problems connected to them - infertility, birth control and abortion, gynaecology, cancer, nervous disorders, and menopause. Mitchinson provides a sensitive understanding of the physician/patient relationship, the unease of many doctors about the bodies of their female patients, as well as overriding concerns about the relationship between female and male bodies. Throughout the book, Mitchinson takes care to examine the roles and agency of both patients and practitioners as diverse individuals.

Case files, records from all kinds of social, medical, governmental, military, and other agencies, become available to researchers once confidentiality is no longer in question. Such records are an important source for scholars in social history and related fields, providing insight not only into the lives of ordinary people but into the workings of the agencies that kept the records as well. Case files contain a wealth of information and challenge researchers by their complexity and the variety of approaches and methodologies their analysis demands. On the Case is a timely book intended to provide a forum for discussing the theoretical and methodological issues that case files raise. The book brings together theoretical debates, new research, and new research methods and offers compelling illustrations of the drama, conflict, and power relations that the case file can capture.

This collection of essays features some of Canada's leading social historians. Readers will encounter an impressive array of case files, including psychiatrists' accounts of sexual deviants, employment records of sailors, state welfare and Indian Affairs reports, court records, the patient forms of hospital and asylum doctors, and state security files. While the contributors differ in choice of subject and approach, they share a commitment to the progressive traditions of social history. They recover the voices and actions of people - not only of those with power but also of those who seemingly have none.

Case files have proved crucial to scholars developing such new fields of historical study as sexuality, gay and lesbian lives, and domestic violence, and have reinvigorated work in more established fields of history such as immigration, security and intelligence, and the modern welfare state. On the Case is unique in offering new research as well as guiding readers through recent debates and the various theoretical and methodological challenges created by case files.

In this energetic new study, Wendy Mitchinson traces medical perspectives on the treatment of women in Canada in the first half of the twentieth century. It is based on in-depth research in a variety of archival sources, including Canadian medical journals, textbooks used in many of Canada's medical faculties, popular health literature, patient case records, and hospital annual reports, as well as interviews with women who lived during the period. Each chapter examines events throughout a woman's life cycle - puberty, menstruation, sexuality, marriage and motherhood - and the health problems connected to them - infertility, birth control and abortion, gynaecology, cancer, nervous disorders, and menopause. Mitchinson provides a sensitive understanding of the physician/patient relationship, the unease of many doctors about the bodies of their female patients, as well as overriding concerns about the relationship between female and male bodies. Throughout the book, Mitchinson takes care to examine the roles and agency of both patients and practitioners as diverse individuals.

Medical professionals, social policy makers, and the media have all declared that Canada is in the grip of an obesity epidemic. Conceptualizing obesity as a biological condition, these experts insist that it needs to be "prevented" and "managed." Obesity in Canada takes a broader, critical perspective of our supposed epidemic. Examining obesity in its cultural and historical context, the book's contributors ask how we measure health and wellness, where our attitudes to obesity develop from, and what the consequences are of naming and targeting as "obese" those whose body weights do not match our expectations. A broad survey of the issues surrounding the obesity panic in Canada, it is the first collection of fat studies and critical obesity studies from a distinctly Canadian perspective.

In "Giving Birth in Canada," the first historical study of childbirth in Canada, Wendy Mitchinson has written a fascinating account of childbirth rituals in the first half of the twentieth century. Thorough and comprehensive, the work is based on a rich variety of sources, including medical textbooks, the medical periodical press, popular medical advice books, literature published in women's magazines, patient records, and interviews with women who gave birth and physicians who practiced during the period.

Mitchinson follows the birthing experience, from the initial diagnosis of pregnancy, through prenatal care, childbirth - who was present, and where it took place - to obstetrical intervention, postnatal care and the definition of what constituted a normal birth, much of which changed significantly through those years. She explores physicians' responses to the needs of pregnant women, developments in medical practices, and the increasing medicalization of childbirth.

While the book focuses on conventional medical practices, the author's survey of midwifery and Aboriginal birthing practices provides a counterpoint to the approach taken by western medicine and permits valuable discussion about the dynamics of gender and race as they relate to childbirth and, more broadly, to early twentieth-century Canada.

In "Giving Birth in Canada," the first historical study of childbirth in Canada, Wendy Mitchinson has written a fascinating account of childbirth rituals in the first half of the twentieth century. Thorough and comprehensive, the work is based on a rich variety of sources, including medical textbooks, the medical periodical press, popular medical advice books, literature published in women's magazines, patient records, and interviews with women who gave birth and physicians who practiced during the period.

Mitchinson follows the birthing experience, from the initial diagnosis of pregnancy, through prenatal care, childbirth - who was present, and where it took place - to obstetrical intervention, postnatal care and the definition of what constituted a normal birth, much of which changed significantly through those years. She explores physicians' responses to the needs of pregnant women, developments in medical practices, and the increasing medicalization of childbirth.

While the book focuses on conventional medical practices, the author's survey of midwifery and Aboriginal birthing practices provides a counterpoint to the approach taken by western medicine and permits valuable discussion about the dynamics of gender and race as they relate to childbirth and, more broadly, to early twentieth-century Canada.

In 1864 a woman was admitted to the Toronto asylum and diagnosed as suffering from 'mania, ' a not uncommon diagnosis for women, a step beyond 'hysteria.' The cause cited by doctors for the patient's insanity was lactation.

This was one of the scores of cases cited by Wendy Mitchinson in her history of the medical treatment of women in Victorian Canada. The cases, combined with the medical literature of the period, reflect the society's preoccupations, both among the general population and the medical profession. Above all, they illustrate in sharp detail the society's perception of women.

For most medical practitioners, the male body was taken to be the norm; women were 'other.' Doctors were uncomfortable with some of the central physiological experiences of women, such as menstruation and menopause. They often felt that healthy bodies should not undergo such stresses.

From this attitude it was a short leap to viewing the normal functions of women's bodies as illnesses to be treated by specialists. One of the most significant medical developments of this period was the rise of gynaecology and medical obstetrics as major medical specialties. Practitioners used surgical gynaecology to alleviate disorders - mental as well as physical - in women.

In documenting the changing nature of interventional medicine, Mitchinson considers the medical treatment of women within the context of what was available to physicians at the time. She also explores the kind of pressure that women themselves brought to bear. Faced with a medical profession that viewed them as creatures of weakness, women used their strength and stamina to change attitudes and treatments.