Medical HistoryPub Date : 2025-10-01DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2025.10031
María Mundi-López, Agata Ignaciuk
{"title":"Different aspirations: medicine, activism and uterine vacuum aspiration technology in Spain (1960s-1980s).","authors":"María Mundi-López, Agata Ignaciuk","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.10031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.10031","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article we trace a biography of vacuum aspiration in Spain between the 1960s and 1980s. Analysing the local but transnationally connected history of vacuum aspiration during late Francoism and the democratic transition, we argue that this technology was since the mid-1960s reincarnated in mainstream medical discourse as vacuum curettage, presented as a major medical innovation in diagnosis and therapy. While abortion activists working at the end of the 1970s emphasized the group and political components of a technique they called the 'Karman method', doctors performing illegal abortions within the family planning network defined vacuum aspiration in terms of safety and medical innovation. As we demonstrate, this technique embodied meanings that at times overlapped, at others conflicted, contingent on whether aspirations were linked to medical innovation, pro-abortion activism, or social justice.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"1-21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145199902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Medical HistoryPub Date : 2025-09-15DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2025.10033
Edward Armston-Sheret
{"title":"Nourishing food, clean air and exercise: medical debates over environment and polar hygiene on Robert Falcon Scott's British National Antarctic expedition, 1901-1904 - CORRIGENDUM.","authors":"Edward Armston-Sheret","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.10033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.10033","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"1"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145065037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Medical HistoryPub Date : 2025-09-14DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2025.10025
Nick Hopwood
{"title":"The ghostwriter and the test-tube baby: a medical breakthrough story.","authors":"Nick Hopwood","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.10025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.10025","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Ghostwriting autobiographies has gained so high a profile that novels and films focus on the ghost. To deepen understanding of such collaborations in science and medicine, this article reconstructs the making of <i>A Matter of Life</i> (1980), 'the sensational story of the world's first test-tube baby'. Although critiqued by feminist scholars, revised through research and embellished in fiction, this double autobiography of Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe is still the standard history of the British team's work to achieve in vitro fertilisation (IVF). It is thus high time to investigate the debt acknowledged only by 'gratitude for his invaluable help' to the physician and poet Dannie Abse. I use previously unexploited manuscripts to illuminate relationships among authors, rewriter, and editor, and among those they cast as involved in the research. The records show that Abse rewrote underwhelming drafts for a publisher that had bought and sold the doctors' story of the 'baby of the century' and needed a bestseller. To engage readers, he reworked the text so that alleviating infertility appeared as a career-long quest. As a result of adding vivid scenes with characters and expository dialogue, Abse began to give women-wives, assistants and patients-larger roles in the drama. The objections of Edwards and his circle to various literary references and factual claims were overruled. Yet the authors came across more sympathetically, and IVF was promoted more effectively, than in their own drafts. The process puts recent retellings of the story into perspective and exemplifies how collaboration can shape scientific and medical autobiographies.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"1-24"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145058480","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The treatment of alcoholism that should not exist: Addiction, East German doctors, and Western methods in the German Democratic Republic.","authors":"Markus Wahl","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Addiction was considered 'alien to Socialism'. At least, that was the narrative upheld by the socialist East German state, which thus followed the traditional argumentation of socialist and social democratic movements since the turn of the century. While the state clung to this ideological claim, the consumption and abuse of beer, spirits, and benzodiazepines continued to increase. However, there was never a central strategy for the treatment and prevention of addiction in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The hesitation and ignorance of the state authorities created a vacuum that was filled by local initiatives and expert discussions aimed at improving the situation of people with addictions. In this article, I analyse the introduction of new treatment methods in a psychiatric hospital in the GDR and show that doctors, psychologists, patients, and local officials had certain freedoms to test new approaches, many of which originated in the West. Even though they had to adapt concepts such as the 'therapeutic communities' of British reformer Maxwell Jones to the specific socialist and East German context to avoid restrictions by state authorities, the Berlin Wall did not prevent the transfer of knowledge. This article, therefore, paints a nuanced picture of the therapeutic methods used to treat people with addiction in the GDR. From condemning individuals as outcasts of socialist society for socially deviant drinking behaviour and relying exclusively on aversion therapy and moral accusations, there was a shift towards a mixture of treatments that became increasingly specialised and individualised, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, comparable to Western standards.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"1-18"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144959511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Medical HistoryPub Date : 2025-08-28DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2025.10029
Daniela Koleva
{"title":"'At least our pituitaries will see the world': Pituitary gland export from communist Bulgaria.","authors":"Daniela Koleva","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.10029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.10029","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The article focuses on the export of cadaveric pituitary glands from communist Bulgaria in the 1980s, used for the production of human growth hormone. The case is explored in the broader context of practices and transnational networks for the supply of pituitaries. Special attention is paid to the changes resulting from the turn to the production of recombinant growth hormone in the mid-1980s, which put an end to the international 'market' of pituitary glands. In the last sections, different perspectives are explored to make sense of the case under scrutiny: those of bioethics and biolaw, on the one hand, and of bioeconomy in a globalising world, on the other.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144959419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Medical HistoryPub Date : 2025-08-22DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2025.10021
Wen-Ji Wang, Yan-Je Yin
{"title":"'This restriction of expression': migration, social catastrophes, and psychiatry in Cold War Taiwan.","authors":"Wen-Ji Wang, Yan-Je Yin","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.10021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.10021","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores the intersection of Cold War geopolitics, cultural psychiatry, and migration in Taiwan from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. Building on recent scholarship in cultural psychiatry and Cold War science, it examines how geopolitical tensions shaped psychiatric knowledge production in East Asia. Focusing on the psychological and social impact of the 1949 mass migration, when over a million Chinese immigrants arrived in Taiwan, alongside the clinical and academic work of Taiwanese psychiatrists, the study highlights how migration and societal upheaval became central research concerns. Operating under the authoritarian Kuomintang regime and within the constraints and opportunities of international politics, Taiwanese psychiatrists - most of whom were native-born with colonial backgrounds - drew on intellectual traditions from imperial Japan, fascist Germany, and the Cold War Western bloc. Navigating both global psychiatric discourses and local concerns, they positioned themselves as key contributors to the international development of psychiatric research. While their portrayals of Chinese character structure and family dynamics sometimes reflected essentialist views, their work also demonstrated a nuanced awareness of historical change and contemporary realities during a period of intense political repression and uncertainty. By analysing archival sources and medical texts, this article illuminates the complex interplay between geopolitics and psychiatric knowledge production in Cold War Taiwan.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"1-18"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144959555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Medical HistoryPub Date : 2025-08-22DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2025.10026
Madeleine Mant, Judy Chau, Bryce Hull, Maryam Khan, Mollie Sheptenko, Mia Taranissi, Charlotte Parry, Fred O'Dell, Andrew Williams
{"title":"Little lives-reading between the lines: insights from the Northampton Infirmary Eighteenth Century Child Admission Database.","authors":"Madeleine Mant, Judy Chau, Bryce Hull, Maryam Khan, Mollie Sheptenko, Mia Taranissi, Charlotte Parry, Fred O'Dell, Andrew Williams","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.10026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.10026","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The presence of children in eighteenth-century English voluntary hospitals is an area of increasing interest and attention. The Northampton Infirmary admission records detail inpatient and outpatient ages from 1744 to 1804, allowing for longitudinal investigations of children in the institution. The most common distempers affecting children were surgical infections, infectious diseases, and skin diseases; fifty-six per cent of the child patients were male and 43.3 per cent were female. Nearly seventy-five per cent of children left the hospital 'cured'. This article outlines the Northampton Infirmary Eighteenth Century Child Admission Database, and demonstrates how the patterning of distempers within and among children provides insight into the health journeys of eighteenth-century children through the lens of their bodies, their parents, and their institutional recommenders.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144959436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Medical HistoryPub Date : 2025-08-22DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2025.10016
Delphine Berdah
{"title":"Situated efficacy: FMD vaccines in France and Britain, 1930s-1960s.","authors":"Delphine Berdah","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.10016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.10016","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Following the trajectories of vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in France and Britain up to the 1960s, this paper will show how vaccine efficacy has two meanings: 1) technical - or <i>experimental</i> - which refers to test protocols and regimes of evidence, and 2) practical - or <i>experiential</i> - which refers to the experience various actors have of diseases and their direct or indirect impacts on society and the economy, as well as on representations and imaginaries they share about diseases, vaccines, and vaccination. The assessment protocols in the two countries are analysed to show how these two meanings are deeply intertwined and influence the different public policies chosen by each country. Although statistically assessed, the efficacy of the same vaccines appears situated, depending not only on regimes of evidence but also on the reality of agricultural practices, on national stock exchanges, and on various imaginaries about animal health and the absence of disease that differ between and within countries. As a consequence, this analysis reveals how public policies regarding vaccination do not always come from governmental incentives but can also emerge from private and local initiatives.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"1-16"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144959408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Medical HistoryPub Date : 2025-08-06DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2025.10018
Dmitry Ezrokhi
{"title":"The lower cavity: the origins and history of an anatomical idea.","authors":"Dmitry Ezrokhi","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.10018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.10018","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper examines the history of the 'lower cavity' of the gastrointestinal tract, a distinctive anatomical feature in Greco-Roman medicine that described a second stomach-like organ in the large intestine. It traces how a bipartite model of the digestive system emerged in fourth-century bce Greek medical and philosophical thought and persisted in the works of influential figures such as Galen, Vesalius, and Glisson, despite shifts in terminology, anatomical observations, and physiological theories. The study demonstrates that this understanding arose primarily from three complementary factors: a specific terminology that paired the stomach with a lower cavity, systematic animal dissections that revealed pronounced caeca in certain species, and emerging physiological theories that required separate bodily receptacles for digested food and residues. Through this case study, the paper illuminates how premodern anatomical knowledge was articulated by a constant negotiation between animal bodies, human bodies, and past textual authorities, facilitating the surprising longevity of ideas like the 'lower cavity' in the gastrointestinal tract.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144789526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Medical HistoryPub Date : 2025-07-18DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2025.10019
Ilari Virtanen, Kalle Kananoja
{"title":"Popular health guides and their reception in Finland, 1890s-1970s.","authors":"Ilari Virtanen, Kalle Kananoja","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.10019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.10019","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores the cultivation of medical knowledge via popular health guides among the Finnish lay populace from the 1890s to the 1970s. By using written reminiscences and newspaper articles as source material, the article discusses the relevance, popularity, and practical use of various printed health guides and manuals throughout Finland. We place particular focus on the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century as the period that experienced a high increase in lay education and literacy. By focusing on individual readers and their experiences of popular health guides, the article examines lay medical and health practices as the number of medical manuals dramatically increased from the late nineteenth century onwards. It also investigates the reception of medical, popular and irregular health movements, such as hygienism, nature cure, and Couéist autosuggestion, and the change in medical culture brought about by the appearance of patent medicines. As the information discovered in popular health guides tended to fluctuate between official and irregular medical theory, we analyse the relationship between learned, alternative, and vernacular medicine through the views and opinions expressed by people who engaged with health literature. Through these materials, we provide a novel understanding of the accessibility of medical knowledge, the spread and impact of health guides, and attitudes towards different medical practices among the Finnish reading public.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144659597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}