Medical History最新文献

{"title":"Surgical innovation, statistical analysis, and professional culture: thymectomy for myasthenia gravis, 1936-2016.","authors":"Mark W Weatherall","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2024.35","DOIUrl":"10.1017/mdh.2024.35","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper provides an account of a specific operation - the removal of the thymus gland (thymectomy) to treat the rare neurological condition myasthenia gravis - from its first performance in 1936, by the American surgeon Alfred Blalock, to the publication in 2016 of an international multicentre randomised controlled trial (RCT) of the technique. Thymectomy was the subject of a transatlantic controversy in the 1950s, in which the main players were the English surgeon Geoffrey Keynes, and American neurologists and surgeons from New York, Boston, and the Mayo Clinic. The resolution of this controversy involved the use of increasingly sophisticated statistical techniques, but also crucially other influences including the social transformation of thoracic surgery, and competition between the leading American centres. The consensus achieved after this controversy was challenged in the late 1970s, eventually prompting the implementation of a trial acceptable to twenty-first-century evidence-based medicine. This account will demonstrate that surgical innovation in the period covered required increasing attention to the statistical basis of patient selection and outcome evaluation; that the processes of technical innovation cannot be regarded as separate from developments in the professional culture of surgery, and that one of the consequences of these changes has been the gradual eclipse of the prestigious autonomous surgeon.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"166-182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12041332/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143795733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An 'arsenal for the supply of ammunition for the defence of vaccination': the Jenner Society and anti-anti-vaccinationism in England, 1896-1906.","authors":"Matthew L Newsom Kerr","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2024.28","DOIUrl":"10.1017/mdh.2024.28","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although historians have given close attention to the anti-vaccination movement that gripped late-Victorian England, relatively little scholarship explores how doctors and health officials responded or asks what strategies and assumptions structured how they might oppose the vaccine opponents. This article traces the advent and actions of the Jenner Society, a smallpox vaccination advocacy group founded in 1896 by Dr. Francis Bond. His goal was to publicly confront the leading anti-vaccinationists and to effectively conduct an <i>anti-anti-vaccination</i> campaign. The Jenner Society appeared amidst disputes over how and even whether vaccination should be publicly debated - disputes shaped both by long-standing attitudes toward professional propriety and also by indecision about what sorts of political advocacy were suitable for medical practitioners. Vaccination was shifting toward a more voluntary administration, and the Jenner Society represents how civil society, the popular press, and the modern tools of persuasion were becoming increasingly central to public health governance. The Jenner Society encapsulated the profession's disdainful attitude toward populist medical dissent, and this essay argues that the tone and deportment of anti-anti-vaccinationism had the effect of encouraging doctors to overlook and neglect other, probably more significant, sources of vaccine skepticism. Preoccupied with rebutting and attacking vaccination's enemies, public \"controversialists\" like Bond waged the first true large-scale pro-vaccination propaganda campaign, but they ultimately were unable to address the underlying dynamics of vaccine evasion. This history holds important lessons today for those interested in constructing more effective ways to effectively counteract medical misinformation and anti-vaccinationist beliefs.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"76-98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12041328/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143468484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Immunity for sale: depictions of immunity in British newspaper advertising, 1890-1940.","authors":"Maebh Long","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2024.26","DOIUrl":"10.1017/mdh.2024.26","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article analyses the depictions of immunity and immunological functions employed in proprietary medical advertising in British newspapers between 1890 and 1940. Using marketing copy to gain insights into the ways immunity was presented to the public and normalised outside of medical institutions and publications, I offer four main areas of discussion. First, I present an analysis of the ways advertisements evoked both natural and artificial immunity in their marketing copy, thereby affording us insights into the ways immunity was made palatable both to those supportive of and opposed to vaccinations. I then unpack the ways in which this advertising copy often emphasised immunity rather than the immunological, that is, presented immunity as resistance to infection achieved by purchasing particular brands, rather than as part of a defensive process taking place at a cellular level. Third, I examine the ways in which advertisements engaged with futurity and drew on a narrative of social exclusion that pitted created communities of the immune against the non-immune. Finally, I analyse the ways in which immunity was used to connect the biological and the psychological, looking particularly at the ways immunity against worry was sold to the public.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":" ","pages":"99-118"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12041330/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143625272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"MDH volume 69 issue 1 Cover and Front matter.","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2025.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2025.14","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":"69 1","pages":"f1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144003238","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":"Institutional care and education: circulation of knowledge about epilepsy in Sweden 1915–40","authors":"Johanna Ringarp","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2024.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2024.23","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article focuses on the circulation of knowledge about epilepsy in Sweden between 1915 and 1940. During the period medical research on epilepsy increased, which simultaneously brought a new degree of specialisation and distinction between branches of medicine. The aim of this article is to study the impact of new medical knowledge about epilepsy on the treatment and education of children with epilepsy in Sweden. In order to concretise the aim, the study focuses on the asylum Margarethahemmet. The key source material consists of Margarethahemmet’s annual reports and yearbooks. The minutes of the meetings of the Swedish General Association for the Care of the Feebleminded and Epileptic for the period 1915–1938 have been used as supplementary material. In order to trace the impact of medical discoveries on Margarethahemmet’s operations, contemporary scientific articles, mostly from Germany, have also been used. The article demonstrates how new research and new knowledge was sought internationally and nationally, to provide doctors and special teachers at the asylum with a proper knowledge about education, care and treatment for children with epilepsy. The increased understanding of the disease directly impacted the ability of a stigmatized group – people with epileptic disorder – to actively participate in society on the same terms as others.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142257613","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":"Response to: Reflections on ‘Have we lost sleep?’","authors":"Niall Patrick Boyce","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2024.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2024.18","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I would like to thank Professor Ekirch for his reflections on ‘Have we lost sleep?’, which contain several points that I have already responded to within the paper following his peer review of my original submission to <span>Medical History</span> in 2023 (Professor Ekirch having voluntarily identified himself as a reviewer in a normally double-blind process). I acknowledge that the focus of my paper was on Ekirch’s original work from 2001; if I did not engage as he would have wished with his subsequent publications, this was simply because I do not perceive the same substantial developments in his thinking and research on the subject that he does. Indeed, the present critique by Ekirch amounts essentially to more of the same: a long list of references and quotes but little detailed discussion of any individual source. As my paper demonstrates, seemingly unambiguous evidence from a brief quotation can become less clear-cut when placed in context. I am sorry if I deploy the word ‘might’ more than Ekirch would like. This reflects, I hope, a healthy degree of uncertainty and intellectual humility in my approach to the complex issue of pre-industrial sleep. To extend Ekirch’s metaphor, if the jigsaw puzzle that both he and I are trying to assemble can take the form of a cat or a dog, it is possible that its true form is neither animal. The extent to which people woke in the night in pre-industrial Europe, the duration of such awakening, and the predominant cultural attitude towards this—concern, acceptance, or indifference—are topics about which it would seem wise to avoid sweeping statements and generalisations, given the relatively long period covered and the social, cultural, and individual diversity that must be taken into consideration. I can only repeat that I think amassing more brief references, and selectively citing relatively small physiological studies and anthropological evidence from global settings, is unlikely to provide much clarity, let alone definitive answers. I welcome Professor Ekirch’s contribution to this discussion as an indication that the question of segmented sleep in early modern Europe is by no means settled but is a matter of ongoing debate.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142269261","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":"Reflections on ‘Have we lost sleep?’","authors":"A. Roger Ekirch","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2024.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2024.20","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The article, ‘Have we lost sleep? A reconsideration of segmented sleep in early modern England’, <span>Medical History</span>, 67, 2 (2023), 91–108, by Niall Boyce is devoted to criticising my historical research pertaining to 1) the predominance of segmented sleep in the pre-industrial Western world and 2) the nineteenth-century transition of sleep to today’s pattern of continuous slumber that most people in modern societies seek to achieve, albeit not always successfully. This response addresses Boyce’s reinterpretation of the evidence and indicates whether this is erroneous or selective. My analysis thereby reasserts the predominance of segmented sleep in pre-modern Western Europe. Boyce’s assessment rests not on his original investigation of primary sources but on my first study relating to segmented sleep, published in 2001. Not least of the flaws of ‘Have We Lost Sleep?’ is its surprising inattention to my subsequent works that have expanded, modified, and bolstered this initial publication.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":"88 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182481","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 Medical and Physical Journal and the construction of medical journalism in Britain, 1733–1803","authors":"Alan Mackintosh","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2024.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2024.19","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Medical practitioners, inevitably scattered across the country, need frequent periodicals to communicate the latest medical information. Journals are an essential component of the infrastructure of modern medicine, yet they were slow to achieve firm roots in Britain during the eighteenth century, with few sustained quarterly periodicals and the only attempt at a monthly lasting a year. Then in 1799, Richard Phillips, owner of <span>the Monthly Magazine</span>, published the <span>Medical and Physical Journal</span>, the first sustained monthly medical journal, which lasted for thirty-four years. Ever since, Britain has never been without a monthly or weekly general medical journal. Responding to the need for a strong commercial focus, the <span>Journal</span> used a magazine format which blended reviews and abstracts of already published material with original contributions and medical news, and it quickly achieved a national circulation by close engagement with all types of practitioners across the country.</p><p>Contrary to the historiography, the <span>Journal</span> was distinctly different from the contemporaneous monthly science journals. The key to success was two-way communication with all practitioners, especially the numerous surgeons and surgeon-apothecaries who were increasingly better trained and confident of their status. Much of the content of the <span>Journal</span> was written by these readers, and with rapid, reliable distribution and quick publication of correspondence, controversial topics could be bounced back and forth between all practitioners, including the distinguished. Initially, the editors tried to maximise circulation by avoiding any controversy, but this started to change in the first few years of the next century.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182480","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":"Treating with minerals in the Middle Ages: the rare substance mūmiyāʾ (pitch-asphalt) and its medicinal uses in Byzantium","authors":"Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, Fabian Käs","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2024.25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2024.25","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Premodern medicine used a variety of mineral substances for therapeutic purposes. The present article deals with pitch-asphalt, and, in particular, a precious kind of it called <span>mūmiyāʾ</span> originating in Persia. It was first described in detail in the Arabic pharmacological tradition, and its fame spread throughout the medieval Mediterranean, including Byzantium. By editing and examining for the first time a previously unexplored medieval Greek text on <span>mūmiyāʾ</span>, this study offers new insights into the medicinal uses of this substance. It also significantly increases our understanding of the intense cross-cultural transfer of medical knowledge from the Islamicate world to Byzantium by showing that this was not merely based on the translation of a few Arabic medical works into Greek, but was a multifaceted phenomenon involving a complex nexus of sources that require further investigation.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182482","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 first recorded outbreak of epidemic dropsy, 1877–80: Climate, empire, and colonial medical science between India, Bengal, and Mauritius","authors":"Yadhav Deerpaul, Alexander Springer, Philip Gooding","doi":"10.1017/mdh.2024.24","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2024.24","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article reconstructs the first outbreak of epidemic dropsy recorded in documentary evidence, which occurred in Calcutta, Mauritius, and northeastern India and Bengal in 1877–80. It uses current medical knowledge and investigations into the wider historical contexts in which the epidemic occurred to re-read the colonial medical literature of the period. It shows that colonial policies and structures in the context of variable enviro-climatic conditions increased the likelihood that an epidemic would break out, while also increasing the vulnerability of certain populations to infection and mortality. Additionally, it shows how the trans-regional nature of the epidemic contributed to varying understandings of the disease between two colonial medical establishments, which influenced each other in contradictory ways. The article’s core contributions are to recent trans-regional perspectives on disease transmission and colonial medical knowledge production in the Indian Ocean World.</p>","PeriodicalId":18275,"journal":{"name":"Medical History","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182478","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}