{"title":"Supplying Relief: Civil Medical Assistance during the Korean War, 1950-3.","authors":"Dongkue Lee, Mark Harrison","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkaf068","DOIUrl":"10.1093/shm/hkaf068","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study examines the United Nation (UN)'s efforts to provide emergency relief for civilians during the Korean War, one of the deadliest and most devastating conflicts for civilians since World War II. The UN coordinated civilian relief during and after the war, developing a logistical system, legal framework and payment mechanism through UK banks in pounds sterling, and a distribution strategy based on European experience. United Nations Korean Reconstruction Agency (UNKRA) managed financial and legal issues, determined packing and shipping methods, resolved storage problems and distributed medical supplies in the field, either through United Nations Civil Assistance Corps Korea or UNKRA. The UN's efforts to provide civilian medical assistance to Korea set an exemplary model for later relief efforts and this study shows how this holistic system was created on the basis of experience gained during World War II and the creation of entirely new mechanisms for purchasing and delivering medical aid.</p>","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":" ","pages":"hkaf068"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7618686/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146107329","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}
James Lancaster, Peter Roderick, Allyson M Pollock
{"title":"The Struggles That Led to the Unwise Demise of the Public Health Laboratory Service, 1979-2003, in the Context of Changing Economic Policy.","authors":"James Lancaster, Peter Roderick, Allyson M Pollock","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkaf049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkaf049","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) was an integral part of England's post-war communicable disease control. Its central reference and surveillance facilities and network of laboratories in NHS hospitals was an international exemplar. Under neoliberal economic policy from the 1980s it faced intense scrutiny and expenditure constraints. Attempts to transfer its peripheral laboratories to the NHS were successfully opposed by arguing that public health needs would not be prioritised. The 1990s introduction of the internal market and capital charging fractured the complex relationships that had developed between the PHLS and NHS. Required to enter market-like contractual arrangements with NHS bodies, it found most of its funding switched from government grant to contract-generated income. This was unsustainable. The PHLS was dismantled in 2003 without a clear rationale, ostensibly because of complexity, preferential financial treatment, and professional rivalries. When Covid-19 arrived, England lacked an established and extensive public health laboratory network.</p>","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":"39 2","pages":"440-470"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13474422/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148761396","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":"The Necessities of Life: Japanese Colonial Policy as a Social Determinant of Ainu Health, 1876-1887.","authors":"Michael Roellinghoff","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkaf039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkaf039","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this paper, I reassess the Meiji period (1868-1912) Japanese public health and Indigenous management policies, focussing on the Karafuto Ainu in Tsuishikari, Hokkaido. Utilising Indigenised public health frameworks, I argue that colonial policies, including forced migration, sedentarisation and paternalistic management, were significant aetiological causes of disease in Ainu communities. This approach allows us to challenge received historiographical understandings of Ainu health, which often characterise the Ainu as having been disproportionately impacted by epidemic disease because they collectively possessed 'no immunity' to numerous contagions and/or an understanding of 'hygiene'. The latter especially reflects the views of colonial hygiene inspectors who visited Tsuishikari. Pathologising Ainu culture and domestic life, Japanese officials aimed to 'cure' the Ainu of their many afflictions through zero-sum assimilation measures. However, by disavowing the material impact of colonisation on Ainu health and wellbeing, this served only to further entrench those policies which rendered Tsuishikari residents vulnerable to the spread of epidemic disease.</p>","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":"38 4","pages":"810-829"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12817968/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146019717","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}
Margarita Vilar-Rodríguez, Daniel Peñín-Agra, Bruno Casal Rodríguez
{"title":"Historical Evolution of the Public Hospital System in Spain, 1963-2019: A Path to Equity in Healthcare Access?","authors":"Margarita Vilar-Rodríguez, Daniel Peñín-Agra, Bruno Casal Rodríguez","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkaf058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkaf058","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article contributes to the academic debate on the impact of disparities in the spatial distribution of healthcare resources on the quality of the public health system from a historical perspective. In particular, it analyses the evolution of inequalities in the provincial distribution of public hospital beds in Spain during the Franco dictatorship and the more than four decades of the current democracy. The long study period under consideration and the new statistical data used make it possible to examine to what extent the impact of political, economic and socio-demographic factors affected the equitable distribution of hospital coverage in the country.</p>","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":"39 3","pages":"639-664"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13583626/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148991516","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":"Preventing Epidemics at the Borders: The Public Health Policy of the Greek State (1821-1909).","authors":"Yannis Gonatidis, Maria Pappa, Leda Papastefanaki","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkaf036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkaf036","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The paper traces the evolution of the public health measures taken by the Greek state for its protection from the spread of epidemic diseases, particularly plague and cholera, from abroad, and the development of the network of health authorities during the nineteenth century. In the article, use is made for the first time of the whole of the public health legislation of the Greek state during the period 1821-1909 (more than 1,700 laws, decrees, and circulars) on its protection from the spread of epidemic diseases. In contrast with the meagre accounts in the international bibliography, which represents the public health policy of the Greek state as having been fixed, unchanging, and centred simply on the use of quarantine as a protective measure, this study draws attention to the active, constantly changing, and dynamic policy which was followed during the nineteenth century.</p>","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":"38 4","pages":"787-809"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12817987/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146019736","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":"'To practise the healing art even in the most remote corners of the British Empire': Slavery, Medical Philanthropy, and the University of Edinburgh's Colonial Networks, c. 1789-1794.","authors":"Simon Buck","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkaf050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkaf050","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article looks at the 1790s campaign to finance the construction of the University of Edinburgh's Old College through private philanthropy. It shows how the project was seen as necessary to accommodate the growing Edinburgh Medical School, and how Trustees sought out and secured funds from Britain's Caribbean and Indian colonies, and from medical professionals in Britain and abroad. Using lists of subscribers, alongside medical journals, private correspondence and the University's archival records, this article constructs a prosopography of Old College's Caribbean medical subscribers. By analysing the subscribers' wide-ranging and lifelong connections to the University as former students and correspondents with its professors, alongside their activities as physicians, scientists, enslavers and proslavery lobbyists, this paper demonstrates how records of philanthropy can serve as snapshots of British academic and medical institutions' colonial networks and entanglements with Atlantic slavery.</p>","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":"39 2","pages":"471-495"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2025-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13474423/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148760305","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":"What Is a Doctor? Braided Global Histories of Medical Assistants, Intermediaries and Auxiliaries.","authors":"Clare Herrick","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkaf041","DOIUrl":"10.1093/shm/hkaf041","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The 'Physician Associate' (PA) is one of numerous assistants and auxiliaries that staff healthcare systems across the world. Advocates for the role often trace its origins to North American manpower experiments that aimed to address the 'doctor shortage' of the 1960s in creative and cost-effective ways. As this article explores, this geographically narrow origin story not only omits the careful 'crafting' of the American PA role over six decades, but importantly, obscures the interconnected histories of medical assistants and auxiliaries across the world. To address this geographic myopia, this article traces a braided history of the PA and explores, first, how the role emerged <i>from</i> and <i>in relation to</i> the already widespread use of medical assistants across many developing and developed countries. It then examines the imbrication of the PA role within international efforts to develop solutions to medical manpower shortages across developing and developed countries from the 1960s onwards.</p>","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":"39 1","pages":"185-205"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13034119/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147594338","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":"From Sick Bed to Death Bed? Patient Composition and Mortality in the Amsterdam Binnengasthuis, 1856-1896.","authors":"Nadeche Diepgrond, Tim Riswick","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkaf046","DOIUrl":"10.1093/shm/hkaf046","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Hospitals played a central role in the nineteenth century, as these institutions were the so-called gateways to death or places of healing. Who was admitted and if there is inequality in who died is, however, often understudied. Our study examines the development and mortality risks of the patient population in the Binnengasthuis in Amsterdam over time by analysing detailed patient records of people admitted to the hospital in the period 1856-1896. Our results demonstrate that mortality was not extremely high and depended on the admission policy, the composition of the patient populations was very diverse, and that mortality risks were mainly determined by the disease, year, age, and marital status of the admitted patients. This indicates that a diverse population could get a sick bed, for most it would not become their death bed, and that inequality in mortality risks within the hospital based on socioeconomic status or religion was limited.</p>","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":"39 1","pages":"206-234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13034118/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147594293","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":"Persistence and Innovation in the Greco-Roman Medical Tradition: The Reading and Writing Practices of a Tenth-Century Monk.","authors":"Silvia M Marchiori","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkaf032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkaf032","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>By offering an organic reading of the tenth-century medical miscellany BnF, Lat. 7028, this article questions assumptions about the erratic and rudimentary nature of early medieval medicine, highlighting the compiler's purposeful selection and manipulation of contents. Following the tenets of the ancient sect of Rationalists, as described in Celsus' <i>De medicina</i>, the compiler gathered a consistent yet non-linear compendium, blending texts about the mythological Greek origins of medicine, anatomical parts, natural philosophy and different sets of therapeutical options, encompassing regimen, medications, and surgery. The Greek-Latin monk Johannes Philagathos is arguably the intellectual author of this eclectic miscellany, which he assembled thanks to networks of people and books that circulated between Byzantine and Ottonian areas. While preserving ancient and late antique medical traditions and visual models, this manuscript witnessed the reception of medicinal drugs from eastern lands and their inclusion in recipes, a few centuries before the flourishing of the School of Salerno.</p>","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":"38 4","pages":"723-747"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12817978/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146019751","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":"'Brought in Dead': Post-Mortem Glimpses of the Early 'Heroin Epidemic' in Ireland, 1971-1983.","authors":"Oisín Wall","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae094","DOIUrl":"10.1093/shm/hkae094","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores the formation of Ireland's first 'hard drug' culture. To do this, it uses the coroners' reports on drug-related deaths in Dublin between 1971, when the first overdose by a regular user was recorded, and 1983, when the first Irish 'heroin epidemic' peaked. Through these reports, the article constructs a macro-view of the demographics involved in 'hard drug' use and the changing trends within the subculture. It contrasts this overview with the lived experience of the drug culture by developing a series of micro-histories of specific people who used drugs during this period, which both illustrate and counterpoint the statistical trends. In doing so, it demystifies the 'hard drug' culture and reinserts it into the history of Irish everyday life.</p>","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":"39 1","pages":"24-47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13034122/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147594257","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}