{"title":"Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body by Steffan Blayney (review)","authors":"Whitney Laemmli","doi":"10.1353/bhm.2023.a922717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2023.a922717","url":null,"abstract":"<p><span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li> <!-- html_title --> <em>Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body</em>by Steffan Blayney <!-- /html_title --> </li> <li> Whitney Laemmli </li> </ul> Steffan Blayney. <em>Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body</em>. Activist Studies of Science & Technology</article-title>. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2022. xii + 248 pp. Ill. $28.95 (978-1-62534-649-0). <p>Pop open a jar of Bovril in 1916 and you would have encountered a thick, glossy paste with a salty tang and the powerful odor of meat. The substance, first known as Johnston's Fluid Beef, had been developed for Napoleon III's troops in the Franco-Prussian War, but by the first decades of the twentieth century it had become a <strong>[End Page 652]</strong>popular consumer good in Britain. Some savored Bovril slathered on toast with a bit of butter; others diluted it with water to make a warm \"beef tea.\" As Steffan Blayney discusses in his <em>Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body</em>, however, Bovril's popularity was not the result of a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm for meat goo. Instead, its ubiquity was entwined with its maker's promise that Bovril could banish fatigue and boost energy among the country's industrial workers, transforming the \"imperfect biological material of the human body\" into a \"maximally efficient productive machine\" (p. 118).</p> <p>Indeed, Blayney uses Bovril—alongside a host of other foodstuffs, medical products, and factory floor interventions—as part of the book's larger effort to examine the development and consequences of the \"new sciences of work\" in Britain between 1870 and 1939. Beginning by exploring how developments in late nineteenth-century thermodynamics helped produce an idea of the human body as a machine amenable to optimization, Blayney then traces the effects of this conceptual shift on physiological and psychological research, workplace practice, popular culture, and workers' own bodies. The broad outlines of this story—including the hope that the right kind of scientific expertise could provide an \"objective,\" politically neutral solution to the problem of worker unrest—will likely be familiar, especially to readers of Anson Rabinbach's classic text <em>The Human Motor</em>. <sup>1</sup></p> <p>But while Rabinbach focused on developments in continental Europe and the United States, Blayney trains his attention on the United Kingdom, rooting his discussion in the specifics of national dynamics and institutions, including World War I's Health of Munition Workers Committee and the interwar period's Industrial Fatigue Research Board and National Institute of Industrial Psychology. Blayney also pays special attention to the ways in which industrial physiology and industrial psychology eventually supplanted the more obviously coercive te","PeriodicalId":55304,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the History of Medicine","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140199344","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":"Underrepresented Minority Recruitment: Manpower as Motivator in Late Twentieth-Century Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy","authors":"Andrew J. Hogan","doi":"10.1353/bhm.2023.a922709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2023.a922709","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>summary:</p><p>This article offers a historical perspective on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in health professions. Historians have highlighted how workforce shortages have facilitated increased gender diversity in male-dominated scientific and clinical occupations. Less attention has been given to manpower as a motivator for enhancing racial/ethnic diversity. I explore the history of minority recruitment, retention, and inclusion initiatives in occupational therapy and physical therapy after 1970 and examine the evolving ways in which the longstanding underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority health professions students and practitioners was recognized, mobilized, and instrumentalized in each field. I argue that broad-based manpower concerns, though often compelling initial motivators for action, were insufficient for sustaining successful and long-term minority initiatives, due to constant shifts in job market demand. Instead, this article shows that annual and institutionalized minority-specific awards and fundraisers were the most effective strategies for maintaining minority recruitment initiatives over multiple decades.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":55304,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the History of Medicine","volume":"93 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140199350","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":"Hide and Seek: Elmer Belt, Agnes, and the Battle over Castration in Transsexual Surgery, 1953-1962.","authors":"Howard Chiang","doi":"10.1353/bhm.2024.a944546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2024.a944546","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the 1950s, the idea of sex change increasingly assumed the mainstay of public interest. As psychiatrists and psychologists developed new understandings of gender, the role of surgeons is often overlooked in the early history of sex reassignment. This article explores the work of one such doctor, Elmer Belt, a urologist based in Los Angeles. Between 1953 and 1962, Belt operated on twenty-nine male-to-female patients in the face of ethical and material obstacles. Working closely with Harry Benjamin, Belt developed a surgical technique that transplanted the testes inside the abdomen rather than involving full castration. He became involved in the famous case of Agnes Torres, on which other high-profile scientists based their invention of such seminal concepts as \"passing\" and \"gender identity.\" Belt's utilization of Agnes as exemplary evidence to support his technique illustrates how and why testicular retention remained a heated topic in the development of transsexual science.</p>","PeriodicalId":55304,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the History of Medicine","volume":"98 3","pages":"394-427"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142711897","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":"Specialists on Stage: Neurosurgeons, Mass Media, and the Performance of Expertise in the Dutch Welfare State, ca. 1950-1985.","authors":"Bart Lutters","doi":"10.1353/bhm.2024.a955175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2024.a955175","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article traces the remarkable transition of the Dutch neurosurgeons from a rather shielded group of specialists in the early 1950s to a publicly accountable professional community by the mid-1980s. It describes how the neurosurgeons aligned their specialty to the problems and sentiments of the welfare state. In doing so, they exchanged traditional notions of expert authority and doctor anonymity for public performances of expertise that enabled them to stage their specialty in a way that resonated with society and served their professional goals. During this professionalization process, they increasingly came to embody the public image they enacted, seamlessly blending strategic role-play with the genuine performance of professional identity. By analyzing the way the Dutch neurosurgeons adapted their expert performances to the changing rules of expertise in postwar society, the article addresses the entangled relationship between medicine, media, the state, and society in the second half of the twentieth century.</p>","PeriodicalId":55304,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the History of Medicine","volume":"98 4","pages":"587-619"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143796272","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}
Raúl Necochea López, Herman Freeman, Nzia Hall, Candace Henry, Quiara Shade, Imani H Sweatt, Brian Wood
{"title":"Represented: Black Alumni at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, 1960s-1970s.","authors":"Raúl Necochea López, Herman Freeman, Nzia Hall, Candace Henry, Quiara Shade, Imani H Sweatt, Brian Wood","doi":"10.1353/bhm.2024.a955169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2024.a955169","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55304,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the History of Medicine","volume":"98 4","pages":"490-500"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143797236","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":"News and Events.","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/bhm.2024.a955178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2024.a955178","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55304,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the History of Medicine","volume":"98 4","pages":"683-685"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143797233","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":"\"Better Babies, Better Mothers, Better City\": Eugenic Maternalism, the Babies Welfare Association, and the Urban Better Baby Contest.","authors":"Jamie Marsella","doi":"10.1353/bhm.2024.a944545","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2024.a944545","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper offers the term \"eugenic maternalism\" to conceptualize how eugenic thought and practice was disseminated through Progressive Era materialist reform work. Focusing on the Better Babies Contests hosted by the New York City Babies Welfare Association from 1913 to 1916, I argue that the BWA Better Babies Contest provides an opportunity to broaden our understanding of the ways eugenic logic permeated maternalist discussions of child welfare. The contests incentivized mothers and children to participate in educational programming at local community centers, enlisting families in the project of assimilation. Within these spaces, eugenics operated as a reciprocal process of environmental reform, negotiated between reformers and immigrant women. Both participants and organizers acted within a eugenic framework in which their ability to control the environment would determine their future hereditary potential and capacity for citizenship.</p>","PeriodicalId":55304,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the History of Medicine","volume":"98 3","pages":"370-393"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142711885","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":"\"Four Corners and a Void\": Idiocy and Childhood Disability in Nineteenth-Century America.","authors":"Kathryn Irving","doi":"10.1353/bhm.2024.a929784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2024.a929784","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Over the second half of the nineteenth century, thousands of Americans were admitted to schools for so-called idiotic children, later known as institutions for the feebleminded and linked to the Eugenics movement. While idiocy is often presumed to be the antecedent of intellectual disability, an analysis of the stories of three hundred children admitted to one such institution over a forty-year period demonstrates an unexpected diversity of appearances, abilities, and behaviors. Within the walls of the institution, idiocy was composed of children whose perceived abilities deviated from the expectations of their social position. Families further shaped the diagnosis of idiocy by negotiating the timing of admission for their children, influenced not only by personal factors, but by shifting educational and employment opportunities, and cultural tolerance of diversity. Consequently, idiocy became the broadest descriptor of disability during the nineteenth century.</p>","PeriodicalId":55304,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the History of Medicine","volume":"98 1","pages":"61-92"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141332569","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}
Jeffrey P Baker, Damon Tweedy, Sibyl Avery Jackson
{"title":"Can Insiders Be Activists? Narrating Local History Truthfully in an Academic Health Center.","authors":"Jeffrey P Baker, Damon Tweedy, Sibyl Avery Jackson","doi":"10.1353/bhm.2024.a955168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2024.a955168","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55304,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the History of Medicine","volume":"98 4","pages":"481-489"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143797229","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}
Raúl Necochea López, Jeffrey P Baker, Jason E Glenn, Aimee Medeiros, Dominique Tobbell
{"title":"Tapping Historians' Capacities to Confront Racism at Academic Health Centers: Notes of Encouragement and Caution.","authors":"Raúl Necochea López, Jeffrey P Baker, Jason E Glenn, Aimee Medeiros, Dominique Tobbell","doi":"10.1353/bhm.2024.a955167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2024.a955167","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55304,"journal":{"name":"Bulletin of the History of Medicine","volume":"98 4","pages":"475-480"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143796374","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}