Medical confidentiality is an essential cornerstone of effective public health systems, and for centuries societies have struggled to maintain the illusion of absolute privacy.
Since the late nineteenth century, medicine has sought to foster the birth of healthy children by attending to the bodies of pregnant women, through what we have come to call prenatal care.
In The Province of Affliction, Ben Mutschler explores the surprising roles that illness played in shaping the foundations of New England society and government from the late seventeenth century through the early nineteenth century.
Like many of the traditional medicines of South Asia, Ayurvedic practice transformed dramatically in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Eating the Enlightenment offers a new perspective on the history of food, looking at writings about cuisine, diet, and food chemistry as a key to larger debates over the state of the nation in Old Regime France.
Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842) was a medical reformer in a great age of reform-an occasional and reluctant vivisectionist, a theistic popularizer of natural science, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a surgeon, an artist, and a teacher.
When asked to compare the practice of medicine today to that of a hundred years ago, most people will respond with a story of therapeutic revolution: Back then we had few effective remedies, but now we have more (and more powerful) tools to fight disease, from antibiotics to psychotropics to steroids to anticancer agents.
An innovative, deeply researched history of Chinese medicine in America and the surprising interplay between Eastern and Western medical practice Chinese medicine has a long history in the United States, with written records dating back to the American colonial period.
During the first half of the twentieth century, representatives of the French colonial health services actively strove to expand the practice of Western medicine in the frontier colony of Cambodia.
A short and thoughtful introduction to traditional Chinese medicine that looks beyond the conventional boundaries of Western modernism and biomedical science Traditional Chinese medicine is often viewed as mystical or superstitious, with outcomes requiring naïve faith.
This fascinating book tells the story of the Yale University School of Medicine, tracing its history from its origins in 1810 (when it had four professors and 37 students) to its present status as one of the world’s outstanding medical schools.
A noted medical historian explores the roles played by various intellectual frameworks and trends in the writing of history A collection of ten essays paired with substantial prefaces, this book chronicles and contextualizes Roger Cooter’s contributions to the history of medicine.
A revealing look at how the memory of the plague held the poor responsible for epidemic disease in eighteenth-century Britain Britain had no idea that it would not see another plague after the horrors of 1666, and for a century and a half the fear of epidemic disease gripped and shaped British society.
A challenging new look at the entwined histories of genetic medicine and eugenics, with thoughtful discussion on the moral risks of seeking human perfection Almost daily we hear news stories, advertisements, and scientific reports that promise genetic medicine will make us live longer, enable doctors to identify and treat diseases before they start, and individualize our medical care.
A spectacularly illustrated history of an enigmatic surgical diagramThe Wound Mana medical diagram depicting a figure fantastically pierced by weapons and ravaged by injuries and diseaseswas reproduced widely across the medieval and early modern globe.
A vivid recreation of how the governors and governed of early seventeenth-century Florence confronted, suffered, and survived a major epidemic of plaguePlague remains the paradigm against which reactions to many epidemics are often judged.
A noted clinical epidemiologist shows how evidence-based medicine can help us understand and assess news about health risks, cures, and treatment “breakthroughs” The press and other media constantly report news stories about dangerous chemicals in the environment, miracle cures, the safety of therapeutic treatments, and potential cancer-causing agents.
An ambitious, landmark history of the Scientific Revolution, from the age of Columbus to the age of Cook In 1492 Columbus set out across the Atlantic; in 1776 American colonists declared their independence.
A uniquely accessible way of looking at recent major advances in the science of embryonic development In the span of just three decades, scientific understanding of the formation of embryos has undergone a major revolution.
In the first in-depth study of how gender determined perceptions and experiences of illness in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, Olivia Weisser invites readers into the lives and imaginations of ordinary men and women.
Generating Bodies and Gendered Selves examines the textured interrelations between medical writing about generation and childbirth - what we now call reproduction - and emerging notions of selfhood in early modern England.
Strange Harvest illuminates the wondrous yet disquieting medical realm of organ transplantation by drawing on the voices of those most deeply involved: transplant recipients, clinical specialists, and the surviving kin of deceased organ donors.
Ten Follies: A Journey Around the World in Ten Forms of Madness focuses on a critical question in the history of psychiatry: to what extent does psychopathology describe phenomena that exist before or beyond their description?
The first book of its kind, Forensic Medicine in Western Society: A History draws on the most recent developments in the historiography, to provide an overview of the history of forensic medicine in the West from the medieval period to the present day.
This ground-breaking, interdisciplinary volume provides an overdue assessment of how infertility has been understood, treated and experienced in different times and places.
This multi-disciplinary essay collection explores the controversial life and achievements of Sir John Hill (1714-1775), a prolific contributor to Georgian England's literature, medicine and science.
This introductory textbook presents medical history as a theoretically rich discipline, one that constantly engages with major social questions about ethics, bodies, state power, disease, public health and mental disorder.
A unique account of a peasant girl's mental illness in nineteenth-century FranceHysteria Complicated by Ecstasy offers a rare window into the inner life of a person ordinarily inaccessible to historians: a semiliterate peasant girl who lived almost two centuries ago, in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
