The social history of medicine has become recognized as a major field of historical enquiry. Aspects of health, disease, and medical care now attract the attention not only of social historians but also of researchers in a broad spectrum of historical and social science disciplines. The Society for the Social History of Medicine, founded in 1969, is an interdisciplinary body, based in Great Britain but international in membership. It exists to forward a wide-ranging view of the history of medicine, concerned equally with biological aspects of normal life, experience of and attitudes to illness, medical thought and treatment, and systems of medical care. Although frequently bearing on current issues, this interpretation of the subject makes primary reference to historical context and contemporary priorities. The intention is not to promote a sub-specialism but to conduct research according to the standards and intelligibility required of history in general.
Edited
By James Moran, Leslie Topp, Jonathan Andrews
September 19, 2020
This is the first volume of papers devoted to an examination of the relationship between mental health/illness and the construction and experience of space. This historical analysis with contributions from leading experts will enlighten and intrigue in equal measure. The first rigorous scholarly ...
Edited
By Jim Phillips, David F. Smith
January 20, 2016
This highly topical book offers a comprehensive study of the interaction of food, politics and science over the last hundred years. A range of important case studies, from pasteurisation in Britain to the E coli outbreak offers new material for those interested in science policy and the role of ...
Edited
By Hilary Marland, Anne Marie Rafferty
December 01, 2014
Midwives, Society and Childbirth is the first book to examine midwives' lives and work in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on a national and international scale. Focusing on six countries from Europe, the approach is interdisciplinary with the studies written by a diverse team of social, ...
Edited
By David Smith
December 01, 2014
This volume brings together for the first time a collection of essays, based on original research, which focus on the history of nutrition science in Britain. Each chapter considers a different episode in the development and application of nutritional knowledge during the twentieth century. The ...
Edited
By Peregrine Horden, Richard Smith
December 01, 2014
The care of the needy and the sick is delivered by various groups including immediate family, the wider community, religious organisations and the State funded institutions. The Locus of Care provides an historical perspective on welfare detailing who carers were in the past, where care was ...
By Alison Bashford, Claire Hooker
April 09, 2014
In the age of HIV, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the Ebola Virus and BSE, metaphors and experience of contagion are a central concern of government, biomedicine and popular culture.Contagion explores cultural responses of infectious diseases and their biomedical management over the nineteenth and ...
Edited
By Waltraud Ernst
April 09, 2014
Research into 'colonial' or 'imperial' medicine has made considerable progress in recent years, whilst the study of what is usually referred to as 'indigenous' or 'folk' medicine in colonized societies has received much less attention. This book redresses the balance by bringing together current ...
Edited
By Waltraud Ernst, Bernard Harris
March 07, 2014
Considering cases from Europe to India, this collection brings together current critical research into the role played by racial issues in the production of medical knowledge. Confronting such controversial themes as colonialism and medicine, the origins of racial thinking and health and migration,...
By Joseph Melling, Bill Forsythe
February 14, 2014
The discovery and treatment of insanity remains one of the most debated and discussed issues in social history. Focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century, The Politics of Madness provides a new perspective on this important topic, based on research drawn from both local and national ...
By Leonard Smith
October 18, 2013
Lunatic Hospitals in Georgian England, 1750–1830 constitutes the first comprehensive study of the philanthropic asylum system in Georgian England. Using original research and drawing upon a wide range of expertise on the history of mental health this book demonstrates the crucial role of the ...
Edited
By Steve Sturdy
September 03, 2013
Medicine is concerned with the most intimate aspects of private life. Yet it is also a focus for diverse forms of public organization and action. In this volume, an international team of scholars use the techniques of medical history to analyse the changing boundaries and constitution of the public...
Edited
By Roger Cooter
February 01, 2013
Recent revelations of child abuse have highlighted the need for understanding the historical background to current attitudes towards child health and welfare. In the Name of the Child explores a variety of professional, social, political and cultural constructions of the child in the decades around...