Sean Hsiang-lin Lei
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226169880
- eISBN:
- 9780226169910
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226169910.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This book aims to answer one question: How was Chinese medicine transformed from an antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol for China’s exploration of its own ...
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This book aims to answer one question: How was Chinese medicine transformed from an antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol for China’s exploration of its own modernity half a century later? Instead of viewing this transition as a derivative of the political history of modern China, it argues that China's medical history had a life of its own and at times even influenced the ideological struggle over the definition of China’s modernity and the Chinese state. Far from being a “remnant” of pre-modern China, Chinese medicine in the twentieth century co-evolved with Western medicine and the Nationalist state, undergoing a profound transformation—institutionally, epistemologically, and materially—that resulted in the creation of a modern Chinese medicine. Nevertheless, this newly re-assembled modern Chinese medicine was stigmatized by its opponents at that time as a mongrel form of medicine that was “neither donkey nor horse,” because the discourse of modernity rejected the possibility of productive crossbreeding between the modern and the traditional. Against the hegemony of this discourse, the definitive feature of this new medicine was the fact that it took the discourse of modernity (and the accompanying knowledge of biomedicine) seriously but survived the resulting epistemic violence by way of negotiation and self-innovation. In this sense, the historic rise of this “neither donkey nor horse” medicine constitutes a local innovation of crucial importance for the notion of China’s modernity, challenging us to imagine different kinds of relationships between science and non-Western knowledge traditions.Less
This book aims to answer one question: How was Chinese medicine transformed from an antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol for China’s exploration of its own modernity half a century later? Instead of viewing this transition as a derivative of the political history of modern China, it argues that China's medical history had a life of its own and at times even influenced the ideological struggle over the definition of China’s modernity and the Chinese state. Far from being a “remnant” of pre-modern China, Chinese medicine in the twentieth century co-evolved with Western medicine and the Nationalist state, undergoing a profound transformation—institutionally, epistemologically, and materially—that resulted in the creation of a modern Chinese medicine. Nevertheless, this newly re-assembled modern Chinese medicine was stigmatized by its opponents at that time as a mongrel form of medicine that was “neither donkey nor horse,” because the discourse of modernity rejected the possibility of productive crossbreeding between the modern and the traditional. Against the hegemony of this discourse, the definitive feature of this new medicine was the fact that it took the discourse of modernity (and the accompanying knowledge of biomedicine) seriously but survived the resulting epistemic violence by way of negotiation and self-innovation. In this sense, the historic rise of this “neither donkey nor horse” medicine constitutes a local innovation of crucial importance for the notion of China’s modernity, challenging us to imagine different kinds of relationships between science and non-Western knowledge traditions.
Fabrizio Benedetti
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199559121
- eISBN:
- 9780191724022
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559121.003.0001
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Molecular and Cellular Systems
The history of medicine is basically the history of placebos, as most early medical interventions were nothing but placebos, i.e., inert. Over the centuries, doctors started using sham treatments to ...
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The history of medicine is basically the history of placebos, as most early medical interventions were nothing but placebos, i.e., inert. Over the centuries, doctors started using sham treatments to see whether the clinical improvements were attributable to patients' imagination and/or spontaneous remissions. Today placebos are widely used in clinical research to validate the efficacy of a therapy as well as in clinical practice to please and to placate anxious patients. The placebo effect represents a good example of how a mental activity may affect several physiological functions, thus it is an excellent model to study the mind-body interaction. The nocebo effect, which is opposite to the placebo effect, is also a good model to understand the interaction between mind and body.Less
The history of medicine is basically the history of placebos, as most early medical interventions were nothing but placebos, i.e., inert. Over the centuries, doctors started using sham treatments to see whether the clinical improvements were attributable to patients' imagination and/or spontaneous remissions. Today placebos are widely used in clinical research to validate the efficacy of a therapy as well as in clinical practice to please and to placate anxious patients. The placebo effect represents a good example of how a mental activity may affect several physiological functions, thus it is an excellent model to study the mind-body interaction. The nocebo effect, which is opposite to the placebo effect, is also a good model to understand the interaction between mind and body.
NEIL VICKERS
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199271177
- eISBN:
- 9780191709647
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199271177.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter considers the impact of Dr Thomas Beddoes (1760–1808) on Coleridge's thinking about medical subjects. It deals especially with the two medical ‘grand narratives’ to which Beddoes devoted ...
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This chapter considers the impact of Dr Thomas Beddoes (1760–1808) on Coleridge's thinking about medical subjects. It deals especially with the two medical ‘grand narratives’ to which Beddoes devoted his professional life. The first was the medical system of John Brown, sometimes known as the ‘Brunonian system’. It points out that the Brunonian system existed in two radically versions: a mechanistic, quasi-materialist, British, one; and a transcendental idealist version to which Kant, Fichte, and Schelling all subscribed. It is suggested that Coleridge's awareness of both versions of the doctrine helped him to make the transition to German idealism. Beddoes' second great commitment was to ‘medical mentalism’, the notion that all physiological events lie under the sway of the thinking mind. The differences between Beddoes' views on the mind and those of other physicians are highlighted, as is their influence on Coleridge.Less
This chapter considers the impact of Dr Thomas Beddoes (1760–1808) on Coleridge's thinking about medical subjects. It deals especially with the two medical ‘grand narratives’ to which Beddoes devoted his professional life. The first was the medical system of John Brown, sometimes known as the ‘Brunonian system’. It points out that the Brunonian system existed in two radically versions: a mechanistic, quasi-materialist, British, one; and a transcendental idealist version to which Kant, Fichte, and Schelling all subscribed. It is suggested that Coleridge's awareness of both versions of the doctrine helped him to make the transition to German idealism. Beddoes' second great commitment was to ‘medical mentalism’, the notion that all physiological events lie under the sway of the thinking mind. The differences between Beddoes' views on the mind and those of other physicians are highlighted, as is their influence on Coleridge.
Neil Vickers
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199271177
- eISBN:
- 9780191709647
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199271177.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This introductory chapter outlines the two central aims of Coleridge and the Doctors. The first is to throw into relief the ideas and influences informing Coleridge's activities in ‘philosophical ...
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This introductory chapter outlines the two central aims of Coleridge and the Doctors. The first is to throw into relief the ideas and influences informing Coleridge's activities in ‘philosophical medicine’, the term widely used by historians of medicine to describe the numerous attempts made between roughly 1770 and 1820 to explain the progress of medicine in the light of philosophical ideas. Coleridge's exposure to philosophic medicine came through his exposure to what he would later term neuropathology (his own coinage), specifically through his exposure to the controversies that had racked Edinburgh University Medical School from the 1750s to the 1790s. The second aim is to put forward an extended speculation about how Coleridge understood his descent into ill-health from late 1800 and how he used that understanding to develop his philosophic and aesthetic ideas. A chapter by chapter summary of the whole book is provided.Less
This introductory chapter outlines the two central aims of Coleridge and the Doctors. The first is to throw into relief the ideas and influences informing Coleridge's activities in ‘philosophical medicine’, the term widely used by historians of medicine to describe the numerous attempts made between roughly 1770 and 1820 to explain the progress of medicine in the light of philosophical ideas. Coleridge's exposure to philosophic medicine came through his exposure to what he would later term neuropathology (his own coinage), specifically through his exposure to the controversies that had racked Edinburgh University Medical School from the 1750s to the 1790s. The second aim is to put forward an extended speculation about how Coleridge understood his descent into ill-health from late 1800 and how he used that understanding to develop his philosophic and aesthetic ideas. A chapter by chapter summary of the whole book is provided.
Stephen T. Casper
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719091926
- eISBN:
- 9781781706992
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091926.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Why, despite often-alleged origins in antiquity, did neurology in Britain endeavour for so long to become a formally recognised specialty within general medicine? To answer this question, this ...
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Why, despite often-alleged origins in antiquity, did neurology in Britain endeavour for so long to become a formally recognised specialty within general medicine? To answer this question, this introduction follows a complicated story, one involving individuals, institutions, and ideas all located in the complex, shifting social and cultural ferment of nineteenth and twentieth century Britain.Less
Why, despite often-alleged origins in antiquity, did neurology in Britain endeavour for so long to become a formally recognised specialty within general medicine? To answer this question, this introduction follows a complicated story, one involving individuals, institutions, and ideas all located in the complex, shifting social and cultural ferment of nineteenth and twentieth century Britain.
NEIL VICKERS
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199271177
- eISBN:
- 9780191709647
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199271177.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter offers a historical sketch of the state of practical and theoretical medicine in the 1790s. It starts by considering the range of practitioners offering medical treatments during the ...
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This chapter offers a historical sketch of the state of practical and theoretical medicine in the 1790s. It starts by considering the range of practitioners offering medical treatments during the eighteenth century and goes on to describe some important but often overlooked differences between our medicine and the medicine of Coleridge's time. It also discusses some of the ramifications of the main theoretical controversies in eighteenth-century medicine: the slow decline of the humoral pathology and rise of the view that disease – possibly all disease – is caused by disturbances in the nervous system; the materialist challenge to vitalism; and the attempt to refound medicine along essentialist philosophical lines.Less
This chapter offers a historical sketch of the state of practical and theoretical medicine in the 1790s. It starts by considering the range of practitioners offering medical treatments during the eighteenth century and goes on to describe some important but often overlooked differences between our medicine and the medicine of Coleridge's time. It also discusses some of the ramifications of the main theoretical controversies in eighteenth-century medicine: the slow decline of the humoral pathology and rise of the view that disease – possibly all disease – is caused by disturbances in the nervous system; the materialist challenge to vitalism; and the attempt to refound medicine along essentialist philosophical lines.
Paul Unschuld
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520257658
- eISBN:
- 9780520944701
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520257658.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
This book is a comparative history of two millennia of Western and Chinese medicine from their beginnings in the centuries bce through present advances in sciences such as molecular biology and in ...
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This book is a comparative history of two millennia of Western and Chinese medicine from their beginnings in the centuries bce through present advances in sciences such as molecular biology and in Western adaptations of traditional Chinese medicine. In this interpretation of the basic forces that undergird shifts in medical theory, the book relates the history of medicine in both Europe and China to changes in politics, economics, and other contextual factors. Drawing on extended research of Chinese primary sources as well as scholarship in European medical history, this book argues against any claims of “truth” in former and current, Eastern and Western models of physiology and pathology. The book contributes to discussions on health care policies while illuminating the nature of cognitive dynamics in medicine, and stimulates fresh debate on the essence and interpretation of reality in medicine's attempts to manage the human organism.Less
This book is a comparative history of two millennia of Western and Chinese medicine from their beginnings in the centuries bce through present advances in sciences such as molecular biology and in Western adaptations of traditional Chinese medicine. In this interpretation of the basic forces that undergird shifts in medical theory, the book relates the history of medicine in both Europe and China to changes in politics, economics, and other contextual factors. Drawing on extended research of Chinese primary sources as well as scholarship in European medical history, this book argues against any claims of “truth” in former and current, Eastern and Western models of physiology and pathology. The book contributes to discussions on health care policies while illuminating the nature of cognitive dynamics in medicine, and stimulates fresh debate on the essence and interpretation of reality in medicine's attempts to manage the human organism.
Megan Coyer
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474405607
- eISBN:
- 9781474405621
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474405607.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines the construction of David Macbeth Moir (1798–1851), a prolific Blackwoodian author and surgeon, as a medical poet, by himself and others, both within Blackwood’s and beyond, as ...
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This chapter examines the construction of David Macbeth Moir (1798–1851), a prolific Blackwoodian author and surgeon, as a medical poet, by himself and others, both within Blackwood’s and beyond, as a key component of a redemptive counter-discourse of medical humanism. The idealistic image of the ‘humanistic’ literary medical man is read as developing, in part, as a counter to the negative cultural representations of medicine exacerbated by the anatomy murders as well as the growing divisions between medico-scientific and literary cultures and the perceived negative consequences of the ‘march of intellect’. Moir’s place within a tradition of literary medical men in Scotland and his role in debates surrounding the reform of medical education are discussed, as are key projects, including essays published in Blackwood’s and Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, his Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine (1831), and his poetry.Less
This chapter examines the construction of David Macbeth Moir (1798–1851), a prolific Blackwoodian author and surgeon, as a medical poet, by himself and others, both within Blackwood’s and beyond, as a key component of a redemptive counter-discourse of medical humanism. The idealistic image of the ‘humanistic’ literary medical man is read as developing, in part, as a counter to the negative cultural representations of medicine exacerbated by the anatomy murders as well as the growing divisions between medico-scientific and literary cultures and the perceived negative consequences of the ‘march of intellect’. Moir’s place within a tradition of literary medical men in Scotland and his role in debates surrounding the reform of medical education are discussed, as are key projects, including essays published in Blackwood’s and Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, his Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine (1831), and his poetry.
Paul U. Unschuld
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520257658
- eISBN:
- 9780520944701
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520257658.003.0023
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
The origin of medicine is apparent from other ancient texts such as from a document with the ambitious title “The Nature of Man”. One of the texts was dedicated to “falling sickness,” or epilepsy ...
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The origin of medicine is apparent from other ancient texts such as from a document with the ambitious title “The Nature of Man”. One of the texts was dedicated to “falling sickness,” or epilepsy under the title “The Sacred Disease,” including the hitherto valid idea that, judging by the sometimes exceedingly strange course of this illness, it must be something divine, coming from the gods. Falling sickness is an illness whose causes, like those of all other illnesses, lie somewhere in nature. The renunciation of the idea that illness is caused by the numinous powers and of the need to treat illness with magic and invocation makes sense. The author of “The Divine Illness” thought no more or less rationally than those who saw falling sickness as something divine. The observation of the sick individual had not produced any evidence for the new view at any rate. For him, only the belief was lost that the gods, whose existence was responsible for the development of falling sickness. He lost this belief not because he had observed an epileptic, or several epileptics, or even a very large number of them. Something else must have caused the change in his view.Less
The origin of medicine is apparent from other ancient texts such as from a document with the ambitious title “The Nature of Man”. One of the texts was dedicated to “falling sickness,” or epilepsy under the title “The Sacred Disease,” including the hitherto valid idea that, judging by the sometimes exceedingly strange course of this illness, it must be something divine, coming from the gods. Falling sickness is an illness whose causes, like those of all other illnesses, lie somewhere in nature. The renunciation of the idea that illness is caused by the numinous powers and of the need to treat illness with magic and invocation makes sense. The author of “The Divine Illness” thought no more or less rationally than those who saw falling sickness as something divine. The observation of the sick individual had not produced any evidence for the new view at any rate. For him, only the belief was lost that the gods, whose existence was responsible for the development of falling sickness. He lost this belief not because he had observed an epileptic, or several epileptics, or even a very large number of them. Something else must have caused the change in his view.
Stephen T. Casper
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719091926
- eISBN:
- 9781781706992
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091926.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Since the 1990s, the English-speaking world has seen the rise of a neuroculture derived from neurology and neuroscience. The Neurologists is a book that asks how did we arrive at this moment? What is ...
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Since the 1990s, the English-speaking world has seen the rise of a neuroculture derived from neurology and neuroscience. The Neurologists is a book that asks how did we arrive at this moment? What is it about neurology and neuroscience that makes neuroculture seem self-evident? To tell this story The Neurologists charts a chronological course from the time of the French Revolution to after the ‘Decade of the Brain’ that outlines the rise of medical and scientific neurology and the emergence of neuroculture. With its focus chiefly on Great Britain, arguably the place where it all began, The Neurologists describes how Victorian physicians located in a medical culture that privileged general knowledge over narrow specialism came to be transformed into the specialized physicians now called neurologists. The Neurologists therefore recasts the received history of neurology and the history of professions and specialties. It provides new insights into the social, cultural, and institutional practices of British medical and scientific culture in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Delving into how and why physicians and scientists were interested in nerves, the nervous system, the brain, and the psyche, The Neurologists explores how Renaissance-styled men and women of medicine and science made neurology the medical field seemingly most concerned by the ‘philosophical status of man.’Less
Since the 1990s, the English-speaking world has seen the rise of a neuroculture derived from neurology and neuroscience. The Neurologists is a book that asks how did we arrive at this moment? What is it about neurology and neuroscience that makes neuroculture seem self-evident? To tell this story The Neurologists charts a chronological course from the time of the French Revolution to after the ‘Decade of the Brain’ that outlines the rise of medical and scientific neurology and the emergence of neuroculture. With its focus chiefly on Great Britain, arguably the place where it all began, The Neurologists describes how Victorian physicians located in a medical culture that privileged general knowledge over narrow specialism came to be transformed into the specialized physicians now called neurologists. The Neurologists therefore recasts the received history of neurology and the history of professions and specialties. It provides new insights into the social, cultural, and institutional practices of British medical and scientific culture in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Delving into how and why physicians and scientists were interested in nerves, the nervous system, the brain, and the psyche, The Neurologists explores how Renaissance-styled men and women of medicine and science made neurology the medical field seemingly most concerned by the ‘philosophical status of man.’
Jeremy A. Greene, Flurin Condrau, and Elizabeth Siegel Watkins
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226390734
- eISBN:
- 9780226390901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226390901.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
In this introductory chapter to the volume Therapeutic Revolutions: Pharmaceuticals and Social Change in the Twentieth Century, the editors review the utility of "revolution" as an analytic category ...
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In this introductory chapter to the volume Therapeutic Revolutions: Pharmaceuticals and Social Change in the Twentieth Century, the editors review the utility of "revolution" as an analytic category in the history of science, technology, and medicine, survey the different uses that historical actors have made of the concept of "therapeutic revolution" over the twentieth century, and introduce the common themes and goals of the volume: revisiting the history of therapeutic revolutions in modern medicine.Less
In this introductory chapter to the volume Therapeutic Revolutions: Pharmaceuticals and Social Change in the Twentieth Century, the editors review the utility of "revolution" as an analytic category in the history of science, technology, and medicine, survey the different uses that historical actors have made of the concept of "therapeutic revolution" over the twentieth century, and introduce the common themes and goals of the volume: revisiting the history of therapeutic revolutions in modern medicine.
Rohan Deb Roy and Guy N.A. Attewell
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780199486717
- eISBN:
- 9780199092093
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199486717.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This introductory chapter defines the intellectual agenda of locating the medical, and explains its significance. It situates the volume as a platform for the traffic of ideas and approaches between ...
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This introductory chapter defines the intellectual agenda of locating the medical, and explains its significance. It situates the volume as a platform for the traffic of ideas and approaches between the history of medicine as a sub-discipline and South Asian history, more generally. It sets out recent historiographical trajectories, examines the theoretical purchase of historical ontologies (as the methodological inspiration) for this project, and provides a brief outline of chapters in this collection.Less
This introductory chapter defines the intellectual agenda of locating the medical, and explains its significance. It situates the volume as a platform for the traffic of ideas and approaches between the history of medicine as a sub-discipline and South Asian history, more generally. It sets out recent historiographical trajectories, examines the theoretical purchase of historical ontologies (as the methodological inspiration) for this project, and provides a brief outline of chapters in this collection.
Scott H. Podolsky and Anne Kveim Lie
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226390734
- eISBN:
- 9780226390901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226390901.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Fears of a post-antibiotic future date back to the very beginning of the antibiotic era. This chapter asks: what can we learn from the history of such expectations? The revolutions claimed in the ...
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Fears of a post-antibiotic future date back to the very beginning of the antibiotic era. This chapter asks: what can we learn from the history of such expectations? The revolutions claimed in the name of antibiotics and the crises envisioned regarding their usage and enduring utility provide instructive analytical lenses for understanding the history of expectations in science and medicine. The authors begin with a review of the major transformation in medicine ushered in by the advent of the antimicrobial wonder drugs and an examination of the futures claimed in their name. They then proceed to examine two intersecting strands of therapeutic reform (the first beginning in the 1950s, the second not fully taking off until the 1980s) justified by alternate antibiotic dystopias, before proceeding to more general reflections on antibiotics and therapeutic futures, past and present.Less
Fears of a post-antibiotic future date back to the very beginning of the antibiotic era. This chapter asks: what can we learn from the history of such expectations? The revolutions claimed in the name of antibiotics and the crises envisioned regarding their usage and enduring utility provide instructive analytical lenses for understanding the history of expectations in science and medicine. The authors begin with a review of the major transformation in medicine ushered in by the advent of the antimicrobial wonder drugs and an examination of the futures claimed in their name. They then proceed to examine two intersecting strands of therapeutic reform (the first beginning in the 1950s, the second not fully taking off until the 1980s) justified by alternate antibiotic dystopias, before proceeding to more general reflections on antibiotics and therapeutic futures, past and present.
Diana B. Petitti
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199837373
- eISBN:
- 9780199919499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199837373.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Evidence and politics intersect in the delineation of policy about prevention. Historically, prevention has played a prominent role in defining the evidence-based medicine movement and creating ...
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Evidence and politics intersect in the delineation of policy about prevention. Historically, prevention has played a prominent role in defining the evidence-based medicine movement and creating evidence-based recommendations. Changes in prevention over time make it likely that prevention recommendations and policies in the future will be subject to more heated attempts to politicize them. Evidence-based recommendations face a variety of challenges that affect their relative immunity to political attack. Important differences exist in the evidence standards applied to prevention compared with treatment and diagnostic services; those differences vary in their justifiability. The December 17, 2009, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force mammography screening recommendations provide an interesting case study of the intrusion of politics into prevention policy; in some respects this intrusion is particular to mammography, and in others it applies to prevention as a whole. Particular factors can be identified that tend to politicize health topics in general. There are specific ways, however, in which the corrupting influences of politics on evidence-based prevention recommendations and policies can be mitigated.Less
Evidence and politics intersect in the delineation of policy about prevention. Historically, prevention has played a prominent role in defining the evidence-based medicine movement and creating evidence-based recommendations. Changes in prevention over time make it likely that prevention recommendations and policies in the future will be subject to more heated attempts to politicize them. Evidence-based recommendations face a variety of challenges that affect their relative immunity to political attack. Important differences exist in the evidence standards applied to prevention compared with treatment and diagnostic services; those differences vary in their justifiability. The December 17, 2009, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force mammography screening recommendations provide an interesting case study of the intrusion of politics into prevention policy; in some respects this intrusion is particular to mammography, and in others it applies to prevention as a whole. Particular factors can be identified that tend to politicize health topics in general. There are specific ways, however, in which the corrupting influences of politics on evidence-based prevention recommendations and policies can be mitigated.
Stephen T. Casper
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719091926
- eISBN:
- 9781781706992
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091926.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter explores the emergence of Britain's first Neurological Society by setting it in sharp contrast to its important specialist counterpart, the Ophthalmological Society of the United ...
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This chapter explores the emergence of Britain's first Neurological Society by setting it in sharp contrast to its important specialist counterpart, the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom. While the members of the Ophthalmological Society advocated for a wholly specialist profile, the members of the Neurological Society never aligned themselves with a specialist identity and instead embraced an inclusive attitude and scrupulously cultivated a generalist appearance in order to mitigate any pejorative charge that neurology was a narrow field of enquiry.Less
This chapter explores the emergence of Britain's first Neurological Society by setting it in sharp contrast to its important specialist counterpart, the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom. While the members of the Ophthalmological Society advocated for a wholly specialist profile, the members of the Neurological Society never aligned themselves with a specialist identity and instead embraced an inclusive attitude and scrupulously cultivated a generalist appearance in order to mitigate any pejorative charge that neurology was a narrow field of enquiry.
Stephen T. Casper
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780719091926
- eISBN:
- 9781781706992
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719091926.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Who were the neurologists? Were there any noteworthy developments in their work in the post-1960s? Were they able to maintain their integrative identity with the rise of specialised medicine? Did the ...
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Who were the neurologists? Were there any noteworthy developments in their work in the post-1960s? Were they able to maintain their integrative identity with the rise of specialised medicine? Did the neurologists’ unique path to specialisation leave a marked legacy in historiography of neurology? And finally, how might the neurologists’ integrative identity have contributed to the rise of a postmodern culture preoccupied with the brain and the nerves? To begin to answer these questions, it is necessary first to mention a few important trends about neurology and to explore how neurologists’ tendencies to possess and aggrandise an integrative perspective left them with a marked legacy of ambivalence towards specialised knowledge. In turn, that ambivalence created opportunities for workers in other arenas to engage in the construction of the neuroculture that became so evident in the post-1990s.Less
Who were the neurologists? Were there any noteworthy developments in their work in the post-1960s? Were they able to maintain their integrative identity with the rise of specialised medicine? Did the neurologists’ unique path to specialisation leave a marked legacy in historiography of neurology? And finally, how might the neurologists’ integrative identity have contributed to the rise of a postmodern culture preoccupied with the brain and the nerves? To begin to answer these questions, it is necessary first to mention a few important trends about neurology and to explore how neurologists’ tendencies to possess and aggrandise an integrative perspective left them with a marked legacy of ambivalence towards specialised knowledge. In turn, that ambivalence created opportunities for workers in other arenas to engage in the construction of the neuroculture that became so evident in the post-1990s.
Eric J. Cassell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199974863
- eISBN:
- 9780190219024
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199974863.003.0001
- Subject:
- Palliative Care, Palliative Medicine and Older People
Twentieth- and 21st-century science has been a brilliant success. The ideal doctor of the 20th century, the physician-scientist, is not a success. Contemporary medical care is disappointing to ...
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Twentieth- and 21st-century science has been a brilliant success. The ideal doctor of the 20th century, the physician-scientist, is not a success. Contemporary medical care is disappointing to patients and doctors, over-technologized, and expensive. It is time to bring back the clinician whose life is the care of sick patients. The introduction explains in detail why the increasing focus on disease for more than a century, almost to the exclusion of the patient, has led medicine astray. The history of medicine, social changes in society, the rise and dominance of science in all walks of life, and the changes in medical institutions and medical education are all part of the same story. The introduction tells why clinicians are special and why are they are now crucial to revitalizing medical care. This need leads to the reasons for this book and what it has to say.Less
Twentieth- and 21st-century science has been a brilliant success. The ideal doctor of the 20th century, the physician-scientist, is not a success. Contemporary medical care is disappointing to patients and doctors, over-technologized, and expensive. It is time to bring back the clinician whose life is the care of sick patients. The introduction explains in detail why the increasing focus on disease for more than a century, almost to the exclusion of the patient, has led medicine astray. The history of medicine, social changes in society, the rise and dominance of science in all walks of life, and the changes in medical institutions and medical education are all part of the same story. The introduction tells why clinicians are special and why are they are now crucial to revitalizing medical care. This need leads to the reasons for this book and what it has to say.
Elaine Leong
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226583495
- eISBN:
- 9780226583525
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226583525.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Early modern English men and women were fascinated by recipes. Across the country, people of all ranks enthusiastically collected, exchanged, and experimented with medical and cookery instructions. ...
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Early modern English men and women were fascinated by recipes. Across the country, people of all ranks enthusiastically collected, exchanged, and experimented with medical and cookery instructions. They sent recipes in letters, borrowed handwritten books of family recipes, and consulted popular printed medical and culinary books. Recipes and Everyday Knowledge is the first major study of knowledge production and transfer in early modern households. It places the production and circulation of recipes at the heart of “household science”—quotidian investigations of the natural world—and situates these practices in larger and current conversations in gender and cultural history, the history of the book and archives and the history of science, medicine and technology. Household recipe knowledge was made through continual, repeated, and collective trying, making, reading, and writing. And recipe trials were one of the main ways householders gained deeper understandings of sickness, health and the human body, and the natural and material worlds. Recipes were also social knowledge. Recipes and recipe books were gifted between friends, viewed as family treasures, and passed down from generation to generation. By recovering the knowledge activities of householders—masters, servants, husbands and wives—this project recasts current narratives of early modern science through elucidating the very spaces and contexts in which famous experimental philosophers worked and, crucially, by extending the parameters of natural inquiry.Less
Early modern English men and women were fascinated by recipes. Across the country, people of all ranks enthusiastically collected, exchanged, and experimented with medical and cookery instructions. They sent recipes in letters, borrowed handwritten books of family recipes, and consulted popular printed medical and culinary books. Recipes and Everyday Knowledge is the first major study of knowledge production and transfer in early modern households. It places the production and circulation of recipes at the heart of “household science”—quotidian investigations of the natural world—and situates these practices in larger and current conversations in gender and cultural history, the history of the book and archives and the history of science, medicine and technology. Household recipe knowledge was made through continual, repeated, and collective trying, making, reading, and writing. And recipe trials were one of the main ways householders gained deeper understandings of sickness, health and the human body, and the natural and material worlds. Recipes were also social knowledge. Recipes and recipe books were gifted between friends, viewed as family treasures, and passed down from generation to generation. By recovering the knowledge activities of householders—masters, servants, husbands and wives—this project recasts current narratives of early modern science through elucidating the very spaces and contexts in which famous experimental philosophers worked and, crucially, by extending the parameters of natural inquiry.
Paul U. Unschuld
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520257658
- eISBN:
- 9780520944701
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520257658.003.0071
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
This chapter provides detailed information on scientist, Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), who had an extreme aversion to demons and spirits. He clearly denounced exorcism and looked for healing powers ...
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This chapter provides detailed information on scientist, Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), who had an extreme aversion to demons and spirits. He clearly denounced exorcism and looked for healing powers in nature. He forms a trinity with John Brown and Samuel Hahnemann. The three are united by a common attribute that they created the only ideas system in the two-thousand-year history of medicine that arose primarily out of the expressiveness of the organism. John Brown learned about the effects of alcohol and opium, cold baths, and spices through his own experience, and made up his own theory based on those observations. Franz Anton Mesmer worked on magnets. All he knew about them was that they contained, and seemed to emit, invisible natural powers. He concluded that there is an “animal magnetism” and an “animal gravity” and the magnet can influence the organism. Mesmer traveled extensively, appearing as a magician who created wonderful effects with his magnets.Less
This chapter provides detailed information on scientist, Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), who had an extreme aversion to demons and spirits. He clearly denounced exorcism and looked for healing powers in nature. He forms a trinity with John Brown and Samuel Hahnemann. The three are united by a common attribute that they created the only ideas system in the two-thousand-year history of medicine that arose primarily out of the expressiveness of the organism. John Brown learned about the effects of alcohol and opium, cold baths, and spices through his own experience, and made up his own theory based on those observations. Franz Anton Mesmer worked on magnets. All he knew about them was that they contained, and seemed to emit, invisible natural powers. He concluded that there is an “animal magnetism” and an “animal gravity” and the magnet can influence the organism. Mesmer traveled extensively, appearing as a magician who created wonderful effects with his magnets.
Alex Broadbent
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190612139
- eISBN:
- 9780190612177
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190612139.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter surveys the origins of medicine and introduces the concept of “Mainstream Medicine,” which is the globalized descendant of Western medicine. Based primarily on Roy Porter’s work, a ...
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This chapter surveys the origins of medicine and introduces the concept of “Mainstream Medicine,” which is the globalized descendant of Western medicine. Based primarily on Roy Porter’s work, a broad-brush survey of the history of Mainstream Medicine is provided. The history of Alternative Medicine is also outlined, and a rough distinction drawn between Alternative and Traditional Medicine. The latter has its origins in a distinct geographical region and tradition, while the former typically involves conscious deviations from or rejections of the mainstream. Medical traditions from China, India, and Africa are briefly outlined. The chapter illustrates the geographical and temporal diversity of medical practices, in order to ground both the driving questions of the book—what is medicine, and what should we think of it? Any answer must handle the variety of medicine and be epistemically fair to the various traditions.Less
This chapter surveys the origins of medicine and introduces the concept of “Mainstream Medicine,” which is the globalized descendant of Western medicine. Based primarily on Roy Porter’s work, a broad-brush survey of the history of Mainstream Medicine is provided. The history of Alternative Medicine is also outlined, and a rough distinction drawn between Alternative and Traditional Medicine. The latter has its origins in a distinct geographical region and tradition, while the former typically involves conscious deviations from or rejections of the mainstream. Medical traditions from China, India, and Africa are briefly outlined. The chapter illustrates the geographical and temporal diversity of medical practices, in order to ground both the driving questions of the book—what is medicine, and what should we think of it? Any answer must handle the variety of medicine and be epistemically fair to the various traditions.
