bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
No Longer the Same Woman: Medical Perceptions of Menopause, 1900–1950
Authors: Mitchinson Wendy
Published: December 2016

Medical definitions of menopause reflected the difficulties physicians had describing, in a precise manner, a process which they saw as transformative. But the lack of explicitness did not worry them. They were more interested in what factors caused an early or late menopause as if such an understanding would allow them to predict when it might occur in individual women. As an exercise, however, it was rather abstract. Less so were practitioners’ mostly negative views of the experience of menopause, a reflection of their own and society’s perception of middle-aged and aging women. Nonetheless, as is reflected in the advice and reassurance they gave to women, medical negativity did lessen over time.
The Evolution of the Birth Control Handbook: From Student Peer-Education Manual to Feminist Self-empowerment Text, 1968–1975
Authors: Sethna Christabelle
Published: December 2016

Peer education has been recognized as a significant means of educating youths, especially about sexual health issues. Although considered a relatively recent development, there are, however, older examples of its existence. In Canada, the Birth Control Handbook (1968) stands out as a stellar example of one student peer-education manual. This article establishes the Handbook’s student peer-education roots. But it also charts the Handbook’s evolution from a revolutionary student peer-education manual to a key feminist self-empowerment text within the Quebec context between 1968 and 1975. Finally, this article includes the recollections of some of the key individuals involved in the development, production and distribution of the Handbook. In so doing, this article confirms the Handbook’s significance to both anglophone and francophone student and feminist politics as well as to women seeking information about birth control.
Treaties and Tuberculosis: First NationsPeople in late 19th-Century WesternCanada, a Political and Economic Transformation
Authors: Daschuk J.W , Hackett Paul , Macneil Scott
Published: December 2016

This paper examines the explosion of tuberculosis infections amongFirst Nations communities of western Canada during the critical period from Canada’s acquisition of the Northwest to the early 1880s. In the early 1870s,the disease was relatively rare among the indigenous population of the plains. Within a few years, the situation changed dramatically. By the early 1880s, TBwas widely recognized to be the primary cause of morbidity and mortality among First Nations populations. Rather than direct infection from the burgeoning European population in the region, the explosion of the disease was caused by sudden ecological, economic, and political changes in the west that were primarily the result of the imposition of Canadian hegemony
Les bibliothèques médicale à Québec aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles: L’exemple de la phtisie
Authors: Bernier Jacques
Published: December 2016

La phtisie avait pris des proportions si considérables en Europe au XVIIIe siècle qu’Antoine Portal écrivait en 1792 : « il n’y a pas de maladie pluscommune ni dangereuse que la phtisie “pulmonaire” ». Les médecins se sentirentévidemment concernés par ce fléau et tentèrent d’en expliquer les causes.Toutes sortes d’hypothèses furent avancées. Richard Morton par exemple, dans Phthisiologia, imaginait plus d’une douzaine de causes possibles. Les diverses explications avancées dans ces livres varient d’un auteur à l’autre et selon lesrégions. Dans l’ensemble, elles peuvent être regroupées en quatre grandes catégories selon que les auteurs pensent que la maladie est contagieuse, héréditaire,due à des désordres physiologiques ou reliée à des façons de vivre.

Cette recherche porte sur les ouvrages que les praticiens de la région de Québec s’étaient procurés sur cette maladie entre 1700 et le milieu du XIXe siècle.Elle concerne plus spécifiquement 27 bibliothèques qui ont été reconstituées principalement à partir d’inventaires après décès. Cette démarche ad’abord permis de connaître le contenu de ces bibliothèques : nombre de livres;titres et auteurs; dates de publication. À partir de ces informations, nous avonspu repérer une partie des ouvrages qui ont circulé sur la phtisie dans la régionde Québec à cette époque. Dès le début du XVIIIe siècle, il y eut à Québec desouvrages dans lesquels on traitait de cette maladie; par contre leur nombre nesemble pas avoir augmenté au cours du siècle. Fait intéressant, on trouve durantces années une majorité de livres dans lesquels les auteurs ont tendance à concevoircette maladie à partir d’une approche (ou modèle) iatromécanique. Celachange cependant après 1815 alors que les bibliothèques deviennent plusimportantes. Par ailleurs, il est intéressant de constater que plusieurs des livresles plus consultés sur cette maladie au XVIIIe et au début du XIXe siècle sontpratiquement inconnus aujourd’hui.
“The Tubercular Cow Must Go”: Business, Politics, and Winnipeg’s Milk Supply, 1894–1922
Authors: Mckay Marion
Published: December 2016

This paper analyzes the Winnipeg health department’s campaign toeliminate tuberculosis in dairy herds supplying milk to the city. It examines thecomplexity of creating dairy policies at a time when there was no consensusabout the role that Mycobacterium bovis played in the etiology of tuberculosis inhumans, and when dairy producers and consumers often resisted regulationsthat increased their costs. The article argues that the scientific debates about the regulation of the city’s milk supply enabled physicians and veterinarians toenlarge their professional practices; that the benefits and costs of the dairy policieswere not equally distributed; and that Winnipeg’s milk supply remained vulnerableto both deliberate and accidental contamination throughout this period.
The Evolution of the Sanatorium: The First Half-Century, 1854–1904
Authors: Warren Peter
Published: December 2016

In the 19th century tuberculosis was the major threat to health in Europe and North America. It was thought to be caused by heredity compounded by one’s way of life and, even when proved to be an infection, these factors were thought to identify who would catch it. In 1854 Hermann Brehmer asserted that he could cure tuberculosis with a regimen of fresh air, exercise and good nutrition in a sanatorium. Although the medical establishment initially rejected Brehmer’s ideas the sanatorium movement steadily caught hold, and within two decades was supported by eminent physicians. Rest replaced Brehmer’s exercise, as the key remedy. The sanatorium regimen put Galenic principles of hygiene into practice.
Harm Reduction and HIV-Prevention among Injecting Drug Users in Australia: An International Comparison
Authors: Sendziuk Paul
Published: December 2016

In response to the threat of HIV transmission via drug injection with shared needles, Australia developed a needle and syringe exchange program that became one of the most comprehensive in the world. Originally health professionals and pharmacists were given the responsibility of implementing the program. However, community-based AIDS organizations were soon also funded to distribute sterile injecting equipment, alcohol swabs, puncture-proof disposable containers, condoms, and safe sex information. Nearly all of the programs operated on a no-need-for-exchange basis, during hours and from outlets (both fixed and mobile) that were convenient for users. Their success in preventing the widespread transmission of HIV among injecting drug users was demonstrated in international studies that found a large discrepancy between the rates of HIV infection in cities with, and without, needle and syringe exchange programs, and was reflected in the continued low level of HIV infection among injecting drug users in Australia. Australia’s success in preventing HIV transmission among drug users suggests the merits of the “harm reduction” approach to controlling drug use as well as funding community-based needle and syringe exchange programs.
Savages to the Left of Me, Neurasthenics to the Right, Stuck in the Middle with You: Inebriety and Human Nature in American Society, 1855–1900
Authors: Rotunda Michele
Published: December 2016

In the second half of 19th-century America, inebriety was defined as a disease of “civilized” life that affected the "better" classes of society. This formulation was based on the belief that the use of intoxicating substances was a perennial aspect of human nature that was distorted by the modern environment. Using a variety of medical and popular writings, this article explores the ways in which middle-class interpretations of the use of intoxicating substances were inextricably bound to ideas of human nature. Cravings for alcohol and drugs reflected the toll that progress had presumably wrought upon American minds and bodies even as the effects of intoxication seemingly revealed the primitive nature that remained.
In Vogue: North American and British Representations of Women Smokers in Vogue, 1920s–1960s
Authors: Warsh Cheryl Krasnick , Tinkler Penny
Published: December 2016

The image of a cigarette in a woman’s hand symbolizes independence, non-conformity and personal power, despite widespread awareness that smoking has serious health risks. Through a content analysis of North American and British editions of Vogue, we trace the representation of women smokers from the 1920s–1960s. Vogue located the cigarette within the culture of the feminine elite. We explore the place of cigarette smoking within the constellation of behaviours and appearances presented as desirable characteristics of elitism, through the themes of lifestyle, “the look,” and feminine confidence. We chart these themes’ transformations over time and national contexts.
Physique as Destiny: William H. Sheldon, Barbara Honeyman Heath and the Struggle for Hegemony in the Science of Somatotyping
Authors: Vertinsky Patricia
Published: December 2016

When Canadian women first took up public smoking in the 1920s, the attraction was a complex one, both for them and for advertisers. Newly enfranchised and moving into the workforce in ever greater numbers, the (usually) young and single waged or salaried woman sought a ready symbol for her liberation as well as the pleasures resulting from the product iWhen Ron Rosenbaum unveiled his explosive journalistic report on the “Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal” in 1995 it was a story that revealed the uneven evolution of attitudes toward body, race, and gender in the last half century. His intention was to highlight how easily ideas about the body have been taken up by scientists and sustained in elite institutions of higher education well beyond the bounds of common sense. The villain of his story was William H. Sheldon, a constitutional psychologist who appropriated the ritual of taking posture photos for his scientific study of somatotypes, a system built upon the relationship of body type to character. Sheldon’s toxic eugenic views and equation of physique with destiny in the years following World War II made him increasingly unpopular. And while Rosenbaum concluded that Sheldon’s downfall was due to the anger of women students over the taking of nude photos, the deathknell of his career was dealt by his former female assistant, Barbara Honeyman Heath. Publicly denouncing his methods as fraudulent and his somatotypes inaccurate she went on to build a successful career modifying somatotyping techniques and participating in projects all over the world.
Baptism of Fire: New Brunswick's Public Health Movement and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic
Authors: Jenkins Jane E
Published: December 2016

In the fall of 1918 when war-weary New Brunswickers were hit by the influenza pandemic, theirs was the only Canadian province with a Minister of Health, the first to be appointed anywhere in the British Empire. But it was a new position and a controversial one. This paper traces the growth of a public health movement in New Brunswick in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the campaign for the establishment of a provincial Department of Health, and the role played by the 1918 influenza epidemic in legitimizing and consolidating the newly minted Department, masthead of the public health movement.
A Locator List of Some Medieval Ophthalmological Texts
Authors: Eldredge L.M
Published: December 2016

At the turn of the last century, there was a flurry of interest in medieval ophthalmological texts. Many of these were edited by practising ophthalmologists, interested in learning and applying the techniques of their distant predecessors. The editions are often difficult to find, and I have listed them along with at least one library location
Neighbours on Notice: National and Imperialist Interests in the American Public Health Association, 1872–1921
Authors: Carrillo Ana María , Birn Anne-Emanuelle
Published: December 2016

Since its founding in 1872, the American Public Health Association (APHA) has devoted its energies to influencing the US's federal, state, and local governments to support public health. But within a few years of its establishment, the APHA expanded its interests beyond US borders; Canada joined the organization in 1884, and Mexico and Cuba became members in 1892 and 1902, respectively. The organization acknowledged a name change to reflect its new membership—the American, Canadian, Mexican and Cuban Public Health Association. However, official control of the organization remained in US hands. This article explores the APHA's national and imperialist interests and the involvement of Canadian, Cuban, and Mexican public health professionals in the association. We seek to understand the economic, political, and medical factors that motivated the APHA to go beyond US borders and induced Canada, Mexico, and Cuba to join the organization. We examine the scope and limits of the APHA's success in obtaining first-hand information concerning epidemic and endemic diseases in each of its member countries and in imposing measures to prevent the spread of disease from one nation to another. We also discuss the impact of the APHA in urging the four countries to pass sanitary codes and establish active national departments of health. Finally, we analyze the role of Canadian, Mexican, and Cuban public health efforts in shaping the APHA and helping the organization understand the importance of reciprocity in international public health.
Knowledge and Power: The Asymmetry of Interests of Colombian and Rockefeller Doctors in the Construction of the Concept of “Jungle Yellow Fever,” 1907–1938
Authors: Emilio Quevedo V , Carolina Manosalva R , Monica Tafur A , Joanna Bedoya , Giovanna Matiz , Elquin Morales L
Published: December 2016

This study examines the asymmetries among the different interests of officials and medical doctors who worked for the Rockefeller Foundation and their Colombian counterparts in the development and consolidation of the concept of “jungle yellow fever,” as distinguished from the known urban form of yellow fever. We explore the research responses to a variety of disease out-breaks in Colombia in the context of the Rockefeller campaigns against yellow fever, from the time of Roberto Franco's initial description of “yellow fever of the forests” in 1907 until the consolidation of the concept of “jungle yellow fever” by Fred Soper in 1938.
La Peste noire dans l’Occident chrétien et musulman, 1347–1353
Authors: Barry Stephane , Gualde Norbert
Published: December 2016

Entre les années 1346 et 1353 une terrible épidémie a balayé l’Asie de l’Ouest, le Moyen-Orient, l’Afrique et l’Europe, provoquant de catastrophiques pertes démographiques partout, à la fois dans les campagnes, les bourgs et les villes. La peste noire fut une maladie d’une telle gravité que non seulement elle a ébranlé le vieux continent dans ses fondations sociales et économiques mais elle a également modifié le cours de l’histoire de l’humanité. Les auteurs ont pris en compte plusieurs travaux consacrés à la peste noire et publiés dans différentes langues. Dans le présent article, ils rapportent les caractéristiques médicales et épidémiologiques de la pandémie ainsi que ses origines géographiques et les routes qu’elle a empruntées.
L’ophtalmie du nouveau-né et ses traitements à la lecture des publications médicales canadiennes : 1872–1985
Authors: Milot Jean
Published: December 2016

L’ophtalmie du nouveau-né avait pris au dix-neuvième siècle des proportions alarmantes dans les salles de maternité, non seulement en Europe mais aussi au Canada. Cet article cherche à retracer l’impact de cette infection oculaire pendant plus d’un siècle (1872-1985) sur la pratique médicale canadienne et s’appuie sur l’analyse de près de 80 publications issues de livres, revues et journaux médicaux canadiens. Après un rappel des mesures, tant prophylactiques que thérapeutiques avec l’usage du nitrate d’argent à 2 % introduites en 1880 par le docteur Credé pour éviter la cécité chez les nouveau-nés, nous exposerons la nature de la maladie avec ses symptômes et signes et ses complications cornéennes. On y trouvera également une énumération de la pharmacopée oculaire de l’époque. L’aspect juridique concernant la vigilance des sages-femmes et des accoucheurs y sera présenté. Le texte se termine sur les découvertes thérapeutiques subséquentes comme les dérivé argentiques colloïdaux (collargol, protargol et argyrol) suivies des sulfamides et des antibiotiques.
Medicine and the Soul of Science
Authors: Bates Don
Published: December 2016

Bates argues that understanding the historical relationship between medicine and science can help to clarify what science itself is, and exactly how it differs from other kinds of knowledge. In particular, it is directly relevant to the so-called "Needham question": why did the Scientific Revolution happen in western Europe, even though the East, particularly China, boasted greater achievements in technology? The question needs to be re-framed: it is not technology which made the Scientific Revolution, but mechanism. Medicine as a philosophical inquiry into life-processes, though often dismissed as impervious to the Scientific Revolution, was actually a driving force for mechanism. This is because the new mechanism of the 17th century was a fusion of revived ancient itomism with another ancient style of mechanistic thinking, which Bates called “organic mechanism” or “technism.” The primary expression or organic mechanism was in living things-the focus of medical reflection. Medicine's role in developing these ideas of nature as soul in what Don Bates calls Phase I of the Western Intellectual Tradition (Antiquity to the Renaissance), had a crucial impact on the Scientific Revolution, or what Bates refers to as Phase II of the Western Intellectual Tradition. The centrality of medicine to the evolving concept of mechanism truly makes it "the soul of science."
Reflections on the Batesian Synthesis1
Authors: Sivin Nathan
Published: December 2016

The argument in “Medicine and the Soul of Science” can be strengthened by understanding that what used to be called “the Western intellectual tradition” is a hodgepodge of Middle Eastern, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and other approaches and methods that converged in the Islamic world before ca. 1000 CE when Europeans began to borrow and adapt it, and by integrating the results of recent research on all of these scientific, technological, and medical traditions.
Part Two: Individual Provincial Histories of Medicare: Four Precursors of Medicare in Saskatchewan
Authors: Houston C. Stuart , Massie Merle
Published: December 2016

T. C. Douglas, on assuming power in June 1944 as the first social democratic premier in North America, began working in a step-like pattern as finances permitted, toward his goal of eventual province-wide Medicare. Douglas and his team were able to build on the success of bold initiatives already in place in the Depression-scarred rural municipalities of Pittville, Miry Creek, Webb, and Riverside. These municipalities developed medical and hospital plans that offered residents comprehensive coverage with freedom of choice of doctor. Built on idealism, prairie pragmatism and tenacity, these formative health plans served not only as models, but provided the leadership required during the creation and early years of Swift Current Health Region #1. Key figures such as Bill Burak, Carl Kjorven, Stewart Robertson, and Charles Haydon brought experience, depth, and ambition to the task at hand. Envisioned as simply a demonstration region by the Saskatchewan government, HR #1 achieved more: a seamless integration of preventative medicine with medical care, combined with a sense of local empowerment.
Working for Medicare
Authors: Bury Betsy
Published: December 2016

A long time promoter and political worker for Medicare realized that the first steps toward universal Medicare could be best met within the Community Clinics where Salaried Physicians worked in a team with other Health Professionals to look after the needs of the community.
Soldiers of Peace: Canadians in UNRRA’s German Nursing Brigade, 1945–1947
Authors: Armstrong-Reid Susan
Published: December 2016

“Soldiers of Peace” examines Canadian nursing experiences with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Occupied Germany from 1945 to 1947. Whether their practice setting was in UNRRA hospitals, camps, or as members of the flying squads that dealt with epidemicsor accompanied the repatriation trains, Canadian UNRRA nurses forged new professional frontiers and encountered unprecedented nursing challenges, calling for even greater diplomatic acumen than demanded by their previous experience. Giving voice to Canadian UNRRA nurses’ stories provides an instructive lens into the history of the first postwar internal organization and into the contemporary challenges presented by the seemingly insatiable demands for nursing services in the wake of war, natural disasters, and epidemics within the global health community.
Indian Hospitals and Aboriginal Nurses: Canada and Alaska
Authors: Drees Laurie Meijer
Published: December 2016

Between 1945 and the early 1970s, both Indian Health Services in Canada (IHS), and the Alaska Native Health Service (ANS) initiated programs and activities aimed at recruiting and training nurses/nurses aides from Canadian and Alaskan Native communities. In Alaska, the Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital in Sitka acted as a training facility for Alaska Native nurses’ aides, while in Canada, the Charles Camsell Hospital served a similar function. These initiatives occurred prior to the devolution of health care to Aboriginal communities. The histories of these two hospitals provide a comparative opportunity to reveal themes related to the history of Aboriginal nurse training and Aboriginal health policies in the north. The paper outlines the structure and function of two main hospitals within the Indian Health and Alaska Native Health Services, discusses the historic training, and role of Aboriginal nurses and caregivers within those systems using both archival and oral history sources.
Genitals to Genes: The History and Biology of Gender Verification in the Olympics
Authors: Rupert James L
Published: December 2016

From 1968 to 1998, female Olympic athletes were expected to prove their "femininity," ostensibly to stop male "ringers" from passing themselves off as female competitors. Rumours that men were competing in drag had been around since at least the 1936 games. The sex tests started out as simple anatomical examinations—the "nude parade," but rapidly progressed to cellular-based tests (the presence of a Barr body), and eventually to molecular-based tests (the absence of the SRY gene). Women went from being defined by genitalia to cellular characteristics, and finally, by genotype but ironically, as the tests become more sophisticated, both sensitivity and specificity suffered. This paper reviews the science underlying the sex tests, their history, and the controversy that accompanied them.
“The older staff, myself included, we were pretty institutionalized ourselves”: Authority and Insight in Practitioner Narratives of Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization in Prairie Canada
Authors: Dooley Chris
Published: December 2016

In the early 1960s, Canada’s provinces began radically to reduce the in-patient populations of their psychiatric services. This was part of a wider project of trans-institutionalization through which vulnerable people and those who cared for them were shifted across institutional contexts within Canada’s evolving welfare state apparatus. This article draws on interviews with Psychiatric Nurses who worked through the transformative mental health reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, and it makes a case for practitioner history. Practitioner narratives offer a window on the vital tensions between the manifest and the latent functions of welfare institutions, between the impulse to support and the impulse to control, and between paternalism and respect for the rights of the mentally ill. It draws upon the authority of practitioners who, retrospectively, have gained insight into their involvement with prior regimes of caring and control and have come to discern institutional logics previously so hegemonic as to have been largely invisible to them.
Sairey Gamps, Feminine Nurses and Greedy Monopolists: Discourses of Gender and Professional Identity in the Lancet and the British Medical Journal, 1886–1902
Authors: Stanley Heather
Published: December 2016

The British debate over midwife registration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was highly gendered. Focusing on the period betweenthe 1886 Medical Act and the 1902 Midwives Act, this article usesthe content from the Lancet and the British Medical Journal, the two maingeneral medical publications of the time, to explore the complex waysthat gender works through other categories such as class and race to create professional identity. Specifically this article demonstrates how man-midwives used gendered language to help create identities forthemselves, female midwives, and other rivals in order to legitimize their own professional identity and practice and to delegitimize the professional identities of their competition.
“The Blood Fights on in Other Veins”: Norman Bethune and the Transfusion of Cadaver Blood in the Spanish Civil War
Authors: Lethbridge David
Published: December 2016

During the Spanish Civil War, Dr. Norman Bethune instituted a research laboratory to determine whether the blood from cadavers could be transfused into wounded soldiers and civilians at the front. Dr. Herman J. Muller joined him in this effort carrying out extensive experimentation into the technique and practice of such transfusions. At the same time, Bethune was in frequent contact with Dr. Reginald Saxton wholater publicly advocated that the Spanish government should organize a large-scale supply of cadaver blood to the front-line hospitals. Recent evidence suggests that Saxton carried out cadaveric transfusions to an extent not previously recognized.
Beginnings: The Occupational Health Program at the University of Alberta, 1984–1999
Authors: Guidotti Tee L
Published: December 2016

The Occupational Health Program (OHP) at the University of Alberta played an important and pioneering role in the specialty of occupational medicine in Canada between 1984 and 1999. Its history illustrates the opportunities and obstacles in one of the smallest and most unusual medical specialties in Canada. After an auspicious beginning in 1984, with support from industry, labour, government, and the university, the OHP encountered, but overcame, many problems subsequently as a result of underfunding, organizational placement, and, after changes in leadership, interference from the provincial government department responsible for occupational health. The history of the OHP illustrates problems of small training programs and the unique problems of occupational medicine but also its potential as a model for medical training out of hospital that responds to population health as well as individual care.
Pulling Up Their Sleeves and Getting on with It: Providing Health Care in a Northern Remote Region
Authors: McBain Lesley
Published: December 2016

Based on the written correspondence between nurses situated at northern outpost nursing stations and their supervisors in Regina, this paper illustrates the complexities of providing nursing care in Northern Saskatchewan between the mid-1940s and late 1950s. The paper begins with a discussion of the steps taken by governments to deal with what I refer to as a “landscape of hardship” in Northern Saskatchewan that precipitated creation of the nursing stations. However, government failure to provide adequate support for the nurses and nursing stations resulted in considerable hardship and frustration for the nurses to which, as their correspondence shows, they often objected.
Nineteenth-Century Nurses and Midwives in Three Canadian Cities, 1861–1891
Authors: Young Judith
Published: December 2016

This paper focuses on nurses and midwives in Montreal, Halifax, and Saint John in the decades leading up to the introduction of trained nurses. Self-employed (private) nurses are compared with those in hospitals. Overwhelmingly of the working-class, predominantly women, and frequently widows, the nurses were not formally trained, though some midwives were. Comparisons are made between nurses and midwives in Montreal, Halifax, Saint John, and their counterparts in Toronto. The changing fortunes of midwives during the era are also discussed.
From Birth Control to Sex Control: Unruly Young Women and the Origins of the National Abstinence-Only Mandate
Authors: Ehrlich J. Shoshanna
Published: December 2016

In the early 1980s, conservative politicians in the United States argued that the federal government was promoting promiscuity by providing teens with confidential access to government-funded family planning services. Claiming the problem was not that young women were getting pregnant but that they were having sex, they promised a new national policy—one that would stress self-discipline and family values over sexual indulgence. As argued in this paper, the resulting abstinence-only federal mandate both draws upon and reinforces traditional sexual scripts, which hold young women responsible for keeping male passion in check, thus selectively burdening them with the work of “doing abstinence.”
La médication par les eaux et le climat : Venise, station balnéaire et climatique au 19e siècle
Authors: Levantis Laetitia
Published: December 2016

Au 19e siècle, l’intérêt manifesté par les médecins français et vénitiens pour le climat de Venise voit son aboutissement avec l’apparition d’un tourisme balnéaire dans le centre historique de la cité. Les propriétés exceptionnelles des eaux lagunaires révélées par les publications des médecins attirent, jusqu’à la fin du siècle, des milliers de malades européens désireux de goûter aux effets bénéfiques de la « cure vénitienne » dans les lagunes. Autrefois dénoncée pour son caractère malsain, l’eau de Venise est désormais appréciée pour ses vertus curatives. Avec l’avènement du tourisme moderne au milieu du siècle, le bain comme mondanité supplante progressivement le bain thérapeutique dans les établissements flottants implantés le long du Grand Canal, tout comme dans les principaux hôtels de la ville.
A Third Look at Sarah Gamp
Authors: Helmstadter Carol
Published: December 2016

Nineteenth and earlier 20th-century readers of Charles Dickens’s novel Martin Chuzzlewit accepted his character of Sarah Gamp as a credible representation of the worst of the old untrained hospital nurses. In the 1980s a number of revisionist historians took a second look at these nurses and concluded that Gamp was a caricature. This article takes a third look at Gamp, setting her into the context of earlier 19th-century hospital nursing and the workforce as a whole and demonstrates that Dickens’s fictional character was based on a reality—there were numerous real Sarah Gamps.
Médecine, comparaisons et échanges inter-impériaux dans le mandat camerounais : une histoire croisée franco-allemande de la mission Jamot
Authors: Lachenal Guillaume
Published: December 2016

Cet article aborde un épisode bien connu de l’histoire sanitaire du Cameroun: le programme de lutte contre la maladie du sommeil du Dr Eugène Jamot. Il étudie à partir de ce cas comment la médecine fut simultanément, dans le contexte mandataire, un enjeu patriotique et le lieu d’une internationalisation des pratiques et des débats coloniaux. En s’appuyant sur les propositions théoriques de l’histoire croisée, l’article replace le parcours de Jamot au sein d’un chassé-croisé entre médecins allemands et français, qui se succèdent au Cameroun suite à la Première Guerre mondiale. Ce croisement est l’occasion de transferts techniques et de comparaisons internationales. S’entrelacent ainsi l’histoire allemande de la médecine coloniale française, l’histoire médicale du mandat camerounais et l’histoire postcoloniale de la médecine tropicale allemande, qui se redéploie en Europe après 1918.
Eugenics in the Community: Gendered Professions and Eugenic Sterilization in Alberta, 1928–1972
Authors: Samson Amy
Published: December 2016

Scholarship on Alberta’s Sexual Sterilization Act (1928-1972) has focused on the high-level politics behind the legislation, its main administrative body, the Eugenics Board, and its legal legacy, overlooking the largely female-dominated professions that were responsible for operating the program outside of the provincial mental health institutions. This paper investigates the relationship between eugenics and the professions of teaching, public health nursing, and social work. It argues that the Canadian mental hygiene and eugenics movements, which were fundamentally connected, provided these professions with an opportunity to maintain and extend their professional authority.
The Early Eugenics Movement and Emerging Professional Psychiatry: Conceptual Transfers and Personal Relationships between Germany and North America, 1880s to 1930s
Authors: Stahnisch Frank W
Published: December 2016

French-Austrian psychiatrist Bénédict Augustin Morel’s (1809–1873) Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l’espèce humaine (1857) was fully dedicated to the social problem of “degeneration” and it became very attractive to German-speaking psychiatrists during the latter half of the 19th century. Auguste Forel (1848–1931) and Constantin von Monakow (1853–1930) in Zurich integrated Morel’s approach and searched for the somatic and morphological alterations in the human brain; a perspective of research that Ernst Ruedin (1874–1952) at Munich further prolonged into a thorough analysis of hereditary influences on mental health. This paper investigates the continuities and major differences within some early eugenic traditions of the emerging field of psychiatry in the German-speaking countries and North America.
Contraception or Eugenics? Sterilization and “Mental Retardation” in the 1970s and 1980s
Authors: Ladd-Taylor Molly
Published: December 2016

Nonconsensual sterilization is usually seen as the by-product of a classist and racist society; disability is ignored. This article examines the 1973 sterilization of two young black girls from Alabama and other precedent-setting court cases involving the sterilization of “mentally retarded” white women to make disability more central to the historical analysis of sterilization. It analyzes the concept of mental retardation and the appeal of a surgical solution to birth control, assesses judicial deliberations over the “right to choose” contraceptive sterilization when the capacity to consent is in doubt, and reflects on the shadow of eugenics that hung over the sterilization debate in the 1970s and 1980s.
“A Visitation of Providence:” Public Health and Eugenic Reform in the Wake of the Halifax Disaster
Authors: Baker Leslie
Published: December 2016

The Halifax Explosion provided the opportunity for an “experiment in public health” that was meant not only to restore but also to improve the city and its population in the process. The restructuring that occurred during the restoration was influenced by pre-existing ideals and prejudices which were reflected in the goals of the newly formed committees in charge of the reconstruction. The primary emphasis on improvement as well as control was the result of existing regional concerns regarding the emigration of the province’s most “desirable” stock, in the form of healthy, educated young men and women, to central Canada and the eastern United States. Public health reforms reflected the eugenic goal of improving the overall quality of the population through education, surveillance, and inspection, resorting finally to institutionalizing people who public health officials determined were genuinely deficient.
“The Luxurious Daughters of Artificial Life”: Female “Delicacy” and Pain in Late-Victorian Advice Literature
Authors: WOOD WHITNEY
Published: December 2016

The second half of the 19th century marked the rise of obstetrics as a legitimate physician-dominated medical specialty. In this period of transition, distanced from traditional cultures of social childbirth but not yet embracing hospital deliveries, many middle-class North American women turned to prescriptive literature to fill a crucial gap. In the medical advice they directed at young wives and expectant mothers, physicians consistently emphasized the middle-class woman’s heightened sensitivity to the pain of giving birth, relying on arguments that resonated with the class, gender, and racial tensions of the late-Victorian period while consistently reaffirming physicians’ expanding authority.
Towards Legitimate Nursing Work? Historical Discursive Constructions of Abortion in The Canadian Nurse, 1950–1965
Authors: HANEY CATHERINE
Published: December 2016

To the detriment of women’s health, the abortion work of nurses in Canada has gone largely unexamined and is not well understood. This historical discourse analysis examines discursive constructions of nurses’ abortion work and ongoing renegotiations of professional identity in The Canadian Nurse from 1950 to 1965. By investigating what has shaped and continues to inform nurses’ understandings and enactment of abortion work over time, I hope to contribute to a foundation from which to evaluate contemporary abortion services and to foster conditions that support nurses in providing safe abortion care.
Malaria and Miscarriage in Ancient Rome
Authors: Stivala Joan
Published: December 2016

Many Roman authors have claimed that induced abortions were frequent among aristocratic women in their society. They assumed that abortion was a simple procedure, easy to perform, and generally harmless for the women involved. The truth of these claims is frequently accepted by modern scholars. This article will argue that most supposed “abortions” were miscarriages caused by various infectious diseases, especially malaria.
Sphagnum Moss in World War I: The Making of Surgical Dressings by Volunteers in Toronto, Canada, 1917-1918
Authors: Riegler Natalie N.
Published: December 2016

In World War I, the shortage and cost of cotton and the unexpected need for an immense supply of surgical dressings made it necessary for Britain to experiment with a number of materials as a replacement. Though many previously used fibres and materials were tried, sphagnum moss, which had been judged beneficial in 1881 by G. Neuber, a German surgeon, and which had been adopted by the French War Department in 1895 as an absorbent dressing, became popular because of its availability, cheapness, and suitability. In 1918 Canada played an important part in the making and shipping of such dressings to Britain, Europe, and Siberia. Looking closely at the work done in Toronto, it was found that the availability of the moss was influenced by the Canadian climate, the making of the dressings was labor-intensive, and the cheapness of the product was dependent upon the volunteerism of women. For these reasons, in spite of the opinions of Drs. J. B. Porter and E. Archibald, both of McGill University, that sphagnum moss dressings had a future and would "take an important place in all hospitals," the substance did not become a replacement for cotton. However, in the 1980s it has again been studied and is being used as a "new absorbent material" for surgical dressings by Johnson & Johnson, manufacturers of health care products.
Ideology and Experience: Public health nursing and the Ontario Rural Child Welfare Project, 1920–25
Authors: Stuart Meryn
Published: December 2016

In October 1920, the provincial Board of Health of Ontario sent 16 public health nurses to the northern and rural parts of the province to "educate" mothers in an attempt to lower the unacceptably high infant mortality rate. This research examines the relationship between the official perceptions and actions of the Board in relation to the child welfare project and the actual experiences of the nurses in two small communities, Kenora and Bowmanville. It will be argued that knowledge is a necessary but not sufficient means to better health. The Board's focus on "health education," however delivered by the nurses, would not erase the effects of poverty, nor replace the lack of expert care for confinements or serious illness. Health education was a facile solution to the serious problem of the lack of permanent human and material resources, particularly in Northern and Eastern Ontario. Specific research at the local level is necessary to establish public health measures as effective agents of social change.
Social Class and Health Care in a Community Institution: The case of Hamilton City Hospital
Authors: Cortiula Mark W.
Published: December 2016

This paper examines the evolution of Hamilton City Hospital. Initially constructed as a municipal charity in 1853, the hospital provided treatment to those poor who could not afford the services of private physicians. The city's affluent shunned hospitalization in favour of home care because it was more hygienic and comfortable. Advances in science and medical technology, in the latter part of the century, revolutionized treatment and surgical techniques. These developments underscored the limitations of home treatment and made the hospital more attractive to the well-to-do. However, the institution was not originally designed to accomodate this new breed of patient in a manner to which they were accustomed. Recognizing the value of having a class of patient who could pay for services, the hospital pursued development strategies that catered to the needs and values of its wealthy patients. City Hospital reflected the rigid social class relationships of society and provided care accordingly.
Hospital History in Canada and the United States
Authors: CONNOR J.T.H
Published: December 2016

During the last decade, historians such as Craig, Guy, Ludmerer, MacDougall, Risse, Rosenberg, and Shortt have identified weaknesses in the prevailing historiography of the hospital as an institution, and they have also outlined conceptual frameworks that others could follow to develop a sounder understanding of the origins and evolution of the hospital in North America. In the United States at least, the response to the numerous pleas, laments, and methodological statements about the writing of good hospital history has been encouraging. Several sophisticated histories of hospitals have been written, including those by Vogel, Rosner, and Stevens, as well as Charles Rosenberg's latest work, which is one of the books being reviewed here.
Medicine and the Goodness of War
Authors: Cooter Roger
Published: December 2016

For reasons that perhaps have much to do with anti-war socialization in the 1960s and 1970s, social historians of medicine have shied away from systematic study of the relations between medicine and war. Where their work has intersected the wars of this century, they have tended to concur with medical writers on the subject, perceiving war simply as good for medicine. This paper challenges that perception by questioning the causal framework in which the relationship between war and medicine has been set—a framework seen to reify both war and medicine. In addition to observing how military medicine existed in peacetime and, secondly, how wartime and peacetime medicine are not so easily demarcated, it argues that the theatres of war and medicine must be studied as part and parcel of the societies and cultures in which they were set, and that they must be seen as economically and ideologically constitutive with those societies. Pursued in this way, the study of war and medicine ceases to be epiphenomenal to the rest of history, and to the rest of the social history of medicine in particular. It becomes, instead, central to it.
The Embodied Soul in Seventeenth-Century French Medicine
Authors: Wright John P
Published: December 2016

While medical historians have noted the continuing importance of the soul in seventeenth-century physiology, it is not generally recognized that there were systematic discussions of the role of the physiological soul even after it was banished from science by Descartes and Malebranche. In this paper I analyze important accounts of it by founding members of the Académie des Sciences who were physicians—Cureau de La Chambre and Claude Perrault. Both these thinkers argued that the soul is spread throughout the body and manifests a form of knowledge in all its actions. Cureau was an Aristotelian who argued that all life processes require some form of active imaging on the part of the vegetative or natural faculty. He argued that life processes themselves must be conceived as passionate responses organized through innate patterns built into the organism itself. While the vegetative soul (like the sensitive soul) reasons through a kind of linking of images, it does so without any knowledge of the goal of its actions. Unlike Cureau, his successor Claude Perrault's account of the embodied soul was developed in response to the new physiology of Descartes. Like the latter, he thought that bodily processes must be described in mechanistic terms. However, he rejected the Cartesian theory that the body is an automaton and insisted that the mechanism must be guided by a soul. Perrault argued that this soul is constantly reasoning in order to achieve certain goals. In response to the Cartesian view that the soul is always conscious and aware of its own actions, he gave a systematic account of how such processes become unconscious and why they appear to be determined. Perrault's theory probably influenced Leibniz and, even more significantly, Georg Stahl. In the conclusion to the paper I discuss the importance of Perrault's conception of the embodied soul for eighteenth-century pathology.
A Hempelian Explanatory Shift in Neuropathology: A Study in the History and Logic of Medicine
Authors: Pollanen Michael S
Published: December 2016

Mechanistic analysis of infarction along the boundary zones between the major arterial territories (watersheds) in the brain is herein described as an example of a scientific explanatory shift. The two explanations for the pathogenesis of watershed infarction were both logically deduced from radicallv different emvirical laws of fluid mechanics. The first explanation became the orthodox or received view only until incompleteness neiessitated the development of an alternative and autonomous explanation which accounted for the empirical phenomenon that the orthodox explanation could not logically infer. Since this explanatory shift emerged to maintain completeness, and used empirical laws (Bernoulli's law and the Fahraeus-Lindqvist effect) as antecedents for the logical deduction of consequents which were empirically testable by experiment, it is suggested that the explanatory shift was of the Hempelian-type.