Women Searchers of the Dead in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century London
From plague epidemics in Elizabethan England to cholera outbreaks in the early Victorian era, women determined causes of death for London parishes. Despite criticism about lack of medical training, parishes continued to rely upon women searchers and expanded their responsibilities during the eighteenth century while looking not to midwives and nurses but female relatives of parish workers to fill open positions. Sextonesses and pew keepers became searchers of the dead and served lengthy terms in office. Historians have assumed that Parliament established the General Register Office to supplant searchers with medical men, acting as registrars. However, the transition away from the bills depended more upon the parish's loss of monopoly on the death business than the medical failings of women searchers. By the mid-nineteenth century, the undertaking industry managed London's dead, and undertakers, rather than medical men, replaced women searchers as reporters of cause of death.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/445?rss=1
Medicine and Charity in Eighteenth-century Northumberland: The Early Years of the Bamburgh Castle Dispensary and Surgery, c. 1772-1802
In 1772 in Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland, a charitable institution was established by Dr John Sharp to offer medical provision to the poor of the parish, which was remote from the Newcastle and Edinburgh Infirmaries. Unlike urban institutions, which have dominated hospital historiography, the Bamburgh dispensary was small, occupying only a few rooms in the castle, and situated in a remote, coastal location. And yet, at its height, the Bamburgh dispensary treated thousands of patients per year, often exceeding dispensaries in large towns, and was equipped with the latest medical technologies. Unlike the majority of infirmaries and dispensaries it was not funded by subscription, nor run by governors, but was entirely funded by the Lord Crewe Trust, and administered by Dr Sharp. While Bamburgh is certainly an anomaly, it raises new questions about voluntary institutional medical provision for rural populations, and forms of medical philanthropy.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/467?rss=1
Infected by the Devil, Cured by Calundu: African Healers in Eighteenth-century Minas Gerais, Brazil
African slaves played a key role in the colonization of Minas Gerais in the interior of Brazil during the eighteenth century. Popular healers from Africa and of African descent were important providers of health care in the region during the colonial period. Relying on a variety of healing practices, their activities often came under the scrutiny of religious authorities as they were denounced to the commissioners of the Inquisition of Lisbon or to priests in the local parishes. The most commonly denounced healing practice was a spirit possession ritual referred to as calundu. Besides organizing healing rituals, African healers offered herbal remedies to their patients. In some cases, the mixing of African, Amerindian and European practices resulted in hybrid forms of healing, which appealed to a wide array of clients, including blacks as well as whites seeking remedies to their illness.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/490?rss=1
Immigration, Statecraft and Public Health: The 1920 Aliens Order, Medical Examinations and the Limitations of the State in England
This article considers the medical measures of the 1920 Aliens Order barring aliens from Britain. Building on existing local and port public health inspection, the requirement for aliens to be medically inspected before landing significantly expanded the duties of these state agencies and necessitated the creation of a new level of physical infrastructure and administrative machinery. This article closely examines the workings and limitations of alien medical inspection in two of England’s major ports—Liverpool and London—and sheds light on the everyday working of the Act. In doing so it reflects on the ambitions, actions and limitations of the state and so extends research by historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth century on the disputed histories of public health and the complexities of statecraft. Overall it suggests the importance of developing nuanced understandings of the gaps and failures arising from the translation of legislation into practice.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/512?rss=1
Medical Eponyms: Patient Advocates, Professional Interests and the Persistence of Honorary Naming
Eponyms have been adopted for the naming of disorders since the mid-nineteenth century. Physicians have favoured eponyms for many reasons, including their descriptive neutrality and role in the awards system of medicine. This paper examines the changing interest groups involved in the adoption of eponyms since 1960. As patient advocates have increasingly collaborated in the medical construction of their disorders, they have played a more influential role in the naming of conditions. This has particularly been the case in disorders known by descriptive terms identifying stigmatising features, such as mental, physical and behavioural abnormalities, as well as often-trivialised hardships, like restless legs. Rather than seeking to upend existing medical naming conventions, patient advocates have continued to support the adoption of eponyms, doing so for many of the same reasons as physicians. This has included maintaining the role that eponyms play in honouring the contributions of medical researchers in constructing conditions.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/534?rss=1
The Strange Case of Hannah West: Skin Colour and the Search for Racial Difference
This article examines the strange case of Hannah West, a ‘very fair female of the white race of mankind’ who had patches of black skin upon her body. A closer glance at William Charles Wells’s 1818 posthumous publication of her case, Account of A female of the white race of mankind, part of whose skin resembles that of a Negro, exposes the process through which Wells crafted an incipient theory of natural selection that was based upon the belief that innate racial differences between blacks and whites were a result of generational adaptations to specific disease environments. Finally, this article demonstrates how Wells maintained Hannah West’s whiteness, despite the potential for her skin to disrupt commonly held associations between skin colour and race. Rather than casting her as a racially transformative figure, Wells used her case to not only reify but also reaffirm the distinctiveness of black and white bodies.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/557?rss=1