Cryptic Pregnancies and their Legal Consequences in Pre-Modern Finland
This article investigates a woman's total unawareness of being pregnant and the legal consequences of this phenomenon in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Finland. Totally unexpected births of viable neonates have an occurrence rate of 1 in 2,500 in the modern Western world. The term used for this phenomenon in history is ‘cryptic pregnancy’. It refers to the medically defined condition ‘denial of pregnancy’ in its extreme form, in which the pregnancy is revealed to the woman only with the birth of her baby. The accounts of cryptic pregnancy given by the usual suspects of infanticide were mainly treated as lies, and the acts were condemned as involuntary infanticide. However, cryptic pregnancy was a recognised corporal condition in medical texts of the time. Consequently, unawareness of pregnancy has to be taken into account not only in research on modern neonaticide but also in historical research dealing with infanticide and its treatment in court proceedings.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/28/4/663?rss=1
‚A virtue beyond all medicine‘: The Hanged Man’s Hand, Gallows Tradition and Healing in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century England
From the eighteenth century through to the abolition of public executions in England in 1868, the touch of a freshly hanged man's hand was sought after to cure a variety of swellings, wens in particular. While the healing properties of corpse hands in general were acknowledged and experimented with in early modern medicine, the gallows cure achieved prominence during the second half of the eighteenth century. What was it about the hanged man's hand (and it always was a male appendage) that gave it such potency? While frequently denounced as a disgusting ‘superstition’ in the press, this popular medical practice was inadvertently legitimised and institutionalised by the authorities through changes in execution procedure.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/28/4/686?rss=1
Migration and Madness at Sea: The Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century Voyage to New Zealand
This article draws on a range of sources—including surgeon superintendents' reports as well as asylum records—to examine the mental health of migrants and crew on the voyage to New Zealand during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. It examines key themes such as relations between crew and passengers, the emotional dimensions of insanity, attempts to export the insane, and collaboration between doctors and relatives in adhering to mental health legislation in order to repatriate the insane, all of which facilitate assessment of wider debates about medical authority. While surgeon superintendents documented actions rather than causes for unusual behaviour, asylum doctors and family members were more likely to attempt to explain mental disturbance at sea. Additionally, this article examines the beliefs of medical officials who paradoxically argued that the voyage was beneficial, rather than detrimental, to health.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/28/4/706?rss=1
Fathers and Hospital Childbirth in New Zealand
From the 1950s the Parents' Centre, a new consumer group in New Zealand, included amongst its goals the right for men to accompany their wives into maternity hospitals at childbirth. This campaign was eventually successful; fathers' presence at childbirth became the norm and hospital spaces changed significantly to accommodate these new demands. This article explores the reasons for that social change, including ideas in the 1950s about the psychological benefits to the family of men's attendance, and the influence of the women's and consumer movements of the 1970s. It then examines attitudes to the changes among health professionals as well as men and women themselves, and explores whether, once men's attendance had become the norm, the reality met expectations.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/28/4/725?rss=1
Charles V. Roman and the Spectre of Polygenism in Progressive Era Public Health Research
The influence of polygenism over twentieth-century medicine and racial science has been an underdeveloped area of study. During the period referred to by historians as the ‘eclipse of Darwinism’, assumptions about separate human ancestry often structured debates across the USA over whether racial heredity was responsible for ‘innate dispositions’ toward certain diseases. This article explores how polygenist carryovers made their way into early twentieth-century medical and public health studies on the links between race and venereal disease during the American social hygiene movement (1910–40). It also recovers the work of the African-American physician, ethicist, and social hygienist, Dr Charles V. Roman, who stressed during this period that the idea of common human ancestry should push public health researchers to think more creatively and critically about the social and environmental factors shaping health outcomes and black susceptibility to sexual diseases.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/28/4/742?rss=1
‚The bones tell a story the child is too young or too frightened to tell‘: The Battered Child Syndrome in Post-war Britain and America
This article traces the emergence of child abuse as a medical concern in post-war Britain and America. In the early 1960s American paediatricians and radiologists defined the ‘battered child syndrome’ to characterise infants subjected to serious physical abuse. In the British context, paediatricians and radiologists, but also dermatologists and ophthalmologists, drew upon this work and sought to identify clear diagnostic signs of child maltreatment. For a time, the x-ray seemed to provide a reliable and objective visualisation of child maltreatment. By 1970, however, medical professionals began to invite social workers and policy makers to aid them in the diagnosis and management of child abuse. Discourse around the ‘battered child syndrome’, specifically, faded away, whilst concerns around child abuse grew. The battered child syndrome was a brief phenomenon of the 1960s, examination of which can inform the histories of medical authority, radiology and secrecy and privacy in the post-war period.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/28/4/767?rss=1
‚A Chequered (and Mated) Scientific Career‘: Robert Case and the Politics of Occupational Bladder Cancer
Occupational bladder cancer appeared in dyestuffs workers by the end of the nineteenth century. In the UK, no action was taken by government and industry until the late 1940s, when an epidemiologist, Robert A. M. Case, was commissioned to conduct a study of chemical workers. This article examines Case's pioneering survey and, in particular, the reaction of industry and government to the confirmation that α-naphthylamine, β-naphthylamine, and benzidine were carcinogens. Robert Case's papers and unpublished government and trades union records are used to shed new light on how the chemical industry and government delayed the publication of Case's pathbreaking study and initially hid the results from trade unions. The finding that workers in other industries, such as rubber, were at risk was first censored and then edited by rubber manufacturers. Case's experience has parallels with other scientists, who uncovered industrial diseases in toxic industries. His early retirement was marked by illness and disillusion. His death went almost unnoticed.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/28/4/789?rss=1
Bolstering the Greatness of the Homeland: Productivity, Disability and Medicine in Franco’s Spain, 1938-1966
The Spanish Civil War ended in 1939 with the victory of the rebel forces led by General Franco, beginning a dictatorship that combined: the establishment of a militarised state to guarantee order; the charismatic authority of the head of state; an enormous bureaucratic apparatus to legitimise its legality; and a strict defence of tradition. In this paper we analyse the way in which disability and rehabilitation formed part of this political programme between the years 1938 and 1966. We highlight the perceived dangers posed by disability and how it was moulded to fit the fundamental principles and goals of the Franco regime. We attempt also to show how these policies helped foster a culture of rehabilitation in Spain which contributed to changing attitudes towards the perception of disabled people.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/28/4/805?rss=1