Before Survivorship: The Moment of Recovery in Twentieth-century American Cancer Campaigns
This paper concerns what I call "the moment of recovery," the time when, in the 1950s, American cancer campaigns abandoned an earlier tendency to downplay post-operative recovery in their public education programs. This change was signalled by the emergence of new patients groups such as Reach to Recovery (founded 1953), and by a new interest in cancer rehabilitation among physicians, nurses, and manufacturers and sellers of equipment and clothing for patients. My focus is on breast cancer and the nurse-patient-industrial complex that drove the new interest in rehabilitation and recovery, but I also argue that the "moment of recovery" in breast cancer was part of a larger "moment" in cancer more generally. Finally, I seek to distinguish the "moment of recovery" of the 1950s from the discourses around the survivor that have emerged since the 1970s and 1980s, what might be called the "moment of survivorship."
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/27/3/440?rss=1
The ‚Dangerous‘ Women of Animal Welfare: How British Veterinary Medicine Went to the Dogs
This paper examines the turn toward the small companion animal that occurred in British veterinary medicine in the twentieth century. The change in species emphasis is usually attributed to post-war socioeconomic factors, however this explanation ignores the extensive small animal treatment that was occurring outwith the veterinary profession in the interwar period. The success of this unqualified practice caused the veterinary profession to rethink attitudes to small animals (dogs initially, later cats) upon the decline of horse practice. This paper argues that a shift toward seeing the small animal as a legitimate veterinary patient was necessary before the specialty could become mainstream in the post-war years, and that this occurred between the wars as a result of the activities of British animal welfare charities, especially the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals of the Poor.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/27/3/466?rss=1
The Search for International Food Safety Regulation. From the Commission Internationale pour la repression des falsifications to the Societe universelle de la Croix Blanche (1879-1909)
In the late-nineteenth and the early-twentieth centuries, food safety regulation experienced important changes throughout Europe and North America with the passing of several national food laws. Rising food adulteration and constant denunciation by scientists, writers, politicians or consumers, prompted the passing of these new laws at a local level. However, the laws proved limited and unsatisfactory in the context of the increasingly industrialised and globalised food chain. The growing international dimension of the food market demanded international agreements in food quality and safety regulation, and the shift towards control mainly based on chemical analysis led to a new regulation strategy: the search for standards. This paper analyses these turning points in regulation by considering the major international initiatives around the turn of the century.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/27/3/419?rss=1
The Prevalence of Syphilis in England and Wales on the Eve of the Great War: Re-visiting the Estimates of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases 1913-1916
Public fears of widespread venereal disease led in 1913 to the appointment of The Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases (RCVD). In 1916 its Final Report offered only a single cautious and somewhat imprecise summary statement about the likely prevalence of venereal diseases in England and Wales. Although the significance of contemporary attitudes to venereal disease has attracted a good deal of historiographic attention, no historian or demographer has since investigated this aspect of the Royal Commission's work. This article critically re-examines the most important quantitative evidence presented to the Royal Commission relating to the years immediately prior to the First World War. It utilises this evidence to produce new estimates of the probable prevalence of syphilis among adult males, both nationally and among certain geographical divisions and social groups in the national population; and also to offer a comment on the likely prevalence of gonorrhoea.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/27/3/508?rss=1
Pills, Potions and Devices: Treatments for Hearing Loss Advertised in Mid-nineteenth Century British Newspapers
This article examines the ameliorative options facing people with hearing loss in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. As reflected in professional journals of the day, medical understanding of diseases and dysfunctions of the ear was limited, yet there was vigorous assertion and counter-claim as to the cause and treatment of problems. At the time, medicine was largely unregulated and quack practitioners were also able to promote their nostrums and services to a credulous the general public with little chance of a genuine cure for their hearing loss. Using the nineteenth-century British Library Newspapers Archive for 1850, 379 advertisements offering cures for deafness were identified and examined to illustrate the variety of nostrums and devices offered to the public. Individuals with hearing loss were easy prey when even qualified medical practitioners had little understanding of cause or treatment, and when scant legal protection protected them from fraudulent treatment claims or offered redress for their failure.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/27/3/530?rss=1
The Question of Water Quality and London’s New River in the Eighteenth Century
Although most historiographic attention about the quality of London's drinking water has been directed towards the nineteenth century, it was an important subject in the eighteenth century as well. This paper focuses particularly on the New River supply to the city and shows that different groups approached the subject in various ways. The New River Company was constantly concerned about quality in regard to matter that affected the water's taste, appearance and smell, meaning mostly weeds, leaves and mud. Popular opinion, however, fixated on one subject above all others: that of people bathing in the New River. This source of contamination created such ire because the practice of bathing was becoming increasingly popular for its health effects; those objecting mingled moral and spiritual impurity with the contamination of the water; and finally, there was a strong class element to the dispute, with the bathers being from the lower classes.
Quelle: http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/27/3/488?rss=1