Former Routledge Series
About the Previous SSHM Series
The Society for the Social History of Medicine's (SSHM) first ventures into book publishing were Health Care and Popular Medicine in Nineteenth Century England (Croom Helm, 1977) and The Social History of Occupational Health (Croom Helm, 1985). These were followed by the book series, Studies in the Social History of Medicine, a collaboration between the SSHM and Tavistock, later Routledge when Tavistock was taken over. Established in 1989, the series published 37 books (listed below) by the time it ended in 2009.
Series editors were Margaret Pelling, Jonathan Barry, Bernard Harris, Joseph Melling, Anne Borsay and David Cantor. The successor to this series is Studies for the Society for the Social History of Medicine published by Pickering and Chatto.
Health and medicine in colonial environments is one of the newest areas in the history of medicine, but one in which the Caribbean is conspicuously absent. Yet the complex and fascinating history of the Caribbean, borne of the ways European colonialism combined with slavery, indentureship, migrant labour and plantation agriculture, led to the emergence of new social and cultural forms which are especially evident the area of health and medicine. The history of medical care in the Caribbean is also a history of the transfer of cultural practices from Africa and Asia, the process of creolization in the African and Asian diasporas, the perseverance of indigenous and popular medicine, and the emergence of distinct forms of western medical professionalism, science, and practice.
This collection, which covers the French, Hispanic, Dutch, and British Caribbean, explores the cultural and social domains of medical experience and considers the dynamics and tensions of power. The chapters emphasize contestations over forms of medicalization and the controls of public health and address the politics of professionalization, not simply as an expression of colonial power but also of the power of a local elite against colonial or neo-colonial control. They pay particular attention to the significance of race and gender, focusing on such topics as conflicts over medical professionalization, control of women’s bodies and childbirth, and competition between ‘European’ and ‘Indigenous’ healers and healing practices. Employing a broad range of subjects and methodological approaches, this collection constitutes the first edited volume on the history of health and medicine in the circum-Caribbean region and is therefore required reading for anyone interested in the history of colonial and post-colonial medicine.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-96290-2
The history of sex education enables us to gain valuable insights into the cultural constructions of what different societies have defined as 'normal' sexuality and sexual health. Yet, the history of sex education has only recently attracted the full attention of historians of modern sexuality.
Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe makes a considerable contribution not only to the cultural history of sexual enlightenment and identity in modern Europe, but also to the history of childhood and adolescence. The essays collected in this volume treat sex education in the broadest sense, incorporating all aspects of the formal and informal shaping of sexual knowledge and awareness of the young. The volume, therefore, not only addresses officially-sanctioned and regulated sex education delivered within the school system and regulated by the State and in some cases the Church, but also the content, iconography and experience of sexual enlightenment within the private sphere of the family and as portrayed through the media.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-41114-1
Mark Jackson, ed. Health and the Modern Home, December 2007
This book explores shifting and contentious debates about the impact of the domestic environment on health in the modern period. Drawing on recent scholarship, contributors expose the socio-political context in which the physical and emotional environment of "the modern home" and "family" became implicated in the maintenance of health and in the aetiology and pathogenesis of diverse psychological and physical conditions. In addition, they critically analyze the manner in which the expression and articulation of medical concerns about the domestic environment served to legitimate particular political and ideological positions.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-95610-9
This book takes a fresh look at community nursing history in Great Britain, examining the essentially generalist and low profile, domiciliary end of the professional nursing spectrum throughout the twentieth century. It charts the most significant changes affecting the nurse’s work on the district including compulsory registration for general nursing, changes in organization, training, conditions of service, and workload. A strong oral history component provides a unique insight into the professional images of district nursing and the complexities of inter- and intra-professional relationships as well as into the changing day-to-day working experiences of the district nurse at ‘grass-roots’ level. Use of oral history and records of individual nurses attempts to rectify the tendency of nursing history to view nurses as if they were a homogenous group of professionals, thereby recognizing the different experiences of nurses in different regions and environments. The book also considers the degree of influence of medically related technologies and of developments in drugs, materials, communications, and transport on the professional development of district nursing. The work addresses issues of gender relationships central to a nursing profession largely composed of women (throughout much of the period) working alongside a largely male-dominated medical profession.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-95634-5
Rosemary Elliott Women and Smoking since 1890, September 2007
The changing face of the female smoker, from the lady smokers of the late nineteenth century to the lone mother of the late twentieth century, suggests that the history of smoking among women is not just about the assimilation of women into a male practice, but about the changing, and varied, circumstances of women’s lives. In this innovative study, Elliott articulates the way in which the history of smoking among women raises complex questions about the construction of female identities in relation to smoking, and the implications of this for understanding smoking among women as a medical and public health problem. In addressing these questions, Elliott uses a variety of source material, from popular magazines to films to medical discourse, to map the history of smoking among women on to changing understandings of gender and social expectations of women over the twentieth century at a societal and an individual level.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-34059-5
This fascinating volume tackles the history of the terms 'normal' and 'abnormal'. Originally meaning 'as occurring in nature', normality has taken on significant cultural gravitas and this book recognizes and explores that fact.
The essays engage with the concepts of the normal and the abnormal from the perspectives of a variety of academic disciplines – ranging from art history to social history of medicine, literature, and science studies to sociology and cultural anthropology. The contributors use as their conceptual anchors the works of moral and political philosophers such as Canguilhem, Foucault and Hacking, as well as the ideas put forward by sociologists including Durkheim and Illich.
With contributions from a range of scholars across differing disciplines, this book will have a broad appeal to students in many areas of history.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-36843-8
Leonard Smith Lunatic Hospitals in Georgian England, 1750–1830, June 2007
Lunatic Hospitals in Georgian England, 1750–1830 constitutes the first comprehensive study of the philanthropic asylum system in Georgian England. Using original research and drawing upon a wide range of expertise on the history of mental health this book demonstrates the crucial role of the lunatic hospitals in the early development of a national system of psychiatric institutions.
These hospitals were to form an essential historical link in the emergence of a national system of institutional provision for mentally disordered people. They provided important prototypes for the subsequent development of a network of state-sponsored lunatic asylums during the nineteenth century.
This is an impressive volume which covers various areas including:
- the provincial lunatic hospitals
- managing the hospital
- managing the insane.
'This useful study moves on from Leonard Smith's first book...Also sharing its strengths, it is based on archival research as well as bringing together much secondary literature, presenting a well-informed, readable and sensible over view.' - Medical History
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-37516-0
This is the first volume of papers devoted to an examination of the relationship between mental health/illness and the construction and experience of space. This historical analysis with contributions from leading experts will enlighten and intrigue in equal measure. The first rigorous scholarly analysis of its kind in book form, it will be of particular interest to the history, psychiatry and architecture communities.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-37529-0
Financing Medicine brings together a collection of essays dealing with the financing of medical care in Britain since the mid-eighteenth century, with a view to addressing two major issues:
- Why did the funding of the British health system develop in the way it did?
- What were the ramifications of these arrangements for the nature and extent of health care before the NHS?
The book also goes on to explore the 'lessons' and legacies of the past which bear upon developments under the NHS.
The contributors to this volume provide a sustained and detailed examination of the model of health care which preceded the NHS - an organization whose distinctive features hold such fascination for the scholars of health systems - and their insights illuminate current debates on the future of the NHS.
For students and scholars of the history of medicine, this will prove essential reading.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-35025-9
Collecting together essays written by an international set of contributors, this book provides an important contribution to the emerging field of disability history. It explores changes in understandings of deformity and disability between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, and reveal the ways in which different societies have conceptualised the normal and the pathological.
Through a variety of case studies including: early modern birth defects, homosexuality, smallpox scarring, vaccination, orthopaedics, deaf education, eugenics, mental deficiency, and the experiences of psychologically scarred military veterans, this book provides new perspectives on the history of physical, sensory and intellectual anomaly.
Examining changes over five centuries, it charts how disability was delineated from other forms of deformity and disfigurement by a clearer medical perspective. Essays shed light on the experiences of oppressed minorities often hidden from mainstream history, but also demonstrate the importance of discourses of disability and deformity as key cultural signifiers which disclose broader systems of power and authority, citizenship and exclusion.
The diverse nature of the material in this book will make it relevant to scholars interested in cultural, literary, social and political, as well as medical, history.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-36098-2
Niall Johnson Britain and the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic: A Dark Epilogue, May 2006
Between August 1918 and March 1919 a flu pandemic spread across the globe and in just under a year 40 million people had died from the virus worldwide. This is the first book to provide a total history and seriously analyze the British experiences during that time.
The book provides the most up-to-date tally of the pandemic’s impact, including the vast mortality, as well as questioning the apparent origins of the pandemic. A ‘total’ history, this book ranges from the spread of the 1918–1919 pandemic, to the basic biology of influenza, and how epidemics and pandemics are possible, to consider the demographic, social, economic and political impacts of such a massive pandemic, including the cultural dimensions of naming, blame, metaphors, memory, the media, art and literature.
An inter-disciplinary study, it stretches from history and geography through to medicine in order to convey the full magnitude of the first global medical ‘disaster’ of the twentieth century, and looks ahead to possible pandemics of the future.
Niall Johnson brings an impressive scholarly eye on this fascinating and highly relevant topic making this essential reading for historians and those with an interest in British and medical history.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-36560-4
'The book is rich in findings founded on a strong evidential base and will be of interest not only to historians of medicine and social policy, but also those of gender, society and politics, as well as to historical geographers and sociologists ... An admirable book that should be a model for further contextualized studies of asylums in particular and regional medical cultures more generally that are needed in Britain and Ireland.' – The Economic History Review
‘There is no doubt that The Politics of Madness is a major contribution that illuminates both the history of psychiatry and social policy.’ – Journal of the History of Medicine
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-30174-9
Taking forward the debate on the role and power of institutions for treating and incarcerating the insane, this volume challenges recent scholarship and focuses on a wide range of factors impacting on the care and confinement of the insane since 1850, including such things as the community, Poor Law authorities, local government and the voluntary sector.
Questioning the notion that institutions were generally ‘benign’ and responsive to the needs of households, this work also emphasizes the important role of the diversity of interests in shaping institutional facilities.
A fresh, stimulating step forward in the history of institutional care, Mental Illness and Learning Disability Since 1850 is undoubtedly an important resource for student and scholar alike.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-36491-1
The risks involved in introducing new drugs and devices are amongst the most discussed issues of modern medicine. Presenting a new way of thinking about these issues, this volume considers risk and medical innovation from a social historical perspective, and studies specific cases of medical innovation, including X-rays, the pill and Thalidomide, in their respective contexts.
Read together, these papers add to our understanding of the current debate about risk and safety by providing a comparative background to the discussion, as well as a set of generally applicable criteria for analyzing and evaluating the contemporary issues surrounding medical innovation.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-33481-5
This collection opens up the post war history of public health to sustained research-based historical scrutiny. Medicine, the Market and the Mass Media examines the development of a new view of 'the health of the public' and the influences which shaped it in the post war years.
Taking a broad perspective the book examines developments in Western Europe, and the relationships between Europe and the US. The essays looks at the dual legacy of social medicine through health services and health promotion, and analyse the role of mass media along with the connections between public health and industry.
This international collection will appeal to public health professionals, students of the history of medicince and of heath policy.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine
ISBN: 978-0-415-30432-0
Barbara E. Mortimer and Susan McGann (eds), New Directions in Nursing History, 2005
This collection of essays reflects the current interdisciplinary and international nature of nursing scholarship, addressing professional, social and ethical issues through research from eleven countries.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 18.
ISBN: 0-415-304334
Bridie Andrews and Mary P. Sutphen (eds), Medicine and Colonial Identity, 2003
This volume shows how the study of medicine can provide new insights into colonial identity, and the possibility of accommodating multiple perspectives on identity within a single narrative.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 17.
ISBN: 0-415-288800
'... these papers … provide a very useful introduction to a neglected episode of global significance, and raise many more interesting questions than they are currently able to answer.' - Sally Sheard, Medical History, 48 (2004).
'It is impossible to do justice to all sixteen of this volume's essays, which cover a wide geographical range and a large number of themes. The majority of the essays have been written by professional historians, with some contributions from virologists and physicians. The result is a well-balanced volume that will be indispensable to anyone studying the 1918-1919 pandemic, or the history of epidemics more generally.' - Mark Harrison, Social History of Medicine, 17 (2004).
The chapters in this book have been structured around five main themes to explore the medical and societal ramifications of this pandemic: the virology, medical responses, official responses, the demographic impact, and long-term effects.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 12.
ISBN: 0-415-23445-X
Steve Sturdy (ed.), Medicine, Health and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1600-2000, 2002
'... there is a common underlying theme to all these pieces to which the contributors, unusually successfully, manage to adhere, or at least acknowledge. This underlying theme, clearly laid out in Sturdy's authoritative and intellectually wide-ranging introduction, is an engagement with the concept of the "public sphere" as articulated by, in the first instance, Jürgen Habermas.' - John Stewart, Medical History, 48 (2004).
An international team of scholars uses the techniques of medical history to analyse the changing boundaries and constitution of the public sphere from early modernity to the present day.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 16
ISBN: 0-415-27906-2
'The collection provides us with interesting case studies, an index and a well-crafted introduction. It will be useful not only to social historians of medicine but also to those involved in the planning and the running of health systems, who want to understand why some changes meet with more resistance and are ultimately less successful than others.' - Carsten Timmermann, Medical History, 47 ( 2003).
This volume brings together cutting edge research by historians from Britain, Germany, France, the US, Japan and New Zealand. Innovative in its approach to innovation, it focuses on diffusion and resistance, and organization as well as technology.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 14.
ISBN: 0-415-24385-8
Waltraud Ernst (ed.), Plural Medicine, Tradition and Modernity, 1800-2000, 2002
Research into 'colonial' or 'imperial' medicine has made considerable progress in recent years, whilst the study of what is usually referred to as 'indigenous' or 'folk' medicine in colonized societies has received much less attention. This book redresses the balance by bringing together current critical research into medical pluralism during the last two centuries. It includes a rich selection of historical, anthropological and sociological case-studies that cover many different parts of the globe, ranging from New Zealand to Africa, China, South Asia, Europe and the USA.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 13.
ISBN: 0415231221
Alison Bashford and Claire Hooker (eds), Contagion, 2001
'Contagion' explores cultural responses to infectious diseases and their biomedical management over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also investigates the use of 'contagion' as a concept in postmodern reconceptualisations of embodied subjectivity.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 15.
ISBN: 0415246717
'Sex, Sin and Suffering is a very good collection of essays that addresses different aspects of VD from 1870. ... I can strongly recommend the collection as a whole to anyone interested in VD in history and in contemporary policy. There are no weak essays. It is good to know that there is now a single stop where historians of sexuality can pick up many details of responses to VD in numerous countries.' - Ivan Crozier, Social History of Medicine.
'What a rare treat to find an edited collection of essays that actually follows closely to its theme, with essays highlighting each other, all the while steadily increasing the reader's global comprehension of the subject at hand. Roger Davidson and Lesley A. Hall have exerted prestidigitatorial prowess in editorially assembling fourteen splendid essays that truly work together.' - Philip K. Wilson, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.
This volume brings together for the first time a series of studies on the social history of venereal disease in modern Europe and its former colonies. It explores, from a comparative perspective, the responses of legal, medical and political authorities to the 'Great Scourge'. In particular, how such responses reflected and shaped social attitudes towards sexuality and social relationships of class, gender, generation and race.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 11.
ISBN: 0-415-23444-1
This highly topical book offers a comprehensive study of the interaction of food, politics and science over the last hundred years. A range of important case studies, from pasteurisation in Britain to the E-coli outbreak offers new material for those interested in science policy and the role of expertise in modern political culture.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 10.
ISBN: 0-415-53532-4
'The editors and contributors to Insanity, Institutions and Society deserve our thanks for significantly expanding our understanding of the rise of the asylum in nineteenth-century Britain.' – Gerald N. Grob, Rutgers University.
This comprehensive collection provides a fascinating summary of the debates on the growth of institutional care during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 9.
ISBN: 0-415-18441-X
Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris (eds), Race, Science and Medicine, 1700-1960, 1999
'The authors demonstrate a commendable ability to connect historical context, racial ideas, and the development of science and medicine. It is a well-written, well-researched collection examining a number of issues relevant not only to the social history of medicine but also to the history of race and science in Western society.' – Angus Bancroft, Social History of Medicine.
Considering cases from Europe to India, this collection brings together current critical research into the role of racial issues in the production of medical knowledge. Confronting such controversial themes as colonialism and medicine, the distinguished contributors examine the part played by medicine in the construction of racial categories.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 8.
ISBN: 0-415-18152-6
'I liked this book. It attempts to expose the variety of settings in which care has been provided, inside and outside the family, and to challenge orthodoxies on the relative merits of various forms of care.' – Peter Bartlett, Medical History.
The Locus of Care provides an historical perspective on welfare detailing who carers were in the past, where care was provided, and how far the boundaries between family and state or informal and organized institutions have changed over time.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 7.
ISBN: 0-415-11216-8
'This indispensable collection of essays neatly ties together three strands in the historiography of early modern Europe: the burgeoning in the social history of medicine; the recently reinvigorated tradition of investigating the origins, nature, and development of public welfare; and the study of the impact of the Protestant Reformation on the quality of social relations in local communities. Since all three fields have been the focus of (sometimes acrimonious) scholarly debate, it is hardly surprising that their amalgamation should give rise to ground-breaking and, in some senses, profoundly controversial analysis.' - Steve Hindle, Social History of Medicine.
The involvement of society in health care has become controversial in the last decade. Drawing on research by international and leading scholars, this volume investigates the conditions under which early modern Protestant societies in northern Europe first became involved in health care and poor relief.
Studies in the social history of medicine,Vol. 6.
ISBN: 0-415-12130-2
This is the first book to focus closely on the relationship between belief, culture and healing in the past. In essays on France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and England, from the sixteenth century to the present day, the authors draw on a broad range of material, from studies of demonologists and reports of asylum doctors, to church archives and oral evidence.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 5.
ISBN: 0-415-13581-8
'Readers will find much of interest in these articles, which add needed scholarly dispassion to a subject we should all care passionately about. A welcome volume!' - Judith Leavitt, University of Wisconsin
Midwives, society and childbirth is the first book to examine midwives' lives and work in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on a national and international scale. Focusing on six countries from Europe, the approach is interdisciplinary with the studies written by a diverse team of social, medical and midwifery historians, sociologists, and those with experience in delivering childbirth services.
Questioning for the fist time many conventional historical assumptions, this book is fundamental to a better understanding of the effect on midwives of the unprecedented progress of science in general and obstetric science in particular from the late nineteenth century.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 4.
ISBN: 0-415-13328-9
'...this collection constitutes an important resource for historians and medical sociologists as well as food for thought (and perhaps much to respond to critically) for researchers in the fields of cultural studies and "race and ethnicity".' – Waltraud Ernst and Kate Reed, Social History of Medicine.
Migrants, Minorities and Health explores the relations between medicine and minorities in the twentieth century. The contributors present both historical and contemporary studies of migrant and minority groups from societies around the world in order to examine how health issues have interacted with ideas of ethnicity and race.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 2.
ISBN: 0-415-11213-3
'What is particularly useful about this volume is that the contributors have not focused exclusively on institutions, which in American historiography had led to distortions because of the neglect of the continued importance of family care. Indeed, what is especially noteworthy is the empirical base of the essays, many of which rest on a reading of local manuscript sources that provide graphic details not only of the ways in which idiocy was defined and differentiated from lunacy but what arrangements were made to ensure that mentally impaired persons had access to care and the basic necessities of life.' – Gerald N. Grob, Social History of Medicine.
This is the first book devoted to the social history of people with learning disabilities in Britain. The nine original research essays collected here cover the social history of learning disability from the Middle Ages through the establishment of the National Health Service. they will not only contribute to a neglected field of social and medical history but will also illuminate and inform current debates.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 3.
ISBN: 0-415-11215-X
'...[this book] is recommended to anyone with an interest in the background to our present ideas on what we should be eating and the role of government controls over food production and marketing.' – Kenneth J. Carpenter, Social History of Medicine.
This volume brings together for the first time a collection of essays, based on original research, which focus on the history of nutrition science in Britain. Providing valuable new insights into the social processes involved in the production and application of scientific knowledge of nutrition, this book will be fascinating reading to historians of science or medicine and anyone with a professional or general interest in food and nutrition.
Studies in the Social History of Medicine, Vol. 1.
ISBN: 0-415-11214-1
Colin Jones and Roy Porter (eds), Reassessing Foucault: Power, medicine and the body, 1994
This study critically examines the implications of Foucault's work for students and researchers in a wide selection of areas in the social and human sciences.
Hardback: ISBN: 0-415-07542-4
Paperback: ISBN: 0-415-18341-3
Jonathan Barry and Colin Jones (eds), Medicine and charity before the welfare state, 1994
'a fascinating examination of a complex and important topic with far ranging implications for our own understanding of caring and curing today.' - Lancet.
ISBN: 0-415-11136-6
'An invaluable critical survey of historical writing on definitions of old age since ancient times, on the health of the elderly and its treatment, on their family and household relationships, the limited role of institutions, work and retirement.' - Medical History.
ISBN: 0-415-11135-8
Roger Cooter (ed.), In the name of the child: Health and Welfare, 1880-1940, 1992
'a model of scholarship that grounds the insights of cultural studies to specific group, institutional, and professional dynamics...a needed and provocative contribution to the histories both of medicine and child welfare.' - Bulletin of the History of Medicine.
ISBN: 0-415-05743-4
Paul Weindling, ed. The Social History of Occupational Health, 1985
ISBN: 0-7099-3606-0
ISBN: 0-85664-321-1
