Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences - current issue

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Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:45 PST

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Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:45 PST

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Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:45 PST

"A Dictate of Both Interest and Mercy"? Slave Hospitals in the Antebellum South

Kenny, S. C. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:45 PST

As a contribution to debates on slave health and welfare, this article investigates the variety, functions, and overall significance of infirmaries for the enslaved in the antebellum South. Newspapers, case histories, and surviving institutional records of antebellum Southern infirmaries providing medical treatment for slaves offer a unique opportunity to examine the development of modern American medicine within the "peculiar institution," and to explore a complex site of interactions between the enslaved, physicians, and slave owners. The world of the medical college hospital in South Carolina and an experimenting clinic in Alabama are reconstructed using newspapers and medical case histories. The Patient Register of the Hotel Dieu (1859–64) and the Admission Book of Touro Infirmary (1855–60) are used to highlight the types of enslaved patients sent to these two New Orleans commercial hospitals and to explore connections between the practice of medicine and the business of slave trading in the city. In addition to providing physicians with a steady income, slave infirmaries were key players in the domestic slave trade, as well as mechanisms for professionalization and the mobilization of medical ideas in the American South.

Enemies or Allies? The Organ Transplant Medical Community, the Federal Government, and the Public in the United States, 1967-2000

Festle, M. J. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:45 PST

The transplant medical community in the United States has frequently been divided over the appropriate role of the federal government and of the public in matters related to organ transplantation. Using public statements in government hearings, newspapers, and press releases, this article traces the thinking of the transplant medical community in particular during three especially politicized periods: the heart transplant and brain death controversies in the late 1960s, consideration of the National Organ Transplant Act and other legislation during the mid-1980s, and the controversy over organ allocation regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in the late 1990s. Even while sometimes denouncing "politicization," over time surgeons, physicians, representatives of the United Network for Organ Sharing, and other leaders in the field became increasingly politically active and more accustomed to the notion that because of the unique nature of organ transplantation, both the public and the federal government have a legitimate and potentially beneficial oversight role.

The Rise and Fall of Celiac Disease in the United States

Abel, E. K. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:45 PST

Because celiac disease is greatly under-diagnosed in the United States, a common assumption is that U.S. doctors and researchers always have considered the condition extremely rare. However, the disorder captured widespread medical attention at the beginning of the twentieth century. Luther Emmett Holt, a leading pediatrician, encouraged three other doctors to investigate the condition. Two helped to associate celiac disease with elite medical institutions. The third linked it to the marketing efforts of the United Fruit Company. Interest in celiac declined after 1965, partly as a result of the decreased concern with nutrition and nutritional disorders.

From Cure to Custodianship of the Insane Poor in Nineteenth-Century Connecticut

Goodheart, L. B. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:45 PST

Connecticut was the exception among the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic states in not founding a public institution for the insane until after the Civil War when it opened the Hospital for the Insane at Middletown in 1868, a facility previously neglected by scholars. The state had relied on the expedient of subsidizing the impoverished at the private Hartford Retreat for the Insane that overtaxed that institution and left hundreds untreated. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, well meaning officials oversold the idea that the Middletown site would promote cures and be cost effective. A number of unanticipated consequences occurred that mirrored fundamental changes in nineteenth-century psychiatry. The new hospital swelled by 1900 to over 2,000 patients, the largest in New England. Custodianship at the monolithic hospital became the norm. The hegemony of monopoly capitalism legitimated the ruling idea that bigger institutions were better and was midwife to the birth of eugenic responses. Class based psychiatry—the few rich at the Retreat and the many poor at Middletown—was standard as it was in other aspects of the Gilded Age. Public policy toward the insane poor in Connecticut represents an outstanding example of the transition from antebellum romanticism to fin de siècle fatalism.

Letter to the Editor

Flannery, M. A. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:45 PST

Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time

Byrne, J. P. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:45 PST

Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues

Porter, S. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:45 PST

The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States

Kisacky, J. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:46 PST

Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell

Dowbiggin, I. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:46 PST

Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America

Dracobly, A. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:46 PST

Fatal Thirst: Diabetes in Britain until Insulin

Gardner, K. E. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:46 PST

War and Disease: Biomedical Research on Malaria in the Twentieth Century

Linton, D. S. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:46 PST

Obsession: A History

Miller, I. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:46 PST

Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan

Van Sant, J. E. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:46 PST

Pioneers of Cardiac Surgery

Jones, D. S. — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:46 PST