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

How the Ideology of Low Fat Conquered America

La Berge, A. F. — 2008-05-07

This article examines how faith in science led physicians and patients to embrace the low-fat diet for heart disease prevention and weight loss. Scientific studies dating from the late 1940s showed a correlation between high-fat diets and high-cholesterol levels, suggesting that a low-fat diet might prevent heart disease in high-risk patients. By the 1960s, the low-fat diet began to be touted not just for high-risk heart patients, but as good for the whole nation. After 1980, the low-fat approach became an overarching ideology, promoted by physicians, the federal government, the food industry, and the popular health media. Many Americans subscribed to the ideology of low fat, even though there was no clear evidence that it prevented heart disease or promoted weight loss. Ironically, in the same decades that the low-fat approach assumed ideological status, Americans in the aggregate were getting fatter, leading to what many called an obesity epidemic. Nevertheless, the low-fat ideology had such a hold on Americans that skeptics were dismissed. Only recently has evidence of a paradigm shift begun to surface, first with the challenge of the low-carbohydrate diet and then, with a more moderate approach, reflecting recent scientific knowledge about fats.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Manchester's Recruiting Statistics: Degeneration as an "Urban Legend" in Victorian and Edwardian Britain

Heggie, V. — 2008-05-07

Few historians have attempted to discuss British medicine, health and welfare policies, or the biological sciences around 1900 without due reference to the concept of degeneration. Most tie public concern with degeneration to a specific set of military recruiting figures, which stated that of 11,000 would-be volunteers in Manchester, 8,000 had to be turned away due to physical defects. Further, most histories point out that these figures had a direct influence on the formation of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration in 1904. With its absolute denial of hereditary decline, the 1904 Report acts as a dénouement of degenerationist fears in Britain. No historian has sought to contextualize these recruiting figures: Where did they come from? How did Manchester react? What role did that city play in the subsequent 1904 Report? Far from being the epitome of urban decay, the 1904 Report repeatedly hails Manchester as a glowing example of innovative urban reform. This article contextualizes the recruiting figures and explores how Manchester had been tackling the three key problems of Physical Deterioration—diet, exercise, and alcohol—for thirty years prior to the 1904 Report. By discussing Manchester, a new understanding of degeneration is outlined; as slogan, rhetorical tool, and urban legend, degeneration was largely feminized and domesticated. Military/masculine problems such as the recruiting figures were the exception, not the rule.

Rationalizing Medicine and the Social Ambitions of Physicians in Classical Greece

Chang, H.-H. — 2008-05-07

Political and social circumstances in the late Classical period increased upward social mobility in Greece and provided some doctors with an opportunity to improve their social status. By adopting rational medical theories and prescribing an upper-class oriented regimen, these doctors appealed to the elites who favored the teachings of natural philosophers and sophists at that time. These doctors' goal was to be accepted into circles of the social elite as intellectual companions. Their ambitions contributed to the fact that rational medicine in the Classical period did not become an empirical science. Instead, speculative theories were selectively used to explain the causes of health and disease and to guide these doctors' practices, because natural philosophical speculation was considered a "superior" form of knowledge by the Greek elites. Eryximachus provided an illustrative example of this strategy by attaining acceptance into the highest social circle of a Classical Greek city.

Primitive Madness: Re-Writing the History of Mental Illness and Race

Fearnley, A. M. — 2008-05-07

Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fire

Debus, A. G. — 2008-05-07

Chymists and Chymistry, Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Chemistry

Jensen, W. B. — 2008-05-07

Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology: The Uses of a Sixteenth-Century Compendium

Furdell, E. L. — 2008-05-07

Eighteenth Century British Midwifery

Wall, L. L. — 2008-05-07

The English Physician

Callery, B. G. — 2008-05-07

The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics

Ponce, R. N. — 2008-05-07

The Secret Leprosy of Modern Days: Narcotic Addiction and Cultural Crisis in the United States, 1870-1920

Gabriel, J. M. — 2008-05-07

Poison, Detection, and the Victorian Imagination

Parascandola, J. — 2008-05-07

Streptomyces in Nature and Medicine: The Antibiotic Makers

Worthen, D. B. — 2008-05-07

The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver

Erlen, J. — 2008-05-07

The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the 'Opening' of Japan

Van Sant, J. E. — 2008-05-07

Our Shared Legacy: Nursing Education at Johns Hopkins Hospital 1889-2006

Keeling, A. W. — 2008-05-07

Goals of Medicine in the Course of History and Today: A Study in the History and Philosophy of Medicine

Grob, G. N. — 2008-05-07

Books Received

2008-05-07

RECENT DISSERTATIONS IN THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE

2008-05-07