Books in the Rochester Studies in Medical History series

Multidisciplinary collection of essays on the relationship of infertility and the "e;historic"e; STIs--gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis--producing surprising new insights in studies from across the globe and spanning millennia.A multidisciplinary group of prominent scholars investigates the historical relationship between sexually transmitted infections and infertility. Untreated gonorrhea and chlamydia cause infertility in a proportion of women and men. Unlike the much-feared venereal disease of syphilis--"e;the pox"e;--gonorrhea and chlamydia are often symptomless, leaving victims unaware of the threat to their fertility. Science did not unmask the causal microorganisms until thelate nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their effects on fertility in human history remain mysterious. This is the first volume to address the subject across more than two thousand years of human history. Following asynoptic editorial introduction, part 1 explores the enigmas of evidence from ancient and early modern medical sources. Part 2 addresses fundamental questions about when exactly these diseases first became human afflictions, withnew contributions from bioarcheology, genomics, and the history of medicine, producing surprising new insights. Part 3 presents studies of infertility and its sociocultural consequences in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Africa, Oceania, and Australia. Part 4 examines the quite different ways the infertility threat from STIs was perceived--by scientists, the public, and government--in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany, France, and Britain, concluding with a pioneering empirical estimate of the infertility impact in Britain. Simon Szreter is Professor of History and Public Policy, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.

Examines medical history in northern Europe from 1850 to 2015 and sheds new light on the circulation of medical knowledge in that regionThe Baltic Sea region in northern Europe, with its history of multiple cultural and social transformations, as well as mixture of national and regional scientific styles, has lately attracted much attention from scholars of various disciplines. This book explores the history of medicine in the Baltic Sea region and provides different answers to one central question: How has the circulation of knowledge in the Baltic Sea region influenced medicine as a discipline, and illness as an experience, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? The anthology consists of ten chapters that shed new light on how medical ideas and devices were developed in different contexts. Illuminating currents of traditions, contact zones, and areas of conflict, essays in this collection discuss technological, social, and economic aspects relevant for the exchange of medical knowledge across the Baltic Sea. The contributing authors are historians, physicians, geographers, ethnologists, and scholars of literature. CONTRIBUTORS: Katharina Beier, Motzi Eklof, Frank Gruner, Martin Gunnarson, Nils Hansson, Axel C. Huntelmann, Ken Kalling, Michaela Malmberg, Joanna Nieznanowska, Anders Ottosson, Maike Rotzoll, Erki Tammiksaar, Jonatan Wistrand NILS HANSSON is Associate Professor in the Department of the History, Theory, and Ethics of Medicine at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany. JONATAN WISTRAND teaches in the Department of Medical History, Lund University, Sweden.

Examining the complex dynamics of medical treatment options and the variable character of surgical technologies, this volume broadens and transcends the notion of technological innovation.Surgery is an ideal field for examining the processes of technological change in medicine. The contributors to this book go beyond the concept of innovation, with its focus on a single technology and its sharp dichotomy of acceptance versus rejection. Instead they explore the historical contexts of change in surgery, looking at the complex dynamics of the various treatment options available -- old and new, surgical and nonsurgical -- as well as the variable character of the new technologies themselves, thus broadening and transcending the notion of technological innovation. CONTRIBUTORS: Christopher Crenner, Sally Frampton, Delia Gavrus, Lisa Haushofer, David S. Jones, Beth Linker, Shelley McKellar, Thomas Schlich Thomas Schlich is the James McGill Professor of the History of Medicine at the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University. Christopher Crenner is the RalphMajor and Robert Hudson Professor and chair of the Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

The first book to provide a social and cultural history of bacteriology in colonial India, situating it at the confluence of colonial medical practices, institutionalization, and social movements.

A new release, with a new preface, of Richard A. Meckel's classic history of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American campaign to reduce infant mortality.

Drawing from original correspondence penned by lobotomy patients and their families as well as from the professional papers of lobotomy pioneer and neurologist Walter Freeman, The Lobotomy Letters gives an account of the widespread acceptance of this controversial procedure.

Biography of a World War II-era physician whose work was a response to the suffering of Holocaust victims, and whose investigations laid the groundwork for the Nuremberg Medical Trials.

A detailed examination of the political forces and events that shaped smallpox vaccination policy in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland during the nineteenth century.

New perspectives on the history of twentieth century public health in Europe.

Original essays by leading media scholars and historians of medicine that explore the rich history of health-related films.

A look at how the concept of "risk factor" has influenced public health and preventive medicine, with an emphasis upon the study of heart disease.

A provocative study that explores medical, social, cultural, and aesthetic customs and practices of treating the dead body in Sweden in an era of modernization.

A re-examination of the role of charity and treating venereal disease in public hospitals in early-modern London.

Examining the history of arterial repair, Of Life and Limb investigates the process of surgical innovation by exploring the social, technological, institutional, and martial dynamics shaping the introduction and adoption ofa new operation.

Traces the history of the British General Medical Council to reveal the persistence of hierarchies of gender, national identity, and race in determining who was fit to practice British medicine.

How did epidemics, zoos, German exiles, methamphetamine, disgruntled technicians, modern bureaucracy, museums, and whipping cream shape the emergence of modern neuroscience?

Explores the complex interactions between French medicine and Vietnamese childbirth traditions, documenting the emergence of a plural system of maternity services that incorporated both biomedical knowledge and local birthing traditions.

Reveals the history of the individuals who worked to make psychiatry more available to Harlem's black community in the early Civil Rights Era.

Explores the history of vaccine development and the rise of antivaccination societies in late-nineteenth-century America.

The first study in English that examines barefoot doctors in China from the perspective of the social history of medicine.

An examination of the complex interrelationship between charity birth control clinics and the commercial marketplace in the United States through the 1970s.

Essays from noted contributors trace the evolution of the neurological patient's role, treatment, and place in the history of medicine.

This edited volume brings together leading scholars to explore the emergence of the stress concept and its ever-changing definitions since the 1940s.