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Medical History Jan 2016
Topics: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; Humans; Medical History Taking; Mental Disorders; Psychiatry
PubMed: 26651185
DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2015.65 -
Medical History Apr 2018
Review
Topics: China; History of Medicine; Humans; Language; Literature
PubMed: 29553027
DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2018.20 -
Medical History Jan 2017In the wake of the Second World War there was a movement to counterbalance the apparently increasingly technical nature of medical education. These reforms sought a more...
In the wake of the Second World War there was a movement to counterbalance the apparently increasingly technical nature of medical education. These reforms sought a more holistic model of care and to put people - rather than diseases - back at the centre of medical practice and medical education. This article shows that students often drove the early stages of education reform. Their innovations focused on relationships between doctors and their communities, and often took the form of informal discussions about medical ethics and the social dimensions of primary care. Medical schools began to pursue 'humanistic' education more formally from the 1980s onwards, particularly within the context of general practice curricula and with a focus on individual doctor-patient relationships. Overall from the 1950s to the 1990s there was a broad shift in discussions of the human aspects of medical education: from interest in patient communities to individuals; from social concerns to personal characteristics; and from the relatively abstract to the measurable and instrumental. There was no clear shift from 'less' to 'more' humanistic education, but rather a shift in the perceived goals of integrating human aspects of medical education. The human aspects of medicine show the importance of student activism in driving forward community and ethical medicine, and provide an important backdrop to the rise of competencies within general undergraduate education.
Topics: Curriculum; Education, Medical; Ethics, Medical; History, 20th Century; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Schools, Medical; Students, Medical; United Kingdom
PubMed: 27998331
DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2016.100 -
Medical History Oct 2016
PubMed: 27628891
DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2016.96 -
Medical History Oct 2012The historiography of medicine in South Asia often assumes the presence of preordained, homogenous, coherent and clearly-bound medical systems. They also tend to take...
The historiography of medicine in South Asia often assumes the presence of preordained, homogenous, coherent and clearly-bound medical systems. They also tend to take the existence of a medical 'mainstream' for granted. This article argues that the idea of an 'orthodox', 'mainstream' named allopathy and one of its 'alternatives' homoeopathy were co-produced in Bengal. It emphasises the role of the supposed 'fringe', ie. homoeopathy, in identifying and organising the 'orthodoxy' of the time. The shared market for medicine and print provided a crucial platform where such binary identities such as 'homoeopaths' and 'allopaths' were constituted and reinforced. This article focuses on a range of polemical writings by physicians in the Bengali print market since the 1860s. Published mostly in late nineteenth-century popular medical journals, these concerned the nature, definition and scope of 'scientific' medicine. The article highlights these published disputes and critical correspondence among physicians as instrumental in simultaneously shaping the categories 'allopathy' and 'homoeopathy' in Bengali print. It unravels how contemporary understandings of race, culture and nationalism informed these medical discussions. It further explores the status of these medical contestations, often self-consciously termed 'debates', as an essential contemporary trope in discussing 'science' in the vernacular.
Topics: Dissent and Disputes; History, 19th Century; Holistic Health; Homeopathy; Humans; India; Publishing
PubMed: 23112381
DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2012.28 -
Medical History Apr 2012In 1902, Albert Moll, who at that time ran a private practice for nervous diseases in Berlin, published his comprehensive book on medical ethics, Ärztliche Ethik. Based...
In 1902, Albert Moll, who at that time ran a private practice for nervous diseases in Berlin, published his comprehensive book on medical ethics, Ärztliche Ethik. Based on the concept of a contractual relationship between doctor and client, it gave more room to the self-determination of patients than the contemporary, usually rather paternalistic, works of this genre. In the first part of the present paper this is illustrated by examining Moll's views and advice on matters such as truthfulness towards patients, euthanasia, and abortion. The second part of this article discusses how Moll engaged with the then publicly debated issues of experimentation on hospital patients and the 'trade' of foreign private patients between agents and medical consultants. In both matters Moll collected evidence of unethical practices and tried to use it to bring about change without damaging his or the profession's reputation. However, with his tactical manoeuvres, Moll made no friends for himself among his colleagues or the authorities; his book on ethics also met with a generally cool response from the medical profession and seems to have been more appreciated by lawyers than by other doctors.
Topics: Berlin; Ethical Theory; Ethics, Medical; History, 20th Century; Humans; Practice Patterns, Physicians'
PubMed: 23002294
DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2011.34 -
Medical History Oct 2017In 1970 the medical associations of South Africa and Rhodesia (now, Zimbabwe) were expelled from the Commonwealth Medical Association. The latter had been set up, as the...
In 1970 the medical associations of South Africa and Rhodesia (now, Zimbabwe) were expelled from the Commonwealth Medical Association. The latter had been set up, as the British Medical Commonwealth Medical Conference, in the late 1940s by the British Medical Association (BMA). These expulsions, and the events leading up to them, are the central focus of this article. The BMA's original intention was to establish an organisation bringing together the medical associations of the constituent parts of the expanding Commonwealth. Among the new body's preoccupations was the relationship between the medical profession and the state in the associations' respective countries. It thus has to be seen as primarily a medico-political organisation rather than one concerned with medicine per se. Although, there were also tensions from the outset regarding the membership of the Southern African medical associations. Such stresses notwithstanding, these two organisations remained in the BMA-sponsored body even after South Africa and Rhodesia had left the Commonwealth. This was not, however, a situation which could outlast the growing number of African associations which joined in the wake of decolonisation; and hardening attitudes towards apartheid. The article therefore considers: why the BMA set up this Commonwealth body in the first place and what it hoped to achieve; the history of the problems associated with South African and Rhodesian membership; and how their associations came to be expelled.
Topics: History, 20th Century; Humans; Societies, Medical; South Africa; United Kingdom; Zimbabwe
PubMed: 28901869
DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2017.58 -
Medical History. Supplement 1990
Topics: Balneology; Europe; History, 18th Century; History, 19th Century; History, Ancient; History, Medieval; Humans; Mineral Waters
PubMed: 2232968
DOI: No ID Found -
Medical History Oct 2016Western literature has focused on medical plurality but also on the pervasive existence of quacks who managed to survive from at least the eighteenth to the twentieth...
Western literature has focused on medical plurality but also on the pervasive existence of quacks who managed to survive from at least the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Focal points of their practices have been their efforts at enrichment and their extensive advertising. In Greece, empirical, untrained healers in the first half of the twentieth century do not fit in with this picture. They did not ask for payment, although they did accept 'gifts'; they did not advertise their practice; and they had fixed places of residence. Licensed physicians did not undertake a concerted attack against them, as happened in the West against the quacks, and neither did the state. In this paper, it is argued that both the protection offered by their localities to resident popular healers and the healers' lack of demand for monetary payment were jointly responsible for the lack of prosecutions of popular healers. Moreover, the linking of popular medicine with ancient traditions, as put forward by influential folklore studies, also reduced the likelihood of an aggressive discourse against the popular healers. Although the Greek situation in the early twentieth century contrasts with the historiography on quacks, it is much more in line with that on wise women and cunning-folk. It is thus the identification of these groups of healers in Greece and elsewhere, mostly through the use of oral histories but also through folklore studies, that reveals a different story from that of the aggressive discourse of medical men against quacks.
Topics: Fees and Charges; Folklore; Greece; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; Humans; Interviews as Topic; Licensure, Medical; Medicine, Traditional; Quackery
PubMed: 27628859
DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2016.57 -
Medical History Apr 2016
Topics: Data Mining; History of Medicine; Humanities
PubMed: 26971613
DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2016.18