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"When I Think of It I Awfully Dread It": Conceptualizing Childbirth Pain in Early America
Bull Hist Med. 2023;97(2):227-254. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2023.a905730.ABSTRACTThe emergence of obstetric anesthesia in the second half of the nineteenth century was preceded by a transformation in the medical conceptualization of women's pain. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, physicians described pain in physiological terms as natural and unproblematic, but in the second half of the nineteenth century they adopted a newly emotional language that emphasized women's subjective experiences of suffering. Middle-class and elite white women shaped this transition by insisting that their physical and emotional anguish...
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Nora Doyle Source Type: research

Vaccination, Dispossession, and the Indigenous Interior
This article explores a poorly understood smallpox vaccination campaign targeting Native Americans in the 1830s. While previous scholars have addressed the motivations of U.S. officials in launching the campaign, the author focuses on Indigenous people's interest in disease prevention and their reception of American physicians and vaccine technology across a broad swath of North America. Resistance to vaccination was not uncommon among Native people, yet many were open to the new form of preventive medicine, including some who sought it out and others who demanded it from the government. Departing from a scholarly consensu...
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Seth Archer Source Type: research

Prenatal Care in the Rural United States, 1912-1929
Bull Hist Med. 2023;97(2):294-320. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2023.a905732.ABSTRACTIn 1920, maternal mortality rates in the United States exceeded those of other industrialized nations. To redress this statistic, the federal Children's Bureau set its sights on improving access to prenatal care at a time when 80 percent of American women received none. In 1921, following lobbying by urban, middle-class progressive women working at or in support of the Bureau, the government legislated for prenatal care programs through the Sheppard-Towner Act. To date, historians have focused on how successfully women implemented the act's provisions...
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Nicole Holding Source Type: research

The History of Psychiatric Epidemiology in Finland: From National Needs to International Arenas, 1900s-1990s
This article discusses how Finnish epidemiologists reacted to local needs, which were born in specific circumstances and were controlled by science policy and funding opportunities. The development between the 1900s and 1990s is divided into three stages. The first Finnish studies in the field focused on the prevalence of mental illnesses in the country. The focus was to gain information for service planning, most of all to estimate the need for new hospitals and to set up the national social insurance system. After the Second World War, structural changes and social engineering fueled epidemiological interest. From the 19...
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Mikko Myllykangas Katariina Parhi Source Type: research

In Praise of the Ordinary: Shifting Knowledge and Practice in the Medical Use of Drinking Water in Italy, 1550-1750
This article is conceived as a contribution to our increasing appreciation of the importance of water for drinking purposes in early modern culture. By analyzing the medical recommendations contained in the case histories and consultations of three prominent Italian doctors-Epifanio Ferdinando, Francesco Redi, and Francesco Torti-it provides evidence of shifting medical knowledge and practice in the use of drinking water. It traces how, as the medical philosophies shifted, so too did the medical use of drinking water, as both aliment (part of a healthy and healing diet) and medicament (part of therapy to treat specific dis...
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: David Gentilcore Source Type: research

"Denied the Joys of Motherhood": Infertility and Medicine in French Interwar Advice Columns
This article explores how physicians leading new specialized fertility clinics promoted the idea that their work treating infertility medically would produce more births for France. It also shows how women's magazines in the 1930s presented new treatment options to their female readership, offering them reassurance and medical advice. Women wrote into advice columns about their experiences with involuntary childlessness, sometimes expressing reluctance to seek fertility testing or continue recommended treatments. Prominent fertility specialists also contributed articles, complete with illustrations, explaining the medical ...
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Margaret Andersen Source Type: research

The Protein Gap: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Nutrient in International Public Health
Bull Hist Med. 2023;97(4):585-613. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2023.a922708.ABSTRACTFrom the early 1950s to the early 1970s, international nutritionists considered childhood protein malnutrition the world's most serious public health threat. By 1974, many believed that this "protein gap" had been exaggerated. Two questions remain: why protein, and why this period? Four converging developments created a network that maintained protein's "charisma": new food technology, a growing international health infrastructure, the nominal demise of eugenics, and new geopolitical priorities in a world shaped by both the Cold War and decolonization...
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Hannah F LeBlanc Source Type: research

Underrepresented Minority Recruitment: Manpower as Motivator in Late Twentieth-Century Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy
This article offers a historical perspective on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in health professions. Historians have highlighted how workforce shortages have facilitated increased gender diversity in male-dominated scientific and clinical occupations. Less attention has been given to manpower as a motivator for enhancing racial/ethnic diversity. I explore the history of minority recruitment, retention, and inclusion initiatives in occupational therapy and physical therapy after 1970 and examine the evolving ways in which the longstanding underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority health professions studen...
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Andrew J Hogan Source Type: research

American Association for the History of Medicine: Report of the Ninety-Sixth Annual Meeting
Bull Hist Med. 2023;97(4):658-684. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2023.a922710.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38588119 | DOI:10.1353/bhm.2023.a922710 (Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine)
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

News and Events
Bull Hist Med. 2023;97(4):685-687. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2023.a922711.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38588120 | DOI:10.1353/bhm.2023.a922711 (Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine)
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Subject and Author Index
Bull Hist Med. 2023;97(4):690-695. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2023.a922713.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38588122 | DOI:10.1353/bhm.2023.a922713 (Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine)
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Table of Contents: Volume 97
Bull Hist Med. 2023;97(4):697-701. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2023.a922714.NO ABSTRACTPMID:38588123 | DOI:10.1353/bhm.2023.a922714 (Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine)
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Source Type: research

Patients, Disability, Syphilis, and History
Bull Hist Med. 2023;97(3):369-393. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2023.a915267.ABSTRACTThis paper explores the experiences of working-class patients treated for tertiary syphilis at the Neurology Dispensary of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and the Infirmary for Nervous Disease of the Philadelphia Orthopedic Hospital from 1878 to 1917. Using the twin lenses of medical history and disability history, it foregrounds the struggles of individuals whose physical condition cannot be reversed.PMID:38588192 | DOI:10.1353/bhm.2023.a915267 (Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine)
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Janet Golden Source Type: research

"In All Circumstances": Home Births and Collaborative Health Care in Ireland, 1900-1950
This article examines the development of a collaborative model of home-based reproductive caregiving in Ireland from 1900 to 1950, focusing on the interactions of different practitioners in childbirth cases in the domestic sphere. In Ireland the move to obstetrics and trained nursing and midwifery was gradual, complicated by the needs and wants of ordinary women, who were reluctant to give up their trusted care givers and who actively sought to maintain long-standing domestic health care traditions. The result was a hybrid and collaborative model of domestic reproductive health care, requiring the attention of different pr...
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Cara Delay Source Type: research

Grammars of Progress and Pathology: A Recursive History of Africa, Cancer, and "Diseases of Civilization"
Bull Hist Med. 2023;97(3):423-455. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2023.a915269.ABSTRACTThe phrase "disease of civilization" and concomitant lexicons, such as "pathologies of modernization," frequently surface across public and global health discourses. This is particularly the case within the framework of cancer research in Africa. In this article, the authors trace the emergence of these grammars of progress at the beginning of the twentieth century as a biomedical lens through which to analyze and frame cancer in Africa. Arguing with Ann Stoler for a recursive understanding of colonial and postcolonial history, the authors follow in d...
Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine - April 8, 2024 Category: History of Medicine Authors: Thandeka Cochrane David Reubi Source Type: research