Medical History最新文献

Addiction was considered 'alien to Socialism'. At least, that was the narrative upheld by the socialist East German state, which thus followed the traditional argumentation of socialist and social democratic movements since the turn of the century. While the state clung to this ideological claim, the consumption and abuse of beer, spirits, and benzodiazepines continued to increase. However, there was never a central strategy for the treatment and prevention of addiction in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The hesitation and ignorance of the state authorities created a vacuum that was filled by local initiatives and expert discussions aimed at improving the situation of people with addictions. In this article, I analyse the introduction of new treatment methods in a psychiatric hospital in the GDR and show that doctors, psychologists, patients, and local officials had certain freedoms to test new approaches, many of which originated in the West. Even though they had to adapt concepts such as the 'therapeutic communities' of British reformer Maxwell Jones to the specific socialist and East German context to avoid restrictions by state authorities, the Berlin Wall did not prevent the transfer of knowledge. This article, therefore, paints a nuanced picture of the therapeutic methods used to treat people with addiction in the GDR. From condemning individuals as outcasts of socialist society for socially deviant drinking behaviour and relying exclusively on aversion therapy and moral accusations, there was a shift towards a mixture of treatments that became increasingly specialised and individualised, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, comparable to Western standards.

The article introduces the special issue by mapping the field of pertinent scholarship and situating the articles with regard to the special angles and contributions they have to offer. As our five articles present case studies from Bulgaria and the GDR, both state socialist countries and their health care systems are portrayed here to provide context. The introduction locates each of the contributions and the overarching aims of the special issue within current scholarly discussions and demonstrates the issue's innovative potential.

When kidney transplantation evolved from an experimental into a clinical treatment of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in the 1960s, it was conceptualised as a collaborative therapy. Before specific immunosuppressants were introduced in the 1980s, the best chances for patient and graft survival were expected from finding 'good' matches between donor and recipient tissues. Therefore, the pioneers of clinical transplantation in Europe started to recombine their growing patient pools. They created trans-border organ exchange organisations such as Eurotransplant and Intertransplant, based on shared patient databases.The article traces international and transnational co-operation in kidney exchange using the example of state-socialist Germany. How did the German Democratic Republic (GDR) get involved with the interconnected networks of knowledge, data, and organ exchange in ESRD treatment? In what ways did the domestic system of kidney transplantation depend on intra- and trans-bloc exchange? How did the GDR profit, and what did it have to offer on an international scale, both in the First and the Second World? The article sheds light on the under-explored transplantation history of the socialist East and thereby investigates the possibilities and limits of trans-bloc collaboration in Cold War Europe.

Following the decisions of the scientific session 'For the further flourishing of Pavlov's doctrine' of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR in 1950, important reforms were introduced under political control in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc countries. Research plans of science institutions and medical university curricula were changed according to these decisions. Scientists and university professors were forced to adopt courses in Pavlovian doctrine. The reforms affected the work of hospitals and sanatoriums, whose staff was instructed to reform the everyday practice. Regarding the clinical work, the session had two main consequences: the introduction of the so-called Curative-Protective Hospital Regime and the introduction of sleep therapy for the treatment of psychiatric diseases, hypertension, ulcers, rheumatism, and other diseases. As a widespread therapeutic method, it was established in the 1950s in the USSR and in the countries of the Eastern Bloc as a general reform of health politics. Political (Soviet influence), ideological (dialectical materialism), theoretical (Pavlovian teaching), and practical medical considerations intersected in the implementation of the therapeutic methods which made patients objects of this treatment. This study explores the process of dissemination and establishment of sleep therapy in Bulgarian hospital practice based on the hospital documentation of the Pediatrics Clinic at the Medical Academy and the Clinic of Cardiac Diseases in Sofia in 1952-1953.

This article is concerned with the history of eugenic sterilisation in Britain through the 1920s and 1930s. In this period, the Eugenics Society mounted an active but ultimately unsuccessful campaign to legalise the voluntary surgical sterilisation of various categories of people, including those deemed 'mentally deficient' or 'defective'. We take as our explicit focus the propaganda produced and disseminated by the Eugenics Society as part of this campaign, and especially the various kinds of data mobilised therein. The parliamentary defeat of the Society's Sterilisation Bill in July 1931 marks, we argue, a significant shift in the tactics of the campaign. Before this, the Eugenics Society framed sterilisation as a promising method for eradicating, or at least significantly reducing the incidence of, inherited 'mental defect'. Subsequently, they came to emphasise the inequality of access to sterilisation between rich and poor, (re)positioning theirs as an egalitarian campaign aimed at extending a form of reproductive agency to the disadvantaged. These distinct phases of the campaign were each supported by different kinds of propaganda material, which in turn centred on very different types of data. As the campaign evolved, the numbers and quantitative rhetoric which typified earlier propaganda materials gave way to a more qualitative approach, which notably included the selective incorporation of the voices of people living with hereditary 'defects'. In addition to exposing a rupture in the Eugenics Society's propagandistic data practices, this episode underscores the need to further incorporate disabled dialogues and perspectives into our histories of eugenics.

This article explores the cultivation of medical knowledge via popular health guides among the Finnish lay populace from the 1890s to the 1970s. By using written reminiscences and newspaper articles as source material, the article discusses the relevance, popularity, and practical use of various printed health guides and manuals throughout Finland. We place particular focus on the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century as the period that experienced a high increase in lay education and literacy. By focusing on individual readers and their experiences of popular health guides, the article examines lay medical and health practices as the number of medical manuals dramatically increased from the late nineteenth century onwards. It also investigates the reception of medical, popular and irregular health movements, such as hygienism, nature cure, and Couéist autosuggestion, and the change in medical culture brought about by the appearance of patent medicines. As the information discovered in popular health guides tended to fluctuate between official and irregular medical theory, we analyse the relationship between learned, alternative, and vernacular medicine through the views and opinions expressed by people who engaged with health literature. Through these materials, we provide a novel understanding of the accessibility of medical knowledge, the spread and impact of health guides, and attitudes towards different medical practices among the Finnish reading public.

While the plague of Provence is the most studied outbreak of the disease in early modern Europe, there is little in the extensive historiography on this topic about fears of the cross-species transmission of disease which re-emerged in the early eighteenth century because of events in southwestern France. Concerns about the interplay between cattle murrains and human plague resurfaced in the early eighteenth century because the plague of Provence followed an outbreak of cattle disease which swept across Europe and killed tens of thousands of animals. This article focuses on the debate about the spread of contagious diseases between species which occurred in Britain during this time. Links between the health of animals and that of humans became objects of heated discussion especially following the issuing of the 1721 Quarantine Act, which was designed to prevent the plague currently ravaging southwestern France from taking hold in Britain. It then considers the different beliefs regarding contagion and the transmission of diseases between different species during the plague of Provence. While focusing on the richly documented and highly revealing discussions in early eighteenth-century Britain about the interplay between plague in cattle and plague in humans, it also utilises materials from earlier centuries to examine more fully how early modern populations understood the relationship between plague in humans and cattle murrains.

This article explores the intersection of Cold War geopolitics, cultural psychiatry, and migration in Taiwan from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. Building on recent scholarship in cultural psychiatry and Cold War science, it examines how geopolitical tensions shaped psychiatric knowledge production in East Asia. Focusing on the psychological and social impact of the 1949 mass migration, when over a million Chinese immigrants arrived in Taiwan, alongside the clinical and academic work of Taiwanese psychiatrists, the study highlights how migration and societal upheaval became central research concerns. Operating under the authoritarian Kuomintang regime and within the constraints and opportunities of international politics, Taiwanese psychiatrists - most of whom were native-born with colonial backgrounds - drew on intellectual traditions from imperial Japan, fascist Germany, and the Cold War Western bloc. Navigating both global psychiatric discourses and local concerns, they positioned themselves as key contributors to the international development of psychiatric research. While their portrayals of Chinese character structure and family dynamics sometimes reflected essentialist views, their work also demonstrated a nuanced awareness of historical change and contemporary realities during a period of intense political repression and uncertainty. By analysing archival sources and medical texts, this article illuminates the complex interplay between geopolitics and psychiatric knowledge production in Cold War Taiwan.