Summary Between 1943 and 1945, Britain’s Royal Naval Medical Service dispatched urgent missions to investigate physiological and psychological effects suffered by British sailors who were deployed in tropical climates. This article draws on the resulting, previously neglected, medical articles and medical research reports to examine understandings of ‘tropical neurosis’ in the wartime Fleet. Exploring how tropical neurosis was encountered, framed and explained by senior naval medical professionals, this article investigates the condition’s portrayal as a serious health and military risk during the Second World War. This research analyses hitherto unexplored intersections of constructions of race, gender and environment in British naval medical conclusions and recommendations, delivering significant new understandings of the insidious operation of medical racism in Britain’s wartime armed forces. It also establishes, for the first time, how this ambiguous illness was construed as a threat to Britain’s naval war effort, and even the very future of Empire, by the Navy’s medical branch.
{"title":"Hunting the Royal Navy’s Medical ‘Snark’: Diagnosis, Prevention and Treatment of Tropical Neurosis in British Sailors, 1943–1945","authors":"Frances Houghton","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae037","url":null,"abstract":"Summary Between 1943 and 1945, Britain’s Royal Naval Medical Service dispatched urgent missions to investigate physiological and psychological effects suffered by British sailors who were deployed in tropical climates. This article draws on the resulting, previously neglected, medical articles and medical research reports to examine understandings of ‘tropical neurosis’ in the wartime Fleet. Exploring how tropical neurosis was encountered, framed and explained by senior naval medical professionals, this article investigates the condition’s portrayal as a serious health and military risk during the Second World War. This research analyses hitherto unexplored intersections of constructions of race, gender and environment in British naval medical conclusions and recommendations, delivering significant new understandings of the insidious operation of medical racism in Britain’s wartime armed forces. It also establishes, for the first time, how this ambiguous illness was construed as a threat to Britain’s naval war effort, and even the very future of Empire, by the Navy’s medical branch.","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141509270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary With the launching of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, this taxpayer-funded, centralised, universal service seemingly negated the need for new voluntary hospitals to be established in Britain. Within 3 years, however, the former doctors of the Kingston and Malden Victoria Hospital (KMVH) announced a new voluntary hospital (the New Victoria) after the KMVH was closed for repurposing in the NHS. Examining this case reveals stakeholder perceptions of the early NHS, including debates over general practitioner (GP) independence, local democracy and state control which predated and permeated the founding of the Service. I argue the New Victoria was founded as a response to and revolt against centralised bureaucracy and an attempt to restore a sense of GP independence and patient control in the local hospital service. Voluntarism, in the form of a voluntary hospital, was the medium through which these debates took place.
{"title":"Voluntarism as Resistance to State Control: A Case Study of the Kingston Victoria Hospital and the Fledgling NHS","authors":"Steph Haydon","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae034","url":null,"abstract":"Summary With the launching of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, this taxpayer-funded, centralised, universal service seemingly negated the need for new voluntary hospitals to be established in Britain. Within 3 years, however, the former doctors of the Kingston and Malden Victoria Hospital (KMVH) announced a new voluntary hospital (the New Victoria) after the KMVH was closed for repurposing in the NHS. Examining this case reveals stakeholder perceptions of the early NHS, including debates over general practitioner (GP) independence, local democracy and state control which predated and permeated the founding of the Service. I argue the New Victoria was founded as a response to and revolt against centralised bureaucracy and an attempt to restore a sense of GP independence and patient control in the local hospital service. Voluntarism, in the form of a voluntary hospital, was the medium through which these debates took place.","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141509272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary From 1890, as advertising in Irish newspapers grew in quantity and sophistication, a discourse of immunity began to circulate. Advertisers drew on advancements in bacteriology and immunology to present their goods as defensive strategies against a range of threats, from major infectious diseases to everyday coughs and colds. Consumers were urged to supplement their bodies’ vulnerabilities by purchasing pills and tonics, with medical products joined by immunity-assuring underwear, coats, cosmetics and cars. From a dataset of every immunity-focused advertisement in the Irish Newspaper Archives and The Irish Times archives between 1890 and 1940, I unpack the ways immunity was presented to the Irish public outside of medical institutions. I show how discourses of immunity intersected with influenza outbreaks, consider the implication of the non-national origins of many advertisements, and trace their rhetoric of protection and resistance across a range of product types.
{"title":"‘Immune from the germ-laden things’: Immunity and Irish Newspaper Advertising, 1890–1940","authors":"Maebh Long","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae035","url":null,"abstract":"Summary From 1890, as advertising in Irish newspapers grew in quantity and sophistication, a discourse of immunity began to circulate. Advertisers drew on advancements in bacteriology and immunology to present their goods as defensive strategies against a range of threats, from major infectious diseases to everyday coughs and colds. Consumers were urged to supplement their bodies’ vulnerabilities by purchasing pills and tonics, with medical products joined by immunity-assuring underwear, coats, cosmetics and cars. From a dataset of every immunity-focused advertisement in the Irish Newspaper Archives and The Irish Times archives between 1890 and 1940, I unpack the ways immunity was presented to the Irish public outside of medical institutions. I show how discourses of immunity intersected with influenza outbreaks, consider the implication of the non-national origins of many advertisements, and trace their rhetoric of protection and resistance across a range of product types.","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141509271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper explores the early marketing practices (1910–1940) of the Swedish cough drop brand Läkerol, demonstrating how it capitalised on the ‘spaces of confusion’ posed by the product’s liminality between food and medicine to create a slick marketing campaign inspired by the tried-and-tested formulas of the food industry. Advertisements used a range of strategies, such as expert and role model testimonials, humorous and serious newsjacking and the introduction of a friend-physician brand mascot to extend Läkerol from a cold remedy to an everyday product necessary for fun and excitement. By telling consumers not just about its benefits, but also connoting that it was part of a contemporary way of living, Läkerol was able to incorporate itself into a daily consumerist lifestyle, growing into a trendy and popular brand consumed daily by Swedes as part of a ritualised practice.
{"title":"Blurring the Boundaries Between Medicine and Food: The Canny Marketing of Läkerol in Early Twentieth-Century Sweden","authors":"L. O’Hagan, Göran Eriksson","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae038","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper explores the early marketing practices (1910–1940) of the Swedish cough drop brand Läkerol, demonstrating how it capitalised on the ‘spaces of confusion’ posed by the product’s liminality between food and medicine to create a slick marketing campaign inspired by the tried-and-tested formulas of the food industry. Advertisements used a range of strategies, such as expert and role model testimonials, humorous and serious newsjacking and the introduction of a friend-physician brand mascot to extend Läkerol from a cold remedy to an everyday product necessary for fun and excitement. By telling consumers not just about its benefits, but also connoting that it was part of a contemporary way of living, Läkerol was able to incorporate itself into a daily consumerist lifestyle, growing into a trendy and popular brand consumed daily by Swedes as part of a ritualised practice.","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141337440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Peter Barham, Outrageous Reason: Madness and Race in Britain and Empire, 1780-2020","authors":"Leonard Smith","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae032","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141271303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Alison C. Pedley, Mothers, Criminal Insanity and the Asylum in Victorian England. Cure, Redemption and Rehabilitation","authors":"Louise Hide","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae028","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141268685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary The colonial authorities in India had always been watchful of the drinking activities of the European soldiers and sailors, expressing concerns about their moral and physical health. The article suggests that such anxieties motivated the European population in India, particularly in its early days, to investigate the drinking practices of the local population and examine the effects of locally distilled liquor on their health and constitution. Through an analysis of a petition and a Commission report, the paper explores a dialogue between a group of European distillers and the Fort William Medical Board in early nineteenth-century Calcutta, focussing on the topics of drinking and health. The article argues that these early interrogations on the local drink not just reinforced the racial stereotypes concerning taste and technology but also consolidated the idea of the ‘tropic’ that continued to inform Anglo-Indian medical discourses in subsequent years.
{"title":"Interrogating ‘Parriah Arrack’: Anxieties Over Health, Race and Drinking in Early Colonial Calcutta","authors":"Sarbajit Mitra","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae027","url":null,"abstract":"Summary The colonial authorities in India had always been watchful of the drinking activities of the European soldiers and sailors, expressing concerns about their moral and physical health. The article suggests that such anxieties motivated the European population in India, particularly in its early days, to investigate the drinking practices of the local population and examine the effects of locally distilled liquor on their health and constitution. Through an analysis of a petition and a Commission report, the paper explores a dialogue between a group of European distillers and the Fort William Medical Board in early nineteenth-century Calcutta, focussing on the topics of drinking and health. The article argues that these early interrogations on the local drink not just reinforced the racial stereotypes concerning taste and technology but also consolidated the idea of the ‘tropic’ that continued to inform Anglo-Indian medical discourses in subsequent years.","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141190544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary This article examines moral therapy in relation to writing by fee-paying ‘lunatic’ asylum patients from the upper and middle classes. Their work was published in a nineteenth-century monthly periodical, The Morningside Mirror. There is an intersection of the periodical with status and the interests of gentlemanly values. Despite their psychopathological diagnoses, which included melancholia, writers for the Mirror retained their human capacity to share poignant insights into love and social injustice. Edinburgh’s reputation as a cultural and scientific centre of learning provided opportunities for the asylum to market itself as an iconic sanctuary that could maintain the materially privileged lifestyles of patients. The Morningside Mirror offered creative activity, self-esteem maintenance and public recognition. It connected the Asylum to the society outside. The expression of logic as reflective of the repair of reason signalled, from the viewpoint of psychological medicine, the Mirror’s therapeutic impact and utility to project reputation.
{"title":"Educative Psychological Treatment at Edinburgh’s Royal Asylum: Unfolding The Morningside Mirror, 1845–1882","authors":"Christopher Holligan","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae022","url":null,"abstract":"Summary This article examines moral therapy in relation to writing by fee-paying ‘lunatic’ asylum patients from the upper and middle classes. Their work was published in a nineteenth-century monthly periodical, The Morningside Mirror. There is an intersection of the periodical with status and the interests of gentlemanly values. Despite their psychopathological diagnoses, which included melancholia, writers for the Mirror retained their human capacity to share poignant insights into love and social injustice. Edinburgh’s reputation as a cultural and scientific centre of learning provided opportunities for the asylum to market itself as an iconic sanctuary that could maintain the materially privileged lifestyles of patients. The Morningside Mirror offered creative activity, self-esteem maintenance and public recognition. It connected the Asylum to the society outside. The expression of logic as reflective of the repair of reason signalled, from the viewpoint of psychological medicine, the Mirror’s therapeutic impact and utility to project reputation.","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140834254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Summary This article examines the place of alcoholic patients in French psychiatry in the 1950s and 1960s, an era of incipient psychiatric reform. Relying on medical literature, national and department archives, as well as hitherto unexploited patient files from one of the first anti-alcoholic consultations opened in the early 1950s in Paris, it shows how new therapies and drugs, such as disulfiram, revived the interest of psychiatrists for alcoholism and enabled the outpatient treatment of alcoholics. However, the study of patient trajectories reveals that ambulatory care did not substitute itself for hospitalisation. The article then analyses how the psychiatrist–patient relation was transformed in the framework of the consultation, and included new stakeholders such as social workers and family members. It finally explains why therapeutic enthusiasm gave way, at the end of the 1960s, to increasing doubts concerning the role of the psychiatrist in the cure of alcoholism.
{"title":"French Psychiatry and Alcoholism in the 1950s and 1960s: The Paradoxes of Outpatient Care","authors":"Anatole Le Bras","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae020","url":null,"abstract":"Summary This article examines the place of alcoholic patients in French psychiatry in the 1950s and 1960s, an era of incipient psychiatric reform. Relying on medical literature, national and department archives, as well as hitherto unexploited patient files from one of the first anti-alcoholic consultations opened in the early 1950s in Paris, it shows how new therapies and drugs, such as disulfiram, revived the interest of psychiatrists for alcoholism and enabled the outpatient treatment of alcoholics. However, the study of patient trajectories reveals that ambulatory care did not substitute itself for hospitalisation. The article then analyses how the psychiatrist–patient relation was transformed in the framework of the consultation, and included new stakeholders such as social workers and family members. It finally explains why therapeutic enthusiasm gave way, at the end of the 1960s, to increasing doubts concerning the role of the psychiatrist in the cure of alcoholism.","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140834253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the 1940s, Abraham Myerson’s work on drinking norms in the USA was central to reorienting the approach medical and scientific experts adopted when studying and treating alcoholism. A leading psychiatrist and neurologist from Boston, Myerson argued that tensions between alcohol’s ability to satisfy a pleasure-seeking drive and the rise of asceticism had generated ambivalent social attitudes, traditions and expectations towards drinking. This article explores how Myerson identified and employed social factors to uncover the relationship between ambivalent drinking norms, one’s gender, ethnic or religious background, and whether one would drink to excess. In doing so, it will illuminate how Myerson’s innovative efforts to highlight the role of social attitudes and traditions in alcoholism ultimately helped shape the approach of medical science to the alcohol problem.
{"title":"The Social Origins of Alcoholism: Abraham Myerson and the Significance of Drinking Norms in Alcohol Addiction, 1938–1946","authors":"Matthew J McLaughlin","doi":"10.1093/shm/hkae023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkae023","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the 1940s, Abraham Myerson’s work on drinking norms in the USA was central to reorienting the approach medical and scientific experts adopted when studying and treating alcoholism. A leading psychiatrist and neurologist from Boston, Myerson argued that tensions between alcohol’s ability to satisfy a pleasure-seeking drive and the rise of asceticism had generated ambivalent social attitudes, traditions and expectations towards drinking. This article explores how Myerson identified and employed social factors to uncover the relationship between ambivalent drinking norms, one’s gender, ethnic or religious background, and whether one would drink to excess. In doing so, it will illuminate how Myerson’s innovative efforts to highlight the role of social attitudes and traditions in alcoholism ultimately helped shape the approach of medical science to the alcohol problem.","PeriodicalId":21922,"journal":{"name":"Social History of Medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140652834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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