Canadian Bulletin of Medical History最新文献

In recent years, self-sampling has emerged as a compelling way of increasing cervical cancer screening rates within First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities. By allowing women to take their own samples in private, when and where they are most comfortable, home testing kits have been framed as a new, unequivocally feminist technology, and a panacea in Indigenous health. But are these techniques really as ethical and empowering as they have been made out to be? To answer this question, this article traces the history of the uptake and use of cervical cancer screening technologies in Canada. By tracing the mechanics and motivations of two state-sponsored cervical cancer screening studies carried out by Canada's Department of Indian Health Services during the mid to late twentieth century, this piece explores the settler-colonial roots of cancer surveillance, and shows how the implementation of both Pap-testing and DIY forms of screening within Indigenous communities has, at least historically, been more about enacting biopolitical regimes than promoting feminist ideals or improving health outcomes.

This article examines the history of the Colombo Plan fellowship program in Canada during the 1950s and 1960s. It will argue that this program had a visible impact on Canadian institutions of learning and health care for three reasons. First, it brought an unprecedented number of students and health care professionals from South and Southeast Asia to Canada; second, it fostered a sense of mission within Canadian institutions about the role education should play in contributing to health and international development overseas; and third, it revealed the challenges and tensions inherent in fulfilling this mission in the context of differences between the objectives of Canadian officials and those of the fellows themselves. With its focus on South and Southeast Asia, the Colombo Plan fellowship program anticipated broader trends regarding the international migration of health workers from that region in later years.

In Quebec's historiography, the history of pharmacies and pharmacists straddles the history of medicine, doctors and health, on the one side, and the history of small business and consumerism, on the other. Too much of a hybrid to fit neatly in either of those fields of study, it has largely flown under the historians' radar. This duality is nonetheless fascinating. Not only is it at the very heart of pharmacies' trajectory and evolution in Quebec, but it explicitly highlights the fact that health, medication, and consumerism have historically close ties. Having given the background to an important investigation held in 1899, the paper illustrates the tension between commerce and profession from the mid-19th century to the economic and identity crisis facing pharmacists in the Sixties and Seventies.

This article will examine pigments recently identified in an unpublished conservation survey at the Wellcome Collection that included two 17^th-century medical manuscripts. These pigments, which were drawn from plant and mineral products, served a dual purpose based on their medicinal and pigmented properties. An exploration of how these pigments were used (and why) by a range of practitioners - including apothecaries, physicians, "kitchen physicians," and artisans - reveals the importance of colour throughout early modern Europe. The persistence of traditional medical theories is revealed by examining evidence across an extensive period covering the 16^th to the 18^th century. Receipt books, medical treatises, and health guides are contrasted with artisanal texts reflecting the blurring of boundaries between the worlds of medicine and art. Modern analysis by conservators of colour used in medieval and early modern texts is crucial to the preservation of pigments but also provides a deeper understanding of what and how pigmented products were used in the period and, ultimately, informs our current understandings of early modern life and medicine.

This article provides context for three studies about early 20^th-century medical cases in the geographically distributed humanitarian aid organization founded by Wilfred Grenfell in pre-Confederation Newfoundland and Labrador. It situates these studies within historiographical and theoretical approaches to case histories and their publication by medical practitioners, the background for research on the clinical records of the Grenfell organization's main hospital, and the history behind specific case information for coastal patients. While the cases examined cohere through their organizational origin, the authors of these three studies reveal sometimes unexpected representations of the patient in text and illustration. In these ways, both this introductory article and the following three studies emphasize the enduring appeal of narrative approaches to case writing while also pointing to the evolving ethics of publishing medical reports for general readers and scholars. Together they invite renewed attention to the representation of medical cases in publications that increasingly are available globally in internet collections.

Articles published between 1956 and 1972 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) and the Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal (CPAJ) reflect the Canadian medical community's certain interest in mental retardation during this period. Much of the scientific production in this area at that time seems to have been aimed at alleviating the economic burden of mental retardation by making the mentally retarded person autonomous and capable of performing an economic function. This article intends to highlight this ambition to discipline the mentally retarded through the study of the CMAJ and CPAJ articles. It begins with a discussion of the diagnosis of mental retardation, followed by a discussion of the treatments, care and services to be offered. The last part of this text deals with the discourse conveyed in the two journals regarding the mentally retarded that seems unable to live outside of the institution and perform an economic function.

This article traces the transformation of the system of control and repression of Brazilian pharmaceutical activities between the 1930s and the 1970s, through a Foucauldian framework of "differential management of illegalisms." The period between 1930 and 1960 can be understood as a process of negotiation between pharmacists and state agencies that achieved a compromise on the differential management of illegalisms in relation to drugs, with a clear distinction between "laymen" and "professionals." This compromise came into question during the dictatorship, due to institutional transformations that reinforced the autonomy of institutions of repression and a military struggle against subversion and corruption. Pharmacists and laymen alike were considered potential suspects. This suspicion even extended to the civilian agencies that were at the core of the regulation of the licit drug market. These developments profoundly changed the way illegalisms committed by professionals and state officials were treated, blurring the boundaries that had been established between laymen, professionals, inspectors, and industrialists. The final section of the article focuses on the various ways in which institutions of repression focused on pharmacists and state regulatory control agencies as potential places of subversive activity or corruption.

In the 1940s, Wilder Penfield carried out a series of experimental psychosurgeries with the psychiatrist D. Ewen Cameron. This article explores Penfield's brief foray into psychosurgery and uses this episode to re-examine the emergence of his surgical enterprise. Penfield's greatest achievement - the surgical treatment of epilepsy - grew from the same roots as psychosurgery, and the histories of these treatments overlap in surprising ways. Within the contexts of Rockefeller-funded neuropsychiatry and Adolf Meyer's psychobiology, Penfield's frontal lobe operations (including a key operation on his sister) played a crucial role in the development of lobotomy in the 1930s. The combination of ambiguous data and the desire to collaborate with a psychiatrist encouraged Penfield to try to develop a superior operation. However, unlike his collaboration with psychiatrists, Penfield's productive working relationship with psychologists encouraged him to abandon the experimental "gyrectomy" procedure. The story of Penfield's attempt to find a better lobotomy can help us to examine different forms of interdisciplinarity within biomedicine.

Although it is not generally done, it is useful to compare the history of the evolution of universal health coverage (UHC) in Canada and Sweden. The majority of citizens in both countries have shared, and continue to share, a commitment to a strong form of single-tier universality in the design of their respective UHC systems. In the postwar era, they also share a remarkably similar timeline in the emergence and entrenchment of single-tier UHC, despite the political and social differences between the two countries. At the same time, UHC was initially designed, implemented, and managed by social democratic governments that held power for long periods of time, creating a path dependency for single-tier Medicare that was difficult for future governments of different ideological persuasions to alter.

After the Second World War, health prevention work in Canada shifted from a focus on sanitation and hygiene to illness prevention and health promotion. Canada became a significant global leader, beginning with the Lalonde Report of 1974. Yet less is known about the provincial public health associations and how their work differed from that of the national body. The purpose of this article is to examine the Saskatchewan Public Health Association's (SPHA) policy work from 1954 to 1986. Utilizing meeting minutes and newsletters, we found that while both national and provincial associations made efforts to prevent accidents, reduce tobacco use, and fluoridate water, the SPHA tended to advocate more for child health, and the cautious use of nuclear power. At the same time, the SPHA's resolutions tended to ignore emerging factors shaping health, including the social determinants of health, regional inequities, lack of public trust in experts, misinformation, and human psychology. Examining the SPHA's records revealed that region mattered in preventative policy work.