Medical Cultures, Therapeutic Properties, and Laws in Global History

This volume ofOsiris takes as its central goal the need to bridge studies of medical cultures, past and present, with studies of the law and legal cultures, encouraging a sustained and historically informed dialogue across all thesefields. It deliberately concentrates most attention on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when medical and legal connections intensified, institutional structures proliferated, and a diverse set of laws and regulations arguably achieved global impact. The field of medical history, for all its accomplishments, still lacks clear and persuasive grand narratives that take all these dynamics into account or that explain their consequences. At the same time, disciplines focused on (bio)medical phenomena today—such as critical global health studies, medical humanities, and science and technology studies—are still insufficiently engaged with the voluminous literature produced by historians, including those focused on science, medicine, and technology. The blind spots this produces matter. Indeed, anyonewho ignores themultifaceted and entangled roots ofmedical and legal phenomena, or believes that the past is irrelevant because recent bioscientific and institutional changes have been so radical and rapid, tends to analyze current trends in ways that are themselvesmisleading. Put simply, disciplinary and professional silos continue to prevent scholars from developing empirically robust and historically nuanced studies of medicine and law on a global scale. This volume offers one path forward. Therapeutic Properties is premised on the idea that boundary work in medical activities has always been mediated and constituted by laws and legal thinking. It