Medical History

1. Medical History A Lesson in Historiographical and Methodological Trends

2. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF MEDICAL HISTORY? The past gives us important perspective on the present The past can be used as an activist tool The past displays the rich professional heritage of physicians The past is a vehicle for helping medical students make sense of the professional culture they are entering

3. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial, page 305. “[W]hen it comes to public health, the society has a right to insist that the community’s interests come before the shareholders’ profits. It is not enough for industry to tout the benefits of its products; it must also inform people of their potential dangers. This is not a radical proposal”

4. WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF THE HISTORY?

5. The Physician as Medical Historian

6. Medical History Before 1800 History played a central role in physician training Medical students were well-versed in Greek, Latin, logic, rhetoric, and philology medical history used to defend medical decision-making, to weigh the pros and cons of various therapeutic practices in the past, and also for developing or remolding or rearranging medical theories so that they fit the contemporary needs of medical doctors Medical history had the potential to instill a sense of civic responsibility

7. Definition: Philology is an older term for linguistics, and especially for the branch of linguistic study devoted to comparative and historical research into the development of languages. In a wider sense, the term sometimes also covers the study of literary texts. A researcher in this scholarly field is a philologist.

8. The Rise of Scientific Medicine and the Decline of Medical History, 1850-1890 The critique of historical pathology Growing faith in Progress through experimental science the laboratory replaces the library as the central institution where medical knowledge is learned and produced

9. The Leipzig Institute

10. The Challenge to Scientific Medicine in North America

13. William Osler, 1849-1919 A Canadian physician Trained at the University of Toronto and later McGill, where he received his medical degree in 1872 Joined the medical staff of Hopkins in 1889 The role of history in the “Oslerian Method” Prolific writer, focus mainly on Great Doctors and other inspirational stories in medical history

14. The German School is Transplanted to North American Henry Sigerist (1891-1957) – arrives in U.S. 1932, joins Johns Hopkins as the head of the Institute of the History of Medicine OwseiTemkin (1902-2002) – arrives at Johns Hopkins in 1932 with Sigerist Ludwig Edelstein (1902-1965) – arrives in 1934

15. Sigerist Biography Did more than anyone else to establish, promote, and popularize history of medicine Head of the Institute of the History of Medicine at Hopkins from 1932-1947 An “articulate apostle of socialized medicine” Believed in the importance of teaching the history of medicine to doctors Established the Bulletin of the History of Medicine Book, Socialized Medicine in the Soviet Union created a huge sensation Left U.S. In 1947; died in Switzerland in 1957

17. Sigerist, on the Soviet Union: “I love the country. I love its socialism but I also love the people and the landscape, so much that I would have liked it even under Tsarism.” “Our students are still trained to be primarily interested in disease and not in health,” he wrote. “Most people do not see a doctor unless they are sick. Russia is far from having reached its goal, but the idea to supervise man medically from the moment of conception to the moment of death and to concentrate all efforts on prevention of disease is undoubtedly very promising and impresses me as the beginning of a new era in medicine.”

18. ENTER THE NON-PHYSICIAN HISTORIANS OF MEDICINE

19. Charles Rosenberg

20. Charles Rosenberg • trained over 50 doctoral dissertations throughout his career • The Cholera Years (1962) – set example for how historians of medicine should take a broader view and examine not just a disease and its victims, but society’s response to it through politics, laws and social mores • Trained by both an academic historian and a physician-historian

21. The Expansion of Historical Inquiry after the 1970s Race Class Gender Ethnicity Sexuality Historians were inspired by theories of Marx, feminism, and later on, post-structuralism.

22. Social Movements Shape Historical Writing Feminist Movement Civil rights movement Anti-war movement Student movement Black panthers/black power

23. Emily K. Abel, "Family Caregiving in the Nineteenth Century: Emily Hawley Gillespie and Sarah Gillespie, 1858-1888," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Winter 1994): 573-599. • She asks, “what were women doing to care for the sick and dying in the nineteenth century?” • Diaries as a way of getting at women’s experiences, from their perspectives • Thesis: “women’s responsibilities for care not only disrupted their lives but also enabled them to acquire extensive medical knowledge and skills, brought them into sustained contact with fundamental aspects of human existence and bound them to a broader network of friends and kin.” • Women mattered…often more than male physicians