History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

This book represents an advance in the historical study of death and disease in the 19th century. It draws on a wide range of public health records and provides a detailed epidemiological investigation of the behaviour of the infectious diseases in the Victorian city. Whooping cough and measles, scarlet fever and diptheria, smallpox, typhus, typhoid, and tuberculosis ravaged millions of families and made life desperately uncertain a hundred years ago; today they have almost ceased to trouble the developed world. The book explores the factors that helped to reduce their fatality, focusing particularly on the role of preventive medicine, and on the local and domestic circumstances that affected the behaviour of the different diseases. This book is a contribution to the historical debate that arose from Thomas McKeown's theory of modern population growth, and it also extends current understanding of the ways in which Victorian society — both lay and medical — coped with the problems of endemic and epidemic infectious disease.

This book provides a history of general practice under the National Health Service, from 1948 to the present. Between them, the chapters cover all the main aspects of general practice, including changing concepts of illness and clinical practices, politics and organization, medical education, public relations, and international comparisons. These chapters examine how the relative stagnation of the early years, when morale and funding were low, gave way to a renaissance in general practice in the 1960s which changed the service out of all recognition. This book shows how the oldest branch of medicine gradually rediscovered its role alongside the rapid advances of specialized medicine.

This book examines the French debate over crime and madness in the fin de siècle. The author argues that psychiatric theories of human behaviour and new sociological interpretations of crime combined to undermine the traditional foundations of the penal system and helped to shape the new science of criminology. Traditional notions of free will and moral responsibility were eroded as new and often draconian strategies evolved from managerial practices developed mainly by medical men. The book offers a detailed examination of the radical politique criminelle they devised. Through a series of case studies, the author looks specifically at discussions of feminine hysteria and women's sexuality; male alcoholism and racial degeneration; crimes of passion; crowd violence; and revolutionary politics.

British hospitals and their administration have changed dramatically since the 19th century, when the provision of medical care depended very heavily upon philanthropic bodies. The King's Fund was the leading charitable institution for the defence and development of London's voluntary hospitals before the creation of the National Health Service. Since 1948, it has worked alongside the NHS and has sought to promote good practice and innovation in health care through grants, training, and a range of other services. This book places the King's Fund in the wider context of the history of philanthropy and social provision. It provides an illuminating analysis of the evolution of the relationship between the voluntary and public sectors in the 20th century and points to the continuing importance of voluntary organizations to the nation's health and welfare.

This book is the first detailed assessment of the development and implementation of social policy to deal with the problem of the ‘mentally deficient’ in Britain between 1870 and 1959. It analyses all the factors involved in the policy-making process, beginning with the politics of the legislature and showing how the demands of central government were interpreted by local authorities, resulting in a wide and varied distribution of medical, institutional, and community care in different parts of the country. The efforts of health professionals, voluntary organizations and the families themselves are considered, alongside questions about the influence of changing concepts of class, gender, and citizenship. The author queries the belief that the policy of segregation was largely unsuccessful, and reveals a hitherto unrecognized system of care in the community. He reframes our understanding of the campaign for sterilization and examines why British policy-makers avoided extremist measures such as the compulsory sterilization introduced in Germany and parts of the US during this period. The author shows that the problem of mental deficiency cannot be understood simply in terms of eugenics, but must also be considered as part of the process of adjusting to democracy in the twentieth century.

Oxford University has not always possessed the high reputation in the sciences for which it is now renowned: it was not until the period between the last century's two world wars that science was firmly established in a university previously noted for its devotion to arts subjects. By 1939, despite only modest increases in the numbers of fellows or undergraduates in science, Oxford had developed an important new research identity. This transformation took place in the face of considerable opposition. The powers of the colleges, the poverty of the University relative to collegiate wealth, and the heightened individualism endemic in a polycratic university combined to produce academic conservatism which, even in the early twenties, could argue that Oxford should cede science to Cambridge and concentrate on its more traditional strengths in the arts. The author of this book shows how the innovators in the sciences coped with these idiosyncrasies and mustered a variety of resources, including government departments, leading industrialists, philanthropic trusts, and individual benefactors, to overcome academic inertia and to promote their subjects.