History of Modern Medicine Midterm

Harrison (Main Ideas)

A Global Perspective (Reframing the History of Health, Medicine, and Disease)
Argues that a global lens has to be adopted when analyzing health, medicine, and disease histories
1. Limitation of Traditional Frameworks: medicine has predominantly been analyzed within confines of specific colonies or nation states
2. Advantages of a Global Perspective: can uncover patterns and connections that transcend national boundaries; more comprehensive understand of how diseases, knowledge, and policies circulate
3. Transnational and Transimperial Approaches: reveals interconnectedness of health issues
4. Reframing Historical Narratives: integrating global perspectives can lead to reframing of historical narratives; more inclusive and accurate portrayal of history of health, medicine, and disease

Cook

The History of Medicine and the Scientific Revolution
Examines the intricate relationship between medicine and the Scientific Revolution (argues that medicine played a crucial role)
1. Significant changes in medicine deeply rooted in philosophical commitments therefore understanding medicine’s evolution requires acknowledging philosophical underpinnings influencing medical thought and practice
2. Importance of integrating medical history into broader scientific narratives
3. Social, political, and natural environments significantly shaped medical concepts
4. Traces the evolution of medical historiography, shifting from purely conceptual analyses to approaches that consider social and cultural contexts (medicine and science developed in relation to societal needs and values)
5. Calls for reevaluation of the Scientific Revolution to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding; advocates for recognizing the contributions of medical science alongside other scientific disciplines

Descartes

Descartes the doctor: rationalism and its therapies

Jewson (Main Argument)

The Disappearance of the Sick-Man from Medical Cosmology, 1770-1870

Foucault argues that between 1770 and 1870, Western medicine underwent a radical transformation, moving away from a patient-centered perspective, where the “sick man” (the patient) was central to medical understanding to a more objective, scientific framework based on anatomical and pathological observation. This shift led to the patient’s experiential knowledge being devalued in favor of a clinical gaze that prioritized disease as an entity separate from the individual.

Krieger

Epidemiology Emerges:

Explores how early debates and theories defined our understanding of disease distribution

Early Theories of Disease Causation:

The 17th and 18th centuries were heavily influenced by prevailing beliefs: Miasma Theory and Contagion Theory

Also influences by social factors of class and poverty and race

A shift towards scientific epidemiology shifted beliefs because of Germ Theory and John Snow’s Work

Medical Cosmology

different ways of thinking of medicine as a whole in terms of the roles that everyone plays; how medicine is understood by those involved and technologies are being used; hospital medicine, bedside medicine, laboratory medicine (Newson)

Medicalization

Process by which nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illnesses or disorders (Conrad)

Discourse

a group of statements which provide a language for talking about, or a way of representing knowledge about a particular topic at a particular historical moment (the frame through which we consider and understand a topic)

Discipline

Generally seen as more diffuse and productive; promotes uniformity, creates sense of accountability, easier to identify those who are out of uniformity

Biopower

Creating new populations for the purposes of management; power over life (ability to foster or disallow it); Gives right to eliminate other biological groups if seen as a threat

Body Individual

lala

Body Universal

lala

Social Construction

Speaks to the power of the medical community to define that which is abnormal to a healthy body and disease as deviation from the healthy self (how we view a disease and how we view the people who have the disease)

Framing Disease

How our understanding of disease changes over time; general academic culture, social norms, cultural values, what we believe as “normal”

Disease as Framing

Using disease to classify people and how they are then viewed socially (alcoholism, hyperactivity, homosexuality); stigmatizes (or historically stigmatized) behaviors in our society; making a social thing a disease

Acclimatization

lala

Actor’s Category

Rooted in the actor’s world; refers to the terms and concepts that people use to understand and describe their own actions and social world (acclimatization, seasoning, humors)

Analyst’s Category

Rooted in the historians world; refers to more abstract, theoretical categories used by researchers to analyze and interpret those actions (Body universal, hospital medicine)

Seasoning

Punishment

An action the person does not necessarily want; application of sovereign power onto a body to immobilize and compel it; reduced to a power of zero agency

Intersections of Discipline and Biopower

Basic human differences in biology; seeks to draw similarities among groups for management; North Head Quarantine Station

Humoral Medicine

Key element was a focus on bodily fluids, each of the four humors was identified with a bodily organ and there are different levels in each person; different disruptions and balancers to the humors (lifestyle choices)

Hippocrates

Belief in treating the whole patient, usually at the bedside, recognizing how the patient lives, what they eat, whether they exercise, etc.

Galen

Brought much of Hippocratic legacy to the Western World; developed early anatomical models; consolidated experimental idea of medicine; anatomical and physiological accounts of diseases

Importance of the Enlightenment

Radical shift of though; masses had the capacity to speak and decide for themselves independent from politics or religion; concepts of freedom and individual action defined outside of the bounds of former structures