Conclusions: A Debt to Alexander the Aggressor? The deaf community was never at ease with Bell’s eugenics attempts for normalization. When the ABA’s Committee on Eugenics drafted a bill limiting marriage between “undesirables,” the deaf fought back. At his presidential address to the National Association of the Deaf, George Veditz declared that “[i]t is evident… Continue Reading
Latest in: history of medicine
-
-
In fact, with one or two exceptions, “aurist,” in England, has been hitherto but another term for “quack.” –James Yearsley (1805-1869), 1839.
-
The British physicians as well, discussed the nature of hereditary transmission of phthisis, loosely gathering into opposing camps of solidists and humoralists.[1] Although the Dutch Hermann Boerhaave had already classified disorders either as congenital or connate, medical men in Britain who were interested in hereditary transmission debated on the possible causal routes of diseases in… Continue Reading
-
By the end of the eighteenth century, many medical men had written exhaustively on the hereditary predisposition to phthisis, implementing medical hereditarianism as a social recourse for advocating social distances between elements of society. Historian Sean Quinlan argues that between 1748 and 1790, heredity in France gave doctors an idiom for diagnosis in light of… Continue Reading
-
Dear Reader, My apologies for the lack of posts and the lateness of this one. Apparently I’ve been so tired I failed to notice I didn’t schedule the Monday Series post properly. As always, thank you for reading. -Jai A fascinating perspective for the popularity of the hereditary theory of phthisis is given by historian… Continue Reading
-
In his A Treatise on the Consumption of the Lungs (1722), Edward Barry describes the influence of environmental stimuli upon an inherited malady such as consumption: “This constitution to some is natural and hereditary; but in many others be acquired, by the intemperate use of a hot, aromatic, saline, or animal Diet, or by previous… Continue Reading
-
During spring 1817, rumours floated towards the English that virulent form of cholera morbus was attacking British ports in India, and was heading towards Asia. This vicious nature of cholera was the first wave in a series of epidemics during the nineteenth century, and Europeans held their breath as the disease continued its journey, hitting… Continue Reading
-
The word “tuberculosis” was not introduced as a classification term until 1834 by the German physician Johann Lukas Schönlein (1793-1864),[1] though it was first used by the British physician Richard Morton (1637-1698) in 1689. Commonly named by the medical community as “phthisis,” or “consumption,” signifying the wasting characteristics of the chronic disease,… Continue Reading
-
Body-Snatching and the Criminalized Body: A Badge of a Marginalized Condition O Poverty! thou art the unpardonable offence… Thou hast neither rights, charters, immunities nor liberties![1] One of the major public conflicts with dissection stemmed from their fears of body-snatching. The shallow graves of the poor[2] were prime targets for body snatches and the ongoing… Continue Reading
-
I’ve been doing a lot of (re-)reading lately on ideas of the body and the embodiment of knowledge on the body–mainly because I was aiming for some background reading as I prepared the CFP for the 2011 HAPSAT Conference. Some of these were based on reading summaries I prepared for Prof. Lucia Dacome’s “Body and… Continue Reading
-
Harold Cook, “Time’s Bodies: Crafting the Preparation and Preservation of Naturalia,” in Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen (New York: Routledge 2002). Harold Cook’s (Brown University) article takes place in sixteenth and seventeenth Netherlands, and ties together the market economy and its capital investments,… Continue Reading
-
Welcome to the second Monday Series on “The Criminalized Body.” If you missed the first one, simply click here. A Deterrent for Murder in a Culture of Dissection The 1752 “Murder Act” reads Whereas the horrid crime of murder has of late been more frequently perpetrated than formerly…it is thereby become necessary, that some further… Continue Reading
From the Hands of Quacks 