Tumgik
#history of medicine
racefortheironthrone · 6 months
Note
Is there any way for governments to respond to a pandemic such as Covid 19 or something worse without provoking considerable public resentment? Take no measures to prevent the spread and you’ll be blamed for the resulting public health disaster. Try to prevent the spread, and you’ll be blamed for the inevitable inequities and negative effects taken to do so, and the (mitigated, but not entirely avoided) public health disaster.
I don't mean this to come off as pessimistic or overly negative, but I would say as a matter of historic record, public health campaigns (especially anti-pandemic campaigns) tend to be quite unpopular - and my suspicion is that the mid-20th century moment where public health experts like Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin became folk heroes with enormous amounts of popular support from the middle-class parents of the Baby Boom is probably the exception that proves the rule.
Tumblr media
You can go all the way back to the very earliest days of public health measures - the Venetian invention of the quarantine during the Black Death - to find one of the first anti public-health backlashes. Conservative Venetians felt that the free food packages that were an essential part of the quarantine process (because you don't want potentially sick people wandering the city looking for food) would make people lazy and economically dependent on the government.
Tumblr media
Likewise, when advances in medicine and state capacity in the early 19th century led to one of the first modern pandemic campaigns during the cholera outbreaks of the early 1830s, the public's response was not one of orderly compliance and gratefulness. Instead, you had what were called the "cholera riots" in both the U.K and Russia. Buoyed by conspiracy theories about shadowy cabals of doctors working hand in hand with an autocratic government to kill the destitute, mobs attacked symbols of public health (public hospitals, government doctors, public research clinics, anatomical colleges, health boards) and government authority (governors, police stations, quarantine cordons, court houses, etc.).
By contrast, all the anti-vaxx insanity of the past couple years seems a bit tame - at least in COVID-19, most violence has been rhetorical and abstract rather than involving the targeted murder of doctors and government officials.
Ultimately, we may just have to come to grips with the fact that public health/anti-pandemic policy is always going to be unpopular and that the correct approach is to use hard power rather than try to chivvy people into doing what's in their best interests. I certainly remember how California started to make strides against the anti-vaxx movement prior to COVID-19: it ultimately required legislation like SB 277 and SB 742 that made vaccinations more mandatory and made anti-vaxx harassment punishable with six months in jail.
155 notes · View notes
cuties-in-codices · 5 months
Text
Tumblr media
anatomical drawing of a pregnant woman
in an astrological-medical miscellany, bavaria/swabia, c. 1485
source: Munich, BSB, Cgm 597, fol. 259v
143 notes · View notes
scarfacemarston · 1 year
Text
Tuberculosis and the Wild West
Spoilers for RDR2 , but it’s been since 2018, y’all.  Trigger warnings for serious talk of severe terminal illness and severe stigma. As of 12/20 or 20/12, I have fixed some of the wording and added a few new things so please seriously head the warnings. Ok, first, some background: I've been studying TB since 2018; my father had a form of TB twice. I'm a historian, and one of my specialties is the history of medicine. Of course, you don't need to be a historian to write something like this. Also,  please "like" and reblog, this sort of content takes time. Tons of pics of buildings, and info below of the “lore” and IRL people.
Background info about TB that y’all need to know: TB is still horrifically deadly and still a leading cause of death. To give you all an idea about how recent genuine scientifically proven treatments were-  antibiotics targeting TB were not  discovered until the late 40s. However, sanatoriums (TB hospitals) and similar TB-related places didn't all close until 1970. My sister was born in 1977.  To give you all an idea of how treeified people were of this disease, think of the stigma with the AIDS/HIV crisis in the 1980s or the early fears surrounding Covid.
TB is one of the three oldest diseases dating back to Ancient Egypt with early evidence appearing through ancient mummies. Starting around the 18th century, western people believed TB was a disease of the elite granting someone ethereal beauty, writing prowess, and artistic talents. It was known as a "romantic disease" and a "beautiful death" - both of which we know aren’t true.  Some western beauty standards are influenced by TB including rouged lips, blush, pale skin and a thin figure accentuated with corsets. However, the appearance was due to the patient wasting away. Patients actually had bloodied lips, feverish cheeks, a pale complexion from the illness and losing a large amount of body weight. That's why TB was initially called consumption.(There have been many other names for TB including the White Plague and Captain of All These Men of Death and phthisis which is Greek in origin.) However, people eventually woke up and realized, "Oh wait, this isn't so sexy” The disease spread like wildfire, especially in the cities affecting whole families as was seen with Doc Holliday. Soon, society blamed anyone who wasn’t a white upperclass person AND those who were "immoral . They believed it was someone’s own fault if they had the disease. People held a very e*gen*c view of the disease believing their activities or who their families were caused this.  Immoral in this instance includes thieves, sex workers, bar workers, drunkards, violent people, women who had children out of wedlock, said child born out of wedlock, and homeless people. Obviously, this isn't true. It was overcrowded spaces, poor hygienic practices, but also animals, especially cows and deer. Ironically, the deer/stag plays a huge role in RDR 2. A few aspects from RDR 2 were inspired by Doc Holiday, one of the greatest gunslingers and outlaws in American history. His talents with the gun were considered by some as otherworldly. He and Wyatt Earp are most famous for the shoot-out at the OK Corral. Doc was dying of TB and headed west in order to potentially receive some medical attention, but found out that being an outlaw was great fun. Watch Tombstone for a fictionalized version of him. He had a very colorful life, but died of TB in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, at the age of 36. The same age as you know who.
Tumblr media
This leads us to RDR 2 itself. The short answer about  survival is potentially yes, but with some major stipulations. I have traveled across the country studying TB and visiting TB sites and have seen these locations firsthand. Read further to read how survival was possible and for pictures of key locations.
IF Arthur had rested, maintained a proper fat rich diet, rested in especially clean air and partook in light exercise, he MIGHT have had a chance. I would estimate a 60-70 percent chance based on my readings of TB survivors. The chance of survival  could be more if he he headed West immediately after diagnosis. The wealthy traveled to newly built luxury resorts, but most people lived in tent colonies, so Arthur would be very familiar with the site. Hell, if the gang moved West, and followed the conditions I mentioned above, he MIGHT have been able to recover without heading to a TB colony. The the gang wasn't stable, and they were being hunted down, etc. However, people were pissed about the TB patients heading west to settle on "their land" (which is, of course, Native American land that was stolen). This pushed people to the outskirts of town and eventually, the establishment of sanatoriums which were tuberculosis treatment centers. 
Tumblr media
Both the picture above and below would be an example of the tents used by TB patients to camp out. The top picture was probably taken around the 1890s which is Arthur’s lifetime while the picture blow is probably from a later era like the 20′s based on the clothing. City people in big cities sometimes camped out on the roofs of their flats and apartments hence the setting of the second picture. 
Tumblr media
Due to the extreme fear, people were literally dropped off by families/friends or even government officials far outside of town. You did not want society to know that you had loved one with TB or else the stigma would affect you as well.  Later, TB patients were forcibly institutionalized. Many of these patients were ashamed of their affliction, but also felt further shame that their loved ones could be ostracized by society. I cannot stress enough how horrific this disease was and how tb psychologically affected the sufferer and its loved ones. Many tb sufferers never saw their loved ones again due to their families shunning them. I interviewed the elderly who remembered family members suffering from the disease and it still haunts their lives today. We see some of the shunning and stigma in the game, not just from the townspeople but from the gang. It's actually one of the reasons why I truly dislike a few unexpected gang members, for example.
At least Abigail, Charles, Tilly, John, and Sadie still treated him as a  human. Hell, Even Molly was kinder to him and she was really suffering in chapter 6.
I will tell you right now, realistically speaking, in no way could Arthur have done anything at all in chapter six. I’m not only talking missions, but any sort of work.  I won't go into graphic details, but one of the less graphic ones is that his hands would struggle to grasp objects, especially a gun. His joints would be too swollen. I know because I've seen it firsthand with my father and read plenty of accounts about it. Other than that, the game does a pretty great job of representing TB - however, Arthur could have been arrested or fined for spitting blood on the street which he did quite often in the game. Link goes to an academic article, but here is a more accessible link.
By 1899, people had been heading west for TB treatment for decades. People of all races headed west to Colorado, California, New Mexico, and Arizona being the prime locations. Dry air and or mountainous air were your best bets. Colorado was quite literally known as THE place for TB tourism as it was called. It was one of the first major waves of health tourism in the history of the USA. 
Another famous person and case study is Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau. He himself suffered from tuberculosis who sent up tuberculosis huts in Saranac Lake, NY. For further study, other key locations include Asheville, North Carolina and in the mountainous regions of Pennsylvania. They huts looked like this:
Tumblr media
These were also in Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs was full of them and they are still occasionally found in people’s yards today. 
Tumblr media
I visited one in the Pioneer museum in Colorado Springs. I can post my pictures later, but this is one found in an outdoor museum.
Tumblr media
The TB patients had a very strict regimen of never leaving the bed and used bed pans. Healthier patients had access to their own private toilet. Stronger patients could work on doctor approved exercises, while even healthier TB patients who weren't ready to leave facilities yet could spend the rest of their time working around the camp or sanatorium.  Below is how Arthur would have looked getting treatment if he wasn’t in a hut or tent:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Above: Women receiving treatment. Below: An 1899 TB facility. Most tuberculosis sanitoriums were built from 1905 onwards so John’s era was FULL of them. The peak of the sanitarium era though was 1920-1940ish.
Tumblr media
The problem is TB patients had a very chance of suffering from pneumonia once TB went into remission. It's happened in tons of my case studies. If Arthur could have survived both TB AND pneumonia, then he would have been considered "Ok". Not good, but “Ok”. However, I can't predict how long he would have lived afterwards. Some TB patients had tuberculosis come in a second wave. This is, unfortunately, very common. Some people lived a few months, a few years and some lived decades after surviving the second wave.
 Fortunately, survival after two waves include people who lived hard, like Arthur. Trudeau lived till 68, and that is after 2 bouts of TB and pneumonia, with the third wave of TB being his cause of death.
This is very likely a reason why Arthur would have been in New Austin if they had kept him in the epilogue and continued the TB storyline. I personally do NOT think John was ever going to kill him. MISC NOTES: Related to RDR:  Important side note: Sex workers were especially blamed for spreading TB which makes sense because of the contact with multiple people, but it's not that different than someone who works at a factory every day, runs a shop or works at the docks, or in similar situations. Anyone could spread it. This is why it is actually technically very offensive to ask someone like Abigail if she had TB because it would be a way to imply she is unclean as a person. (Which people in the game already believe with some of the fandom similarly treating her poorly.) The history of sex work is my other specialty, so I am very familiar with their history. I will say, from what I gathered, sex workers did NOT seem to be that much more affected than others, but at the same time, we don't have a lot of records of people who weren't white upper-class Christian men. So we have these records if these people were arrested, but remember that all of the examples of people I mentioned were viewed as second-class citizens. Therefore, we have hardly any records of sex workers as actual people and historians have to be creative to find other ways to research them properly.  Modern day: TB is also becoming antibiotic-resistant at a frightening pace. This will become a massive problem. Treatment  requires at least two antibiotics - streptomycin being the main choice for the primary antibiotic. This treatment lasts months, and these antibiotics are insanely strong. They can really mess with the body's system. I've seen it. My father was one of the lucky ones only having to take the pills for 8 months. Many others take it from a year to even 18 months. Other people take the pills and undergo radiation therapy to treat TB. Modern science can't produce enough new antibiotics to outpace it, but alternative treatments do appear to be promising.  If you want me to write more about TB or for any other history questions, feel free to send me an anon/message.  Additional pics: Below: Sanitarium built around 1905.
Tumblr media
Below: An example of a finished Sanatorium in 1911ish:
Tumblr media
784 notes · View notes
courtingwonder · 6 months
Text
Tumblr media
How To Make Penicillin --- From "The Book", pg. 34-35
82 notes · View notes
junkdrawertales · 3 months
Text
saw an incredibly disturbing terf post about Lili Elbe misgendering her and going on about how a dead woman’s uterus was transplanted to Lili and that was the cause of her death and how ‘awful’ it was that a dead woman’s organs were used for her surgery. And I just want to know. Do TERFs understand how organ donorship works? Most transplanted organs come from dead people. Eyes, hearts, lungs, liver chunks, some kidneys, stomachs, skin. Most of the time, the uterus isn’t used, because it’s very difficult to transplant. Recently, one of the very first successful uterus recipients (a cis woman) used her new uterus to give birth. Lili Elbe, one of the first to surgically transition in the modern era, helped further such surgeries. She died for it (sepsis infection). A transplant is such a strange thing to be offended by.
42 notes · View notes
upennmanuscripts · 8 months
Text
LJS 470 is a collection of medical recipes, folk remedies, charms, and spells, including a Hebrew translation of John of Parma's medical treatise, Practicella. Written in Siena in 1533.
🔗:
145 notes · View notes
Tumblr media
Skull with jaw affected by phosphorus poisoning.
J. Bartholomew
Wellcome Collection
220 notes · View notes
transmutationisms · 9 months
Note
hii, do you have any reading recs for where to start in terms of the history of medicine? thank you so much and i adore reading your succession analysis
if you're new to this subfield i would recommend starting out by just thumbing through the cambridge history of medicine (2006, ed. roy porter). you don't have to read every word in here, but definitely the introduction and any chapters that look particularly relevant to your interests. there are also some medical chapters scattered throughout the cambridge history of science volumes. cambridge volumes are often limited to europe and north america, and they're generally not methodologically daring, so you don't want to get stuck on them forever. but as a starting point, they can help you start to recognise a few influential names in the field, and give you a sense of what the history of medicine 'canon' is & draws from.
after that you can start to get more specific. history of medicine is a bit of a misnomer field in that it contains a few distinct-but-overlapping subject areas: histories of diseases themselves (this will cross into history of biology, paleo-virology, molecular archaeology, genetics, &c); histories of sickness (often drawing from affect theory, disability studies, and history of emotions); histories of medical practice and practitioners (philosophy of health and medicine, labour history, studies of class and discipline formation, military history); histories of public health (broader population thinking, archaeology and anthropology, history of hygiene, history of state formation and biopolitics); histories of medical devices and instruments (history of technology, material history, economic and industrial history). you'll also serve yourself well if you have some sense of specific time periods and places you're interested in—not that i'm telling you to be close-minded, but it just helps if you have some idea of what you're looking for.
you are more than welcome to come back and ask about a more specific sub-topic :-) since you've basically given me free reign, i'll just toss out a few histmed books i've particularly enjoyed, in no particular order:
medicalizing blackness: making racial difference in the atlantic world, 1780–1840, by rana hogarth (2017)
the expressiveness of the body and the divergence of greek and chinese medicine, by shigehisa kuriyama (1999)
doctoring traditions: ayurveda, small technologies, and braided sciences, by projit mukharji (2016)
plague and empire in the early modern mediterranean world: the ottoman experience, 1347–1600, by nukhet varlık (2015)
killing the black body: race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty, by dorothy roberts (1997)
hearing happiness: deafness cures in history, by jaipreet virdi (2020)
pasteur's empire: bacteriology and politics in france, its colonies, and the world, by aro velmet (2020)
contagion: disease, government, and the 'social question' in nineteenth-century france, by andrew aisenberg (1999)
colonial madness: psychiatry in french north africa, by richard keller (2007)
curing the colonizers: hydrotherapy, climatology, and french colonial spas, by eric t jennings (2006)
ideals of the body: architecture, urbanism, and hygiene in postrevolutionary paris, by sun-young park (2018)
125 notes · View notes
clove-pinks · 2 months
Text
I was reading an (open source) journal article last night about the medical treatment of American POWs in the War of 1812.
Tumblr media
A British officer inspecting the sick in hospital, 1813.
The gist of the article is that American claims of mistreatment are overblown, and most prisoners received adequate medical care (under the circumstances) from their British captors. Relevant to my interests in both military history and the history of medicine, it gives an overview of the treatment of wounds and illness and the results. The author notes:
Few formal conventions dealt with the treatment of prisoners of war during the period. While it was common for combatant nations to agree upon temporary conventions once hostilities commenced, generally it was quasi-chivalric sentiments, notions of Christian conduct, and a sense of humanitarian obligation that moderated treatment of prisoners, allowing, for example, parole for officers and sometimes for enlisted personnel and care for sick and wounded soldiers.
It seems odd that military personnel could switch between trying to kill the enemy and trying to save his life with medical intervention, but it's well-known that soldiers actually don't like killing people (see Men Against Fire by S.L.A. Marshall and numerous other studies).
18 notes · View notes
oldshrewsburyian · 2 years
Text
Dracula Daily: So What About The Asylum?
So, I’ve seen a lot of posts that treat Lucy’s bubbly letter to Mina as containing a jarring tonal shift in describing the clever doctor who has “an immense lunatic asylum all under his own care.” But Lucy is not that clueless. It’s complicated! Which makes it more interesting! I’m not about to become a Victorian asylum apologist here. But I think that the novel makes more sense and is more interesting if we have more knowledge of reality and debate surrounding asylums (and other institutions) in late Victorian Britain. I’ll try to keep this short.
When I teach Victorian hospitals in Modern Europe 101, I describe them as institutions between care and control. And this is hardly original. But this fact, that they both institutions designed for social support (paternalistic) and institutions of state/medical control, is central to what they’re doing and how they’re understood. Also, crucially (!), in 1897, we’re several decades after a big reform of asylums, inspired in part by Wilkie Collins’ 1859/60 sensation novel The Woman in White. See this 1859 treatise by a doctor. So, like prisons, workhouses, and hospitals, asylums are conceptualized as institutions for 1) helping Society’s Unfortunates™ 2) keeping society itself healthy by managing said unfortunates. Yeah. So this mention of an asylum absolutely should ping some ominous alarm bells for us. But it also tells us that Mr. Hot Doctor -- crucially both well-born and wealthy -- is a young man with a social conscience and practical ideas for putting his ideals into action. So hot! Victorian readers, incidentally, would also have been alert to this tension and ambiguity. Just think of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde! Fictional Victorian doctors are constantly messing with things they shouldn’t (except Dr. Watson who is a darling.)
All that said... the reconceptualization of medical institutions from the late 18th century onwards are part of what Michel Foucault has called “The Birth of the Clinic,” meaning that hospitals were sites of managing the sick, educating male medical experts, and edifying wealthy visitors who got tours of the wards. Philippe Pinel’s 1806 Treatise on Insanity is illustrative here. So is the (in)famous case of Ignaz Semmelweis, the advocate of chlorine disinfection. It’s not the case that no one understood or cared about medical hygiene before the 19th century. They absolutely did. But 19th-century doctors specifically -- respectably middle-class, well-educated, male -- were shocked by the insinuation that they, the experts, could be less clean than poor women’s bodies. The very idea! The fact that Semmelweis was a Jewish man whose father was in trade may have been relevant. That’s a bit of a digression. But medical and scientific ideas on basically everything have been changing, and changing rapidly, accompanied by heated debate and international competition, throughout the 19th century. Mr. Hot Doctor is doing cutting-edge work. But because he’s overseeing a private asylum, he’s also doing it without much outside oversight. So what has he chosen as his ideal model of care? Is he inspired by Florence Nightingale’s principles of hospital design? We shall see. Dun dun dunnn.
986 notes · View notes
gwydionmisha · 6 months
Text
51 notes · View notes
thefisherqueen · 4 months
Text
On the seventh day the stitches were taken out, in spite of which there was a report of erysipelas in the evening papers.
Erysipelas (more common know as St. Anthony's fire in English, apperently. In Dutch we call in wound rose) is a bacterial skin infection, leading to swelling, redness and fever. Left untreated - and in the time this story was published, 1924, the invention of broad-spectrum antibiotics like pencilin was still several years away - it can lead to some serious complications like blood clots, blood poisoning or meningitis
22 notes · View notes
alpaca-clouds · 11 months
Text
Medicine in Castlevania
Tumblr media
Had a talk about this topic with @autumnmobile12 and promised I was gonna write a bit about it.
There is the big question, what kind of medicine the vampires have available in the Netflix version of Castlevania. After all Lisa goes to Dracula to learn about medicine and does so. And we know that the knowledge available is far ahead of the time that the series is set (mainly 1475 and 1476).
We see a lot of chemical equipment in Dracula's laboratory, but of course we cannot say, what it does.
The one thing we know is that they know about antibiotics. This is based on Lisa giving the old woman in the village a medication for her cough made from mold. Which is fairly certainly penicillin.
Given how penicillin in the real world was discovered, we can assume two more things from this. In the real world it was discovered, by some spores from a certain kind of mold (one, that primarily grows on melons and sometime on citrus fruits) getting on a petri dish, where they were cultivating bacteria cultures, and then killing the bacteria. Hence, them knowing about penicillin does imply that they know about how to grow bacteria cultures - and hence know about bacteria. After all you would not give someone antibiotics without knowing about bacteria!
Another thing we know is, that Lisa in her own laboratory in Lupu has a centrifuge. Usually centrifuges are used either in some chemical processes, but more likely is, that it is used in blood tests. Which would make it clear that they have some knowledge of the components of blood. This also does imply that they can draw blood in a somewhat orderly manner.
So, in the real world penicillin was discovered in 1928, while blood tests go back to the 18th century.
Some other stuff that was discovered medically in the early 20th century would be insulin (which originally was made from the organs of animals, which I absolutely could see to be something that the vampires in Castlevania have figured out) and vitamins and their importance for the human body.
In the about 100 years before that, other important stuff was discovered. Aspirin being one such thing, as it was originally made from the bark of willow and I very much assume that they have already access to. X-Rays, too, being such a thing. Though I am not entirely certain about these, because while they do have electricity, I am not entirely certain how much they understand about electricity. Something I am rather certain about is general anesthesia, which was discovered in 1849 in the real world.
Vaccines were discovered technically in 1799, but it took until 1890s, until they figured out to prepare dead vaccines, that would just train your immune system, instead of giving your a minor infection. But yes, I am fairly certain that they do know about vaccines.
Some other discoveries, that would be around in the 1920s, are kinda dependend on how well the understanding of electricity is. Because the only electricity we see is in electric light. So, it is hard to say whether they have electro cardiography for example. Though obviously it would help with the survivability of surgery.
I am not entirely certain, whether they might have some other medications that need modern chemical equipment.
Another thing I am fairly certain they have, is proper microscopes, given that those go back really far back and even in the middle ages they had some good ones and they probably have access to much better ones in this world.
But just to imagine, how much the knowledge of bacteria, fungi and maybe viruses would help survivability. Just knowing to desinfect hands before a surgery (something we see Lisa do) and such would do a lot. Heck, antibiotics would greatly help the survivability of the black death and of course vaccines would do so much more. So, if they really end up sharing that knowledge in the end of the series, the next few centuries would have a very different outcome.
(I might also ramble a bit about technology in that world, if anyone is interested.)
Tagging @udaberriwrites and @lena-hills, too, because they might be interested.
62 notes · View notes
scarfacemarston · 2 months
Text
I know this is a long shot, but are there any historians or history graduate students willing to help me with my paper? It’s historiography and I just want opinions on that chapter of my thesis. I have no one to turn to, sadly, and the professor in charge hasn’t talked to me in months. :)/s
I’ll trade you something for your time.
If anyone is willing to reblog this for visibility, that would mean so much. I have no one to ask for help from so I’m desperate!
17 notes · View notes
profkew · 10 months
Text
Freedom House was Pittsburgh's first professional ambulance service, and likely the first anywhere. The first paramedics were a group of Black men from the city's historic Hill District.
To learn more,
Tumblr media
American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics
43 notes · View notes
medievalistsnet · 8 months
Text
44 notes · View notes