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Clio Medica

The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine

Series editors: Roger Cooter and Emma Spary.
The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine provides an active forum for the publication of research into the history of medicine and health care in all their branches in various cultures and all time periods. This series is published in conjuction with the Dutch publisher Rodopi.

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Clio Medica 89: Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence

Clio Medica 89:
Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence
James Shaw and Evelyn Welch
What did you do when you fell ill in fifteenth-century Florence? How did you get the medicines that you needed at a price you could afford? What would you find when you entered an apothecary's shop? This richly detailed study of the Speziale al Giglio in Florence provides surprising answers, demonstrating the continued importance of highly personalised medical practice late into the fifteenth century. Drawing on extensive archival research, it shows how personal relationships and mutual trust, rather than market forces, made payment possible even for those with limited incomes. Examining the spaces, people and products involved, Making and Marketing Medicine investigates the roles played by sociability, information networks and regulation in creating communities as well as in promoting health in Renaissance Italy.

Clio Medica 88: The Stepchildren of Science

Clio Medica 88:
The Stepchildren of Science: Psychical Research and Parapsychology in Germany, c.1870–1939
Heather Wolffram
Leading the reader through the darkened séance rooms and laboratories of Imperial and inter-war Germany, The Stepchildren of Science casts light on the emergence of psychical research and parapsychology in Germany. In particular, it looks at the role of the psychiatrist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing in shaping these nascent disciplines, fashioning himself as both propagandist and Grand Seignior of German parapsychology. In contrast to recent studies in which occultism is seen as a means of dealing with or creating ‘the modern’, Heather Wolffram considers the epistemological, cultural and social issues that arose from psychical researchers’ and parapsychologists’ claims to scientific legitimacy.

Focusing on the boundary disputes between these researchers and the spiritualists, occultists, psychologists and scientists with whom they competed for authority over the paranormal, The Stepchildren of Science demonstrates that in the German context both proponents and opponents alike understood psychical research and parapsychology as border sciences. It will be of interest to historians of medicine and psychology, as well as anyone interested in the paranormal.

Author interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqzgpu2HXE8
Clio Medica 87: The Imperial Laboratory

Clio Medica 87:
The Imperial Laboratory: Experimental Physiology and Clinical Medicine in Post-Crimean Russia
Galina Kichigina
Following a humiliating defeat in the Crimean, the Russian Empire found herself exposed due to major deficiencies in her infrastructure.  To gain from European scientific, technical and educational advancements, the Russian Government began to permit studies abroad and relaxed censorship, which brought a new flood of literature into the country. These measures enormously facilitated the growth of Russian science, medicine and education in the late nineteenth century, taking the Empire into a fascinating era of laboratory research, a new cultural and intellectual tradition.

The Imperial Laboratory tells the story of the lives and studies of the leading Russian and German clinician–experimenters who played critical roles in the integration of physics and chemistry into physiology and clinical medicine. A principal theme is the major transformations undergone in military medicine and education. Using a wide range of Russian and German primary sources, this book offers a unique English-language insight into Russian physiology and medicine that will be of interest to both historians and doctors, as well as anyone interested in Russian science and culture.

Clio Medica 86

Clio Medica 86:
Permeable Walls: Historical Perspectives on Hospital and Asylum Visiting
Edited by Graham Mooney and Jonathan Reinarz

Visiting relatives and friends in medical institutions is a common practice in all corners of the world.  People probably go into hospitals as a visitor more frequently than they do as a patient. Permeable Walls is the first book devoted to the history of hospital and asylum visiting and deflects attention from medical history’s more traditionally studied constituencies, patients and doctors.

Covering the eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries, and taking case studies from around the globe, the authors demonstrate that hospitals and asylums could be remarkably permeable institutions. However, policies towards visitors have varied from outright exclusion, as in the case of some isolation hospitals in Victorian Britain, to near open access in the first Chinese missionary hospitals. Historical studies of visitors and visiting, as a result, tell us much about the changing relationship between healthcare institutions and the communities they serve. These histories are particularly relevant at a time when service providers seek ways to involve patients’ representatives in healthcare decision making; to control hospital super-bugs; and to make the hospital environment accessible yet safe and secure. With the re-emergence of restricted visiting, the subject remains one of the most emotive topics in the history of institutional medicine.

Adopting a wide-ranging definition of visitors, from official inquirers to family members, Permeable Walls provides an innovative perspective on hospitals and asylums historically and will interest historians of medicine, charity and governance, as well as healthcare policy-makers.
Clio Medica 85: 'The Cruel Madness of Love'

Clio Medica 85:
‘The Cruel Madness of Love’: Sex, Syphilis and Psychiatry in Scotland, 1880–1930
Gayle Davis

Against a backdrop of contemporary social and sexual concerns, and potent fears surrounding the moral and physical ‘degeneration’ of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century society, ‘The Cruel Madness of Love’ explores a critical period in the developing relationship between syphilis and insanity.

General paralysis of the insane (GPI), the most commonly diagnosed of the neurosyphilitic disorders, has been devastating both in terms of its severity and incidence. Using the rich laboratory and asylum records of lowland Scotland as a case study, Gayle Davis examines the evolution of GPI as a disease category from a variety of perspectives: social, medical, and pathological.

Through exploring case notes and the impact of new diagnostic techniques and therapies, such as the Wassermann Test and Malarial Therapy, the reader gains a unique insight into both patients and practitioners. Significant insights are gained into the socio–sexual background and medical experience of patients, as well as the clinical ideas and judgmental behaviour of the practitioners confronting this disease.

‘The Cruel Madness of Love’ will be of interest to anyone wishing to explore the historical relationship between sexuality, morality and disease.

Contributors guidelines of how to present a manuscript are available by clicking on the link below.

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Clio Medica Style Sheet

Enquiries should be addressed to:

Michael Laycock
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
183 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE

Tel: 020 7679 8196
Fax: 020 7679 8194
Email:m.laycock@ucl.ac.uk