Explores the history of vaccine development and the rise of antivaccination societies in late-nineteenth-century America.

This volume is an interdisciplinary attempt to insert a broader, historically informed perspective into current political and academic debates on the issue of evidence and the reliability of scientific knowledge. The tensions between competing paradigms, different bodies of knowledge and the relative hierarchies between them are a crucial element of the historical and contemporary dynamics of scientific knowledge production. The negotiation of evidence is at the heart of this process. Starting from the premise that evidence constitutes a central, but also essentially contested concept in contemporary knowledge-based societies, this volume focuses on how evidence is generated and applied in practice—in other words, on “evidence in action.” The contributions analyze and compare different evidence practices within the field of science and technology, how they interlink with different forms of power, their interaction with and impact on the legal and political domain, and their relationship to other, more heterodox forms of evidence that challenge traditional notions of evidence. In doing so, this volume provides much-needed context and historical background to contemporary debates on the so-called “post-truth” society. Evidence in Action is the perfect resource for all those interested in the relationship between science, technology, and the role of knowledge in society. Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Reveals the history of the individuals who worked to make psychiatry more available to Harlem's black community in the early Civil Rights Era. Toward the middle of the twentieth century, African Americans in New York City began to receive increased access to mental health care in some facilities within the city's mental health system. This study documents how and why this important change in public health-and in public opinion on race-occurred. Drawing on records from New York's children's courts, Harlem's public schools, Columbia University, and the Department of Hospitals, Dennis Doyle tells here the story of the American psychiatrists and civil servants who helped codify in New York's mental health policies the view that blacks and whites are psychological equals. The book examines in particular the events through which these racial liberals working in Harlem gained a foothold within New York's public institutions, creating inclusive public policies and ostensibly race-neutral standards of care. Psychiatry and Racial Liberalism in Harlem, 1936-1968 not only contributes to the growing body of historiography on race and medical institutions in the civil rights era but, more importantly, shows how inveterate racial prejudices within public policy can be overcome. Dennis A. Doyle is assistant professor of history at the Saint Louis College of Pharmacy.

An expert legal review of the US government’s response to epidemics through history—with larger conclusions about COVID-19, and reforms needed for the next plague In this narrative history of the US through major outbreaks of contagious disease, from yellow fever to the Spanish flu, from HIV/AIDS to Ebola, Polly J. Price examines how law and government affected the outcome of epidemics—and how those outbreaks in turn shaped our government. Price presents a fascinating history that has never been fully explored and draws larger conclusions about the gaps in our governmental and legal response. Plagues in the Nation examines how our country learned—and failed to learn—how to address the panic, conflict, and chaos that are the companions of contagion, what policies failed America again and again, and what we must do better next time.

Explores the complex interactions between French medicine and Vietnamese childbirth traditions, documenting the emergence of a plural system of maternity services that incorporated both biomedical knowledge and local birthing traditions.

Drawing upon a diverse range of archival evidence, medical treatises, religious texts, public discourses, and legal documents, this book examines the rich historical context in which controversies surrounding the medical neglect of children erupted onto the American scene. It argues that several nineteenth-century developments collided to produce the first criminal prosecutions of parents who rejected medical attendance as a tenet of their religious faith. A view of children as distinct biological beings with particularized needs for physical care had engendered both the new medical practice field of pediatrics and a vigorous child welfare movement that forced legislatures and courts to reconsider public and private responsibility for ensuring children’s physical well-being. At the same time, a number of healing religions had emerged to challenge the growing authority of medical doctors and the appropriate role of the state in the realm of child welfare. The rapid proliferation of the new healing churches, and the mixed outcomes of parents’ criminal trials, reflected ongoing uneasiness about the increasing presence of science in American life.

The field of biopolitics encompasses issues from health and hygiene, birth rates, fertility and sexuality, life expectancy and demography to eugenics and racial regimes. This book is the first to provide a comprehensive view on these issues for Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century. The cataclysms of imperial collapse, World War(s) and the Holocaust but also the rise of state socialism after 1945 provided extraordinary and distinct conditions for the governing of life and death. The volume collects the latest research and empirical studies from the region to showcase the diversity of biopolitical regimes in their regional and global context – from hunger relief for Hungarian children after the First World War to abortion legislation in communist Poland. It underlines the similarities as well, demonstrating how biopolitical strategies in this area often revolved around the notion of an endangered nation; and how ideological schemes and post-imperial experiences in Eastern Europe further complicate a 'western' understanding of democratic participatory and authoritarian repressive biopolitics. The new geographical focus invites scholars and students of social and human sciences to reconsider established perspectives on the history of population management and the history of Europe.

This volume interrogates global health and especially the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role that science has played in mitigating the human experiences of pandemics and health over the centuries. Science, and the scientific method, has always been at the forefront of the human attempt at undermining the virulent consequences of sicknesses and diseases. However, the scientific image of humans in the world is founded on the presumption of possessing the complete understanding about humans and their physiological and psychological frameworks. This volume challenges this scientific assumption. Global health denotes the complex and cumulative health profile of humanity that involves not only the framework of scientific researches and practices that investigates and seeks to improve the health of all people on the globe, but also the range of humanistic issues - economic, cultural, social, ideological - that constitute the sources of inequities and threat to the achievement of a positive global health profile. This volume balances the argument that diseases and pandemics are human problems that demand both scientific and humanistic interventions.

Traces the history of the British General Medical Council to reveal the persistence of hierarchies of gender, national identity, and race in determining who was fit to practice British medicine.