The scale of the current global obesity epidemic and the implications of this for health, functionality and economics, dictates that assessing the origins of overnutrition must become a priority in all research fields. To date anthropometric historians have mainly utilised institutional sources providing height and occasionally weight data for a sample of the working class who experienced deprivation. Tailoring institutions offer new, innovative sources for the field; uniquely measuring body shape in its entirety and sampling the upper-middle classes and elites. Anthropometric data for waist circumference, hip circumference and leg length has been collected from Morris & Son tailoring establishment in Barmouth, North West Wales and from Henry Poole & Co. ‘Savile Row’ tailors in Mayfair, London. This data from the second half of the nineteenth century has been nominally linked to census and probate records and cross-referenced with contemporary medical tracts and modern epidemiological literature to highlight obesity related health risks within both populations. Results indicate that 'diseases of affluence' permeated many nineteenth century class groups. Both waist circumferences and hip circumferences increased over the life span. Furthermore, Barmouth’s economic transition from a port to a tourist destination appears to have placed individuals' health (when measured by early adult waist-hip ratio) at greater risk than the overall wealthier customers attending Savile Row. The Barker hypothesis may be relevant - an influx of wealth being of greater detriment to health in later life than consistent affluence. For Henry Poole & Co.’s customers an elite lifestyle enabled girths to expand, increasing the risk of chronic diseases but seemingly protecting them from infectious pathogens. In later life, during the second half of the nineteenth century, it would appear that optimal waist circumferences to reduce mortality were larger than current recommended levels.

This thesis focuses on the domestic use of plant-based medicines within Early Modern English and Colonial American households, and establishes the defining framework of a domestic botanical culture. It reconstructs the relationship between domestic, popular, and learned medical cultures to reveal the breadth of that practice, demonstrating the unique characteristics of the domestic culture which are underpinned by a shared canon of herbs and a high degree of flexible adaptability by individual practitioners. The botanicals (medicinal plants and the remedies made from them) are themselves analysed through the genres of household receipt book manuscripts, private letters, and journals, as well as almanacs, vernacular medical books, travel writing and settler texts in order to explore more fully and expand our understanding of the domestic culture within a broad social setting. Oral, scribal, and print networks are reconstructed in order to demonstrate that domestic medical practitioners shared a distinctive and influential medical construct, commonly portrayed by current scholarship as a mere reflection of popular and learned practices. Close engagement with both Early Modern English and Colonial women’s receipt books in particular reveals a commonality of practice based upon a shared materia medica which was sensitive and responsive to individual adaptation. Old and new world herbs are examined as a means of providing ingress into this shared and communal domestic practice, as well as to highlight the prevalence and importance of household individualization. The clear commonality of plants in trans-Atlantic domestic use demonstrates a continuous, shared, inherited practice which ends only with eighteenth-century Colonial inclusion of indigenous plants not found in the shared canon. Contemporary views of Early Modern and Colonial domestic medical practice are explored in order to argue that far from simply reflecting learned medical thinking and practice, domestic knowledge and use of botanical medicines was uniquely practical, communal, and flexible in its administration and expression.

In 1974 Random House published a popular and controversial book entitled Why Your Child is Hyperactive. The author, San Francisco allergist Ben F. Feingold, claimed that hyperactivity was caused by food additives and was best prevented and treated with a diet, subsequently dubbed the 'Feingold diet', free of such substances. Reaction to the idea was swift. The media and parents found Feingold's environmentally-based theory intriguing, as it provided an aetiological explanation for hyperactivity that was both sensible and topical. The medical community, in contrast, was suspicious and designed double-blind trials to test his theory. The dominant perception emerging out of these tests was that Feingold's hypothesis was incorrect and, soon after Feingold's death in 1982, medical and media attention faded away. Drawing on unpublished archival material, medical literature, popular media sources and oral history interviews, this thesis explores the rise and fall of the Feingold diet. It examines the origins of Feingold's idea, the manner in which his theory was disseminated to the medical community and the broader public, and analyses how physicians and patients evaluated whether or not Feingold's hypothesis was correct. Aiming to contribute to the histories of allergy, psychiatry and nutrition, the thesis contends that social factors, rather than scientific testing, were largely responsible for the fate of the Feingold diet. Some of these factors include Feingold's methods and approach to describing and promoting his diet, the professional and economic interests of medical practitioners and the food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries, and the difficulties inherent in following the diet. From a broader historiographical perspective, the history of the Feingold diet suggests that in order to understand how medical controversies are resolved it is essential to analyse the historical context within which they emerge.

The thesis examines the relationship between reprobation fears and melancholic illness in puritan culture over a period of approximately ninety years. Reprobation formed part of the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination, by which God had chosen a few for salvation (the elect), and many for destruction (the reprobate). When a person came to believe that they were reprobate, this could give rise to symptoms of fear and despair similar to those associated with melancholy (an imbalance of black bile believed to affect the brain). The thesis shows how puritans used explanations based on melancholy in order to explain how otherwise godly people came to doubt their election. The first chapter shows how the Calvinist physician, Timothy Bright, incorporated ideas from medieval scholastic and medical texts into his Treatise of melancholie (1586), in order to explain how physiological causes could be at the root of reprobation fears. The second and third chapters examine the religious context in which Bright was writing. The second chapter shows puritan ambivalence about pronouncing a person to be reprobate through an examination of responses to the death of the apostate, Francesco Spiera. The third chapter shows how the Elizabethan puritan clergy developed a form of consolation for those suffering from despair of salvation based on the medieval idea that melancholy was the ‘devil’s bath’. The fourth and fifth chapters show the importance of physiological explanations for despair in defending the reputations of the dying. When a godly person despaired on their death-bed, or committed suicide, this was blamed on a combination of forces external to themselves – melancholy and the devil. The final chapter shows how Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy adapted puritan ideas about despair, to be more acceptable in the context of growing resistance to the preaching of double predestination in the 1620s and 30s.

This thesis examines the role of missionaries, the colonial government, and leprosy patients in the formation of leprosy settlements in Uganda, from the first inception of the settlements in 1927, until 1951 when the nature of leprosy control in Uganda changed, with the government appointment of a Protectorate leprologist and the creation of more treatment centres. It focuses on four leprosy settlements opened between 1930 and 1934 by the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the British and Irish Catholic Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa (FMSA) and Mill Hill Mission (MHM). Firstly, this thesis explores the ways in which the differing goals, ideologies, and resources of the Protestant CMS and the Catholic FMSA and MHM shaped the formation of and social environment within leprosy settlements in a highly Christianised and denominationally divided Uganda. Secondly, it examines the relationship between the CMS and Franciscan leprosy missions and the government, exploring the cooperation and conflict that their spiritual and medical priorities had upon the social lives of patients within Uganda’s leprosy settlements. Thirdly, this thesis assesses the extent to which missionaries consciously endeavoured to engineer a social environment for leprosy patients within settlements that conformed to their ideal of Christianised, modern African communities, as well the roles that healthy and leprous Ugandans chose to play in response to these attempts at social engineering. Missionaries and Ugandan leprosy patients had different priorities, but far from being passive receptacles of the ‘civilising’ mission, most leprosy patients were active agents in pursuing their own medical, social, and economic priorities through life in the settlements.

As the first analytic history of Ethiopian medicine, this thesis explores the interchange between the institutional development of a national medical network and the lived experiences of women as patients and practitioners of medicine from the years 1940-1975. Using birth and gender as mechanisms to explore the nation's public health history allows me to pursue alternative threads of enquiry: I ask questions not only about state activities and policy pursuits, but also about the relevance and acceptance of those actions in the lives of the citizenry. This thesis is also the first medical history of a non-colonial African country, opening up new questions about the role of non-Western actors in the expansion of Western medicine in the twentieth century. I explore the ways in which the exceptional history of Ethiopia can be couched in existing narratives of African modernity, medicine, and birth history. Issues of local agency and the creation of new social elites in the pursuit of modernity are all pertinent to the case of Ethiopia. Through both extensive archival research and oral interviews of nearly 200 participants in Haile Selassie's medical campaigns, I argue that the extent to which the imperial medical project in Ethiopia 'succeeded' was highly predicated on pre-existing conditions of gender, class, and geography.

This is a study of Dr. William Cullen (1710-1790), the Scottish chemist, physician, and professor of medicine, who played a significant role in the Scottish Enlightenment. I argue that Cullen was both a more unorthodox figure in Scottish medicine than he is generally depicted, as well as a more ambitious one. Despite his controversial doctrines, he skillfully managed the hierarchy of his profession and reached the pinnacle of success as a learned physician in the Scottish Enlightenment. I explore Cullen’s life and thought from different angles. I explicate his pedagogical persona and philosophy of medicine, both of which shaped the experiences of his pupils. I show how his neurophysiology was rooted in his contentious interpretation of the nature of the nervous fluid. And I provide a detailed look at Cullen’s understanding of hygiene, or the art of health—a rarely-studied component of his practice of medicine.

Over the course of the 1830s and 1840s, a professional scientific and medical community was coming into being. Exclusive membership, limits to the definition of science, and separation of the professional from the popular sphere became important elements in the consolidation of scientific authority. Studies exploring Victorian scientific authority have tended to focus on professional journals and organs of middle-class culture; this thesis takes a new approach in exploring how this authority is reflected and negotiated across the content of the popular mass-market periodicals which provided leisure reading for working- and lower-class men and women. It uses as examples Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, Reynolds's Miscellany and the Family Herald. The readers of these publications were consumers of scientific information, participants in popularised science and beneficiaries and subjects of new research, but were increasingly excluded from the formal processes of developing scientific theory and practice. Examining representations of anatomy and of mesmerism, health advice and theories of class and gender, the thesis argues for an expanded understanding of mass-market periodicals as communicators of scientific ideas, showing how such material widely informs the content of these publications from fiction to jokes to full-length factual articles. However, the role of the periodicals is much wider than simply the transmission of received ideas, and the thesis reveals a plurality of positions with regard to science and medicine within the popular press. The periodicals engage with modern science in complex and varied ways, accepting, modifying and challenging scientific theories and methods from different positions. The form of the periodical is key, presenting multiple sources of knowledge and ways in which readers may be invited to respond. Chambers's broad support for scientific progress is informed by its useful knowledge identity but tempered by its founding editor's own ambivalent relationship to the scientific establishment. The Herald, influenced by both the periodical's commercial character and its editor's adherence to a spiritual, anti-materialist view of existence, is strongly resistant to modern science, while Reynolds's incorporates it alongside other forms of knowledge in its aim to educate, entertain and empower readers from a socialist perspective.

O presente estudo aborda o tema da eugenia - ciência que pregava a aplicação de práticas de melhoramento e aprimoramento da espécie humana - e suas influências nas pesquisas e práticas médicas no início do século XX. A eugenia consistiu em uma importante estratégia para enfrentamento da diversidade imposta nas cidades, contribuindo para a construção da ordem e civilidade, baseada no progresso e na superioridade moral e física dos indivíduos. Ao defender a reprodução humana controlada para obter uma raça pura, pregava a eliminação dos \"inferiores\" e \"degenerados\" por meio de práticas de saneamento, exclusão social, isolamento compulsório, controle de casamentos e, em alguns casos, esterilização involuntária. A transição dos séculos XIX e XX marcou o período de ascensão do movimento eugenista, onde os médicos ganharam posição de destaque como representantes da ciência, exercendo influência sobre diferentes esferas da sociedade, com o objetivo de sanear o meio e oferecer condições para a elevação da raça. O objetivo deste estudo é investigar a influência da eugenia nos estudos e práticas médicas entre 1920 e 1939, a partir da produção das teses doutorais da antiga Faculdade de Medicina e Cirurgia de São Paulo (atual Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo), especificando os elementos relacionados às práticas eugênicas lamarckistas (positivas) e mendelistas (negativas). Para a realização do estudo, foram realizados levantamento e análise de 45 teses doutorais, analisadas sob os referenciais metodológicos pautados no conceito da lógica histórica (Thompson, 1981), do paradigma indiciário (Ginzburg, 1989) e das leituras como representações (Chartier, 1991). A pesquisa encontra subsídios nos estudos em Saúde Coletiva, buscando fornecer elementos no sentido de compreender os princípios do discurso médico-eugênico nas práticas médicas e educacionais do período, contribuindo para a análise de processos de rupturas e permanências históricas nas práticas em saúde. As teses doutorais podem ser consideradas representativas na apresentação das temáticas médico-eugênicas, que estavam presentes, de alguma forma, na estrutura de ensino da faculdade, reforçando a importância atribuída à eugenia no meio científico da época / This study addresses the theme of eugenics - science that proclaimed the application of practices for improvement and enhancement of human species - and its influences on medical practices and research in the early 20th century. Eugenics consisted of an important strategy for coping with the diversity imposed in cities, contributing to the foundation of order and civility, based on progress and moral and physical superiority of individuals. By supporting the idea of controlled human reproduction to obtain a pure race, it preached the elimination of the \"inferior\" and \"degenerate\" by means of sanitation practices, social exclusion, compulsory isolation, marriage control, and, in some cases, involuntary sterilization. The transition of the 19th and 20th centuries has marked the period of ascension of the eugenic movement, in which doctors have gained prominent position as science representatives, exerting its influence on diverse spheres of society, aiming to sanitize the environment and offering conditions for the rise of the race. The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of eugenics on medical studies and practices between 1920 and 1939, from the production of doctoral theses of the former Medicine and Surgery College of São Paulo [Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo] (currently Medicine College of São Paulo University [Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo]), specifying elements related to lamarckist (positive) and mendelist (negative) eugenic practices. In order to fulfil the study, 45 doctoral theses were surveyed and analyzed according to the methodological guidelines based on the concept of historical logic (Thompson, 1981), the indiciary paradigm (Ginzburg, 1989) and the readings as representations (Chartier, 1991). The research finds subsidies in Collective Health studies, seeking to provide elements to understand the principles of medical-eugenic discourse in the medical and educational practices of the period, contributing to the analysis of processes of historical rupture and maintenance in health practices. The doctoral theses can be considered representative in the presentation of the medical-eugenic themes that were present, in some way, in the teaching structure of the college, reinforcing the importance attributed to eugenics in the scientific environment of the time

As idéias psicológicas foram introduzidas no estado do Rio Grande do Sul com a criação das primeiras instituições de ensino superior no final do século XIX. Entre elas se destacam a Faculdade de Medicina (1898) e a Faculdade de Direito (1900). Esta tese teve como objetivos principais descrever as idéias psicológicas presentes nestas duas faculdades, e investigar a relação da ciência psicológica com os demais campos de conhecimento. Foram pesquisados os acervos das bibliotecas das respectivas faculdades, bem como os arquivos históricos do estado e da cidade de Porto Alegre. Os livros e teses encontrados foram catalogados e listados quanto a sua procedência, data de publicação e área temática principal. A pesquisa nos arquivos históricos auxiliou na descrição do contexto sócio-cultural no qual estas faculdades se desenvolveram através do exame da legislação e dos jornais da época. Todos os documentos foram analisados com base nas abordagens da História das Idéias Psicológicas e da História das Ciências. Identificaram-se seis categorias utilizadas na análise dos dados, a saber, “Idéias psicológicas e concepções de higiene no contexto sul-rio-grandense”, “Concepções de adoecimento mental e a constituição da Psiquiatria no Rio Grande do Sul”, “Criminologia, identidade e o estabelecimento de normas na sociedade sul-rio-grandense”, “Saúde pública e cuidados com a infância: Primeiras experiências em higiene escolar”; “Estratégias de diagnóstico e de tratamento das doenças mentais nas perspectivas da Psiquiatria e Neurologia sul-rio-grandense” e “A relação do homem com o ambiente: Primeiras experiências da aplicação da teoria psicossomática na Medicina do Rio Grande do Sul”. Os resultados foram analisados em suas similaridades e especificidades com outras investigações a respeito da História das Idéias Psicológicas no Brasil e compõem um levantamento das idéias psicológicas no Rio Grande do Sul entre 1890 e 1950. / The psychological ideas were introduced in Rio Grande do Sul with the foundation of the Medicine School (1898) and the Law School (1900). This thesis aimed to describe the psychological ideas in these two schools and to establish the relationship between psychology and others realms of knowledge in the Rio Grande do Sul. The libraries of Medicine School and Law School, the historical archives of Porto Alegre and Rio Grande do Sul were investigated. The books and the thesis founded were enlisted by their origin, time of publication and thematic areas. The research at the historical archives helped to describe the socio-cultural framework where the schools were developed trough the analysis of legislation and newspapers. All documents were analyzed by History of Psychological Ideas and History of Science theories. Six categories were identified: “Psychological ideas and hygiene conceptions in Rio Grande do Sul”, “Mental health conceptions and Psychiatry in the Rio Grande do Sul”, “Criminology, identity and behavior at sul-rio-grandense society”, “Public health and childhood care: First experiences in school hygiene”, “Diagnosis strategies and mental health treatment on Neurology and Psychiatry perspectives”, “The relationship between man and environment: First experiences in the application of psychosomatic theory in Rio Grande do Sul”. The results were a panorama of psychological ideas in Rio Grande do Sul between 1890 and 1950.