This thesis investigates facial damage and disfigurement in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, with a primary emphasis upon acquired disfigurement as a result of trauma or disease. It considers facial damage and disfigurement from the perspectives of those whose own faces were affected, those who encountered others with damaged faces, and the medical practitioners who treated and wrote about facial damage. The central research questions addressed here are: what was it like to have, to see, or to treat an atypical face in early modern England? The thesis is structured so that it addresses three main aspects of this subject. The first is the medical and surgical treatment of the face, and the ways in which medical practitioners discussed the facially damaged patients whom they encountered. The second main area of research is the impact that the gendered framework of early modern society had upon responses to facial difference. The third area of research is into the role played by disgust in determining reactions to some facial damage. This section of the thesis investigates the non-visual aspects of some facial damage and the extent to which the fluids and smells produced by the damage caused by conditions such as the pox might have resulted in stigmatisation. Together, these three strands of research form a wide-ranging investigation into the experience of, and responses to, facial damage and disfigurement in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England.

In 1870, physicians in United States were not licensed by the state or federal governments, but by 1900 almost every state and territory passed some form of medical licensing. Regular physicians originally promoted licensing laws as way to marginalize competing Homeopathic and Eclectic physicians, but eventually, elite Regular physicians worked with organized, educated Homeopathic and Eclectic physicians to lobby for medical licensing laws. Physicians knew that medical licensing was not particularly appealing to state legislatures. Therefore, physicians successfully packaged licensing laws with broader public health reforms to convince state legislatures that they were necessary. By tying medical licensing laws with public health measures, physicians also provided a strong legal basis for courts to find these laws constitutional. While courts were somewhat skeptical of licensing, judges ultimately found that licensing laws were a constitutional use of state police powers. The quasi-governmental organizations created by licensing laws used their legal authority to expand the scope of the practice of medicine and slowly sought to force all medical specialists to obtain medical licenses. By expanding the scope of the practice of medicine, physicians successfully seized control of most aspects of healthcare. These organizations also sought to eliminate any unlicensed medical competition by requiring all medical specialists to attend medical schools approved by state licensing boards. Ultimately, licensing laws and a growing understanding of medical science gradually merged the three largest competing medical sects and unified the practice of medicine under physicians. This dissertation includes previously published material. / 2016-06-17

The exercise of autonomy and self-regulation is seen in the literature as one of the basic criteria of professionalism. Since in modern states Medicine has generally been the occupational grouping which has most completely attained that status, it is seen as the model or archetype of professionalism. This study focuses on just one aspect of medical autonomy, that relating to the right of medical professionals to be accountable only to their fellow professionals as far as the maintenance of practice standards are concerned. In this thesis, the theory underlying this system of "peer review" is examined and then its application during the course of the 20th century is traced in one particular jurisdiction, that of the State of New South Wales in Australia. The reason for the focus on NSW is that in this jurisdiction, medical autonomy existed and was exercised in a particularly pure and powerful form after it was instituted in 1900. However, it was also in NSW that for the first time anywhere in the world, an institutional challenge to medical disciplinary autonomy emerged with the establishment in 1984 of the "Complaints Unit" of the Department for Health. The thesis of this study is that as a result of this development, which within a comparatively short space of time led to the emergence of a system of "co-regulation" of medical discipline, medical disciplinary autonomy and peer review had within a decade, been so severely challenged as to be almost extinct in this State. In the light of theoretical frameworks provided by Weber, Habermas and the American scholar Robert Alford, the study examines the long drawn out struggle to institute medical autonomy in NSW in the 19th century, its entrenchment by subsequent legislation over the next eight decades and the "counter-attack" staged by the emergent forces of consumerism, supported by the forces of the ideology of "Public Interest Law" in the last two decades of the century. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications for definitions of professionalism which might result from the loss by Medicine in NSW, of its right to exclusive control of medical discipline and the consequent disappearance of medical peer review.

This study investigates the history of venereal diseases in Sweden in the period from 1785 to 1903. Medical and political perceptions of these diseases as well as the patients and their continued lives have been studied. Venereal diseases were considered a significant threat to the growth of the population throughout the period. They were recognised through the dramatic sores that they produced on the body of the patient, and were frequently cured with mercurial therapies. In the late nineteenth century, syphilis and gonorrhoea became the two most significant sexually transmitted diseases. They were believed to cause paralysis, mental illness, infant mortality and infertility. Sweden fought venereal diseases with a network of State-controlled health measures. County hospitals that contained special wards for patients diagnosed with venereal diseases were established in the late eighteenth century. These hospitals were financed by mandatory revenue after 1817. Medical care was mandatory and ministers, law officers and heads of households could inform the provincial physicians about the incidence of venereal disease. During the nineteenth century, the regulation of prostitution was enforced which implied that women were blamed for the spread of these diseases. Patients with venereal disease belonged to a cross section of contemporary Swedish society. Most of them were from the lower- or working-classes. They suffered higher age-specific mortality in the first half of the century, and high infant mortality throughout the period. It appears, however, that the constructed image of a patient with venereal disease had little impact upon their lives. Contemporary poverty and societal problems, such as unemployment and poor housing, probably played a larger part in their lives. / digitalisering@umu

During the nineteenth century, museums dedicated to the collection, preservation, and display of human anatomy became familiar institutions in America and Europe. The anatomical museum operated under one of two guises: popular museums run as commercial establishments, or medical museums attached to a professional medical society or college. Over the course of the century, the medical establishment sought to cement its authority over anatomy by legitimating its expertise through specialized training. Doctors criticized commercial anatomical museums, which were eventually closed under accusations of obscenity, yet there was considerable overlap in the types of objects on display at both museums. This paper examines how the medical museum was permitted to supersede its commercial cousin and explores the exhibitionary narratives at the sites of both types of institutions.

Thesis (MTech. degree in Business Information Systems.)--Tshwane University of Technology, 2008. / This study is about exploring and understanding the collective work activity involved in medical record keeping for patients within a district hospital. The unit of analysis was the activity of medical record keeping as a system.

This thesis explores the utility of the conflated term “colonial medicine” by drawing on events during an historical outbreak of amebic dysentery that occurred on several Indian Reservations near Loon Lake, Saskatchewan, during the 1960s and ‘70s, including a series of government-sponsored drug trials conducted to stem the outbreak. Largely devoid of the racialized notions characterizing primary documents used by previous scholars of ‘colonial medicine’, the medical journal articles, government memorandums, and letters written by physicians in connection with the outbreak and trials reveal their immersion in ‘la clinique’, or an anatomo-clinical discourse similar to what theorist Michel Foucault described in Birth of the Clinic. Conversely, conversations with Loon Lake area community members on the subjects of the outbreak and trials reveal their multiplex and nuanced reactions to medical and colonial discourses. Arguably, then, when writing about past events, historians should weigh ‘medicine’ and colonial discourse separately. Essential methodological consideration was given to the Foucauldian concept of ‘disinterring’ popular knowledge. Drawing on Foucault’s edited works Power/Knowledge and I, Pierre Riviére, the subjugated knowledges of Aboriginal community members, physicians, sanitation workers, and government employees gleaned through interviews and text are contrasted as per his example in these works with the false functionalism of ‘scientificity’. Moreover, when considered in tandem, these subjugated knowledges illustrate a ‘structural violence’, following anthropologist Paul Farmer’s methodology for describing such phenomena in Pathologies of Power. Overarchingly, they obscure the paradigmatic dichotomies (‘doctor’/‘patient’, ‘patient’/the healthy person, ‘colonizer’/‘colonized’, ‘oppressor’/‘oppressed’) espoused in medical, colonial, and even post-colonial discourses. This understanding forces the reflexive recognition that–if we accept rhetorician Christopher Bracken’s assertion in Magical Criticism there is a recourse to savage philosophy within academia–what we say as historians has consequence beyond discourse, possibly creating new ‘subjects’ in a Foucauldian, disciplined society.

In recent years, with the development of DNA tests and genetic knowledge, there has been a growth of genetic counseling services and research in Canada and Japan. Although the uniqueness of genetic services in medicine lies in the preliminary assessment of the entire family rather than a single patient, few attempts have been made by social scientists to examine the technical and social construction of family trees and medical pedigrees. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how the family data taken by genetic counselors are transcribed as medical pedigrees and used by associated health care workers in different cultural settings. The comparative analysis was based on an ethnographic approach that included participant-observation in genetic counseling sessions, interviews with clinical workers, and content-analysis of medical textbooks. The findings include three major points: (1) cultural views of the family are taken for granted by genetic counselors; (2) the process of documenting family data consists of four stages: primary transcription, secondary transcriptions, combination and publications; (3) the clinical workers' use of medical pedigrees results in the construction of family history as part of the present family illness.

This thesis critically reviews medical journal literature on the physician-patient interview. The review focuses on literature which is written by and for physicians, in Canadian and American, English language medical journals. Articles, essays and letters to the editor are examined as a cultural exchange amongst physicians that both shapes and is shaped by the values of the medical profession. Chapter One presents literature concerning physician-patient communication in general. The following Chapters Two, Three and Four ("The Physician as Medical Interpreter," "Physician and Patient: in Conflict and in Silence," and "The Patient as Narrator,") focus on themes in the medical journal literature written by physicians on the clinical interview. These Chapters examine the values, explicit and implicit, of this literature. The values are examined for possible epistemological origins in traditional medical ethics, philosophical bioethics, contemporary social movements for the dignity and rights of the individual, and other sources. Thematic shifts in these values over the past twenty years, and the sources of these shifts, are also examined. Finally, the Conclusion evaluates the significance of this literature for the development of a medical morality.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / Indigenous health is one of the most pressing issues confronting contemporary Australian society. In recent years government officials, medical practitioners, and media commentators have repeatedly drawn attention to the vast discrepancies in health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. However a comprehensive discussion of Aboriginal health is often hampered by a lack of historical analysis. Accordingly this thesis is a historical response to the current Aboriginal health crisis and examines the impact of colonisation on Aboriginal bodies in Queensland during the early to mid twentieth century. Drawing upon a wide range of archival sources, including government correspondence, medical records, personal diaries and letters, maps and photographs, I examine how the exclusion of Aboriginal people from white society contributed to the creation of racially segregated medical institutions. I examine four such government-run institutions, which catered for Aboriginal health and disease during the period 1900-1970. The four institutions I examine – Barambah Aboriginal Settlement, Peel Island Lazaret, Fantome Island lock hospital and Fantome Island leprosarium – constituted the essence of the Queensland Government’s Aboriginal health policies throughout this time period. The Queensland Government’s health policies and procedures signified more than a benevolent interest in Aboriginal health, and were linked with Aboriginal (racial) management strategies. Popular perceptions of Aborigines as immoral and diseased directly affected the nature and focus of government health services to Aboriginal people. In particular the Chief Protector of Aboriginals Office’s uneven allocation of resources to medical segregation facilities and disease controls, at the expense of other more pressing health issues, specifically nutrition, sanitation, and maternal and child health, materially contributed to Aboriginal ill health. This thesis explores the purpose and rationales, which informed the provision of health services to Aboriginal people. The Queensland Government officials responsible for Aboriginal health, unlike the medical authorities involved in the management of white health, did not labour under the task of ensuring the liberty of their subjects but rather were empowered to employ coercive technologies long since abandoned in the wider medical culture. This particularly evident in the Queensland Government’s unwillingness to relinquish or lessen its control over diseased Aboriginal bodies and the continuation of its Aboriginal-only medical isolation facilities in the second half of the twentieth century. At a time when medical professionals and government officials throughout Australia were almost universally renouncing institutional medical solutions in favour of more community-based approaches to ill health and diseases, the Queensland Government was pushing for the creation of new, and the continuation of existing, medical segregation facilities for Aboriginal patients. In Queensland the management of health involved inherently spatialised and racialised practices. However spaces of Aboriginal segregation did not arise out of an uncomplicated or consistent rationale of racial segregation. Rather the micro-histories of Fantome Island leprosarium, Peel Island Lazaret, Fantome Island lock hospital and Barambah Aboriginal Settlement demonstrate that competing logics of disease quarantine, reform, punishment and race management all influenced the ways in which the Government chose to categorise, situate and manage Aboriginal people (their bodies, health and diseases). Evidence that the enterprise of public health was, and still is, closely aligned with the governance of populations.