The Gazette August 2014 2013
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ISSN 0962-7839 No. 66 THE GAZETTE AUGUST 2014 2013 Contents Editor’s Introduction 2 Meeting Reports 2 EAHMH 2015 11 Calls for Papers 12 SSHM Sponsored Events 13 More Events 14 News from Centres 16 Wellcome Library News 17 Publications 20 Bursaries 20 SSHM Undergraduate Prize 21 Blog watch 23 Cover Star: For those who appreciate Huber the Tuber, here’s Ann the Anopheles Mosquito from the 1943 booklet written by Dr. Seuss for the US Army. View and download the complete book at Library of Michigan Link: http://cdm16110.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p9006coll4/id/ 121 Please send correspondence to: Email [email protected] Katherine Foxhall School of History Web www.sshm.org University of Leicester groups/societyforthe Leicester socialhistoryofmedicine United Kingdom LE1 7RH @SSHMedicine Welcome to the Gazette. ROY PORTER PRIZE As I write this it’s already been a week since the SSHM is delighted to announce that SSHM Conference in Oxford. Congratulations the winner of this year's Roy Porter and thanks to Erica Charters and Cassie prize is Julie Hipperson, King's Watson for organising such an all-round superb College London, for her essay event. entitled 'Professional entrepreneurs: The twittersphere was active throughout – Women veterinary surgeons as small particularly when several people realised a little business owners in interwar Britain'. too late that they were missing the absinthe chocolate samples… For those who missed the conference, and those who just want to see Huber the Tuber again, catch up on #sshm2014 with MEETING REPORTS this Storify page: https://storify.com/SSHMedicine/sshm2014 SSHM 2014: DISEASE, HEALTH AND THE STATE. On the first night of the conference a drinks reception at the Natural History Museum SSHM were delighted to award a large remembered Professor John Pickstone, who number of bursaries to postgraduate and passed away earlier this year. He will be greatly early-career scholars to attend and missed by the HSTM community. An obituary present at SSHM 2014. The first two reports written by Mick Worboys for the Guardian is are here, and a full write-up will be in the available here: next issue. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/2 3/john-pickstone The biennial conference of the Society for SSHM held its AGM at the conference. A full the Social History of Medicine was held at report will be in the next issue of the Gazette. We St. Anne’s College, Oxford, from 10-12 July, said farewell to Alex Mold, who steps down as 2014. Hosted jointly by the Centre for Health, Book Reviews Editor for the SHM journal. We Medicine and Society at Oxford Brookes are delighted to welcome Vanessa Heggie as University and the Wellcome Unit for the her successor. The SHM also has a new editor – History of Medicine at the University of Professor Trish Skinner joins the team in Oxford, the meeting brought together place of Ian Burney. Thanks to both Alex and approximately 250 scholars for three Ian for their wonderful work over the years, and intellectually stimulating days of talks, all the best for new projects and challenges! lectures and discussions. All in all, around 165 presenters shared their work over the course We waste no time in advertising the Call for of nine sessions of concurrent panels. Papers for the 2015 EAHMH conference in The theme of this year’s meeting was ‘Disease, Ulm, Germany on the theme of ‘Cash and Health, and the State’. Within the scope of this Caring: Economics and Values in the History of theme, panels focused on a wide range of Medicine and Health’. The conference will be specific topics, from early modern military held 2-5 September 2015. medicine, nineteenth-century sanitation, and colonial public health, to contemporary The SSHM also has a new Undergraduate biomedicine, changing conceptions of Prize –details and entry form are on p.21-2. disability, and the evolution of the movement Please get your students to enter! for ‘global health.’ The sessions raised a number of important issues and questions Katherine. surrounding the relationships between health, medicine, and the state. Among these were SSHM Gazette August 2014 2 the symbolic and material roles of public research at Manchester’s CHSTM with health and medicine in state formation and reflections by younger scholars on the use of centralisation, the biopolitics of economic and text mining and new digital collections in military manpower, and the history of state their research. Likewise, the SSHM sponsored intervention in health care markets. These an excellent workshop on the day before the topics have a longstanding presence in the conference for postgraduates and early career historiography; nevertheless, they were given scholars, covering an array of topics such as new life by the many excellent presentations publishing, funding opportunities, and career that successfully wove together novel paths. approaches blending social, cultural, and Oxford generally, and St. Anne’s medical history. Moving away from staid College in particular, provided a convivial debates about government growth and the setting for the meeting, and the conference emergence of the welfare state, many was well planned to allow for extended presenters instead explored cutting-edge periods of discussion between sessions. The questions about the involvement of public conference reception was held in Oxford health and medicine in shaping ideas about University’s Museum of Natural History, a citizenship and cultural identity, in the grand Victorian space in which attendees production of social and therapeutic spaces, mingled amidst dinosaur fossils and dodo and the symbolic relations between health skeletons. Meals provided in the courtyard of outcomes and state power. St. Anne’s allowed delegates to enjoy the These themes were further explored in warm summer weather alongside their the conference’s two plenary lectures. Sally conversations with colleagues. Many thanks Sheard’s (University of Liverpool) ‘Quacks, are due to the SSHM and the local hosts for Clerks, Ministers and Spads: The Governance putting on a conference that artfully combined of British Health’ emphasized the importance thought-provoking scholarship and a warm, of accounting for the capacities of individuals collegial atmosphere. in our histories of state policymaking. Drawing particularly on her study of former Eli Anders SSHM president and Ministry of Health Johns Hopkins University special advisor Brian Abel-Smith, Sheard demonstrated that we need biography as much as bureaucratic models to fully The 2014 Society for the Social History of comprehend the evolution of state Medicine conference took place amidst involvement in the healthcare sector. In ‘The glorious sunshine this July. The theme of this Role of Health and Poor Relief Policy in the year’s conference, ‘Disease, Health and the Building of the Early Modern State’, Laurinda State’, brought links between the history of Abreu (University of Evora) examined the medicine and contemporary issues of public importance of poor relief and health policy in health and medical governance to the fore, the construction of the early modern with the majority of papers gesturing to the Portugese state, showing that health and present day challenges and politics around welfare emerged as key areas for political health. intervention in everyday life and the With seven sessions offering six imposition of central authority. concurrent panels spanning three days this In addition to these themed sessions SSHM conference promised to keep the two and lectures, a few panels were particularly hundred and fifty odd delegates very busy. useful for keeping abreast of important For the post-graduate and early career developments in the profession. The panel on historians amongst our delegation, the ‘Digitisation and Records’, for instance, conference started a day earlier with a half- combined updates on digitisation projects at day workshop focusing on the particularities the Wellcome Library and text mining of getting, and sticking with, an academic SSHM Gazette August 2014 3 career. With uncompromising honesty the rather she encouraged an engagement with speakers debated the agonies, ecstasies and policy makers which championed context and odd peculiarities of getting published, finding questioned the inevitability of the a post-doctoral position, gaining a permanent unsustainability thesis which overshadows position and applying medical history to the state-sponsored healthcare, specifically the contemporary health policy issues it’s so NHS. patently relevant to. We ended the afternoon After the stimulating plenary lecture with wine and a collective sense of we retired en-masse to Oxford University anticipation for the conference to come. Museum of Natural History for a drinks reception. Beyond conference chat and post- plenary discussions, space was made to remember John Pickstone, both as a person and a prolific historian and champion of the history of medicine. Whilst many delegates provided papers which ranged beyond the more obvious parameters of the themes set for the conference - ‘Disease, Health and the State’ - others took the opportunity to address directly the three themes by tackling them together as Public Health. Nebulous, slippery and problematic; multiple sessions across the three days tried to unpick what Public Health might be and has been, who it is/was for and how it is/was used by the State as a method of governance. Papers ranged vastly in both date and subject matter, drawing out the ways Public Health has been deployed by agents as disparate as Burnley anti-dog poo activists and early modern kings with European states under their command. Clear within all sessions which took Public Health as a theme was an acknowledgement of contemporary debates, indeed whilst the papers themselves did not "Brian Abel-Smith , c1980s" by LSE Library - Flickr: Brian Abel-Smith , c1980s. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - dwell in presentism, the questions which http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brian_Abel- followed many sessions did.