Series: The History of Medicine in Context

Birth control holds an unusual place in the history of medicine. Largely devoid of doctors or hospitals, only relatively recently have birth control histories included tales of laboratory-based therapeutic innovation. Instead, these histories elucidate the peculiar slippages between individual bodies and a body politic occasioned by the promotion of techniques to manipulate human reproduction. The history of birth control in...

Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England places childbirth in early-modern England within a wider network of social institutions and relationships. Starting with illegitimacy—the violation of the marital norm—it proceeds through marriage to the wider gender-order and so to the 'ceremony of childbirth', the popular ritual through which women collectively controlled this, the pivotal event...

This study surveys, examines, and analyses the British apprenticeship model of nurse training from 1860 at St Thomas's Hospital, until the publication of the last national syllabus from the General Nursing Council in England and Wales in 1977. The study uses primary data and evidence of the British model of nurse training that was unquestioned for over a century, drawing...

Wounds were a potent signifier reaching across all aspects of life in Europe in the middle ages, and their representation, perception and treatment is the focus of this volume. Following a survey of the history of medical wound treatment in the middle ages, paired chapters explore key themes situating wounds within the context of religious belief, writing on medicine, status...