This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book explores how the body was investigated in the late nineteenth-century asylum in Britain. As more and more Victorian asylum doctors looked to the bodily fabric to reveal the ‘truth’ of mental disease, a whole host of techniques and technologies were brought to bear upon the patient's body. These practices encompassed the clinical and the pathological, from testing the patient's reflexes to dissecting the brain. Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum takes a unique approach to the topic, conducting a chapter-by-chapter dissection of the body. It considers how asylum doctors viewed and investigated the skin, muscles, bones, brain, and bodily fluids. The book demonstrates the importance of the body in nineteenth-century psychiatry as well as how the asylum functioned as a site of research, and will be of value to historians of psychiatry, the body, and scientific practice.
Much like the Information Age of the twenty-first century, the Industrial Age was a period of great social changes brought about by rapid industrialization and urbanization, speed of travel, and global communications. The literature, medicine, science, and popular journalism of the nineteenth century attempted to diagnose problems of the mind and body that such drastic transformations were thought to generate: a range of conditions or “diseases of modernity” resulting from specific changes in the social and physical environment. The alarmist rhetoric of newspapers and popular periodicals, advertising various “neurotic remedies,” in turn inspired a new class of physicians and quack medical practices devoted to the treatment and perpetuation of such conditions. Anxious Times examines perceptions of the pressures of modern life and their impact on bodily and mental health in nineteenth-century Britain. The authors explore anxieties stemming from the potentially harmful impact of new technologies, changing work and leisure practices, and evolving cultural pressures and expectations within rapidly changing external environments. Their work reveals how an earlier age confronted the challenges of seemingly unprecedented change, and diagnosed transformations in both the culture of the era and the life of the mind.
Distinctive in its use of two disciplinary lenses—sociology and political science—Abortion in the United States provides a balanced scholarly analysis of the most salient issues in the pro-life/pro-choice debate. According to the CDC, more than 660,000 legal abortions were performed in the United States in 2013, yet despite these numbers, or perhaps because of them, the abortion war rages on in state legislatures, in Congress, and in court rooms. This work offers an eye-opening look at the enduring cultural clash between reproductive rights activists, who have argued that access to safe, legal abortion is critical for ensuring women's equality, and impassioned activists seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade, who fervently believe that abortion is unethical. Written for high school and college students as well as for general audiences seeking to better understand opposing viewpoints, it gives readers essential background information and addresses persistent questions regarding the abortion debate. The new Perspectives chapter features the compelling voices of those engaged in the front lines of this battle alongside those of scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Notable activists and leading advocacy groups are profiled, followed by the latest data on abortion rates and public opinion. Carefully curated documents and recommended news outlets, websites, documentaries, and academic readings invite continued exploration.
These six essays form a stimulating and lucid investigation of the meaning of evil in the light of postmodern thought, and of the cultural and social changes of the modern age. They consider subjects such as the war in Bosnia, AIDS, and the Holocaust.
Caring for America is the definitive history of care work and its surprisingly central role in the American labor movement and class politics from the New Deal to the present. Authors Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein create a narrative of the home care industry that interweaves four histories--the evolution of the modern American welfare state; the rise of the service sector-based labor movement; the persistence of race, class, and gender-based inequality; and the aging of the American population--and considers their impact on today's most dynamic social movements.
In the early twentieth century, public health reformers approached the task of ameliorating unsanitary conditions and preventing epidemic diseases with optimism. Using exhibits, they believed they could make systemic issues visual to masses of people. Embedded within these visual displays were messages about individual action. In some cases, this meant changing hygienic practices. In other situations, this meant taking up action to inform public policy. Reformers and officials hoped that exhibits would energize America's populace to invest in protecting the public's health. Exhibiting Health is an analysis of the logic of the production and the consumption of this technique for popular public health education between 1900 and 1930. It examines the power and limits of using visual displays to support public health initiatives.
Jennifer Connor explores the worldview of leaders in American medicine with respect to medical literature, history, libraries, and librarianship. Tracing the first fifty years of the Medical Library Association (MLA) from its conception as a resource for libraries to its post-World War II role as a national, professional organization, this thorough study portrays the 'genesis' of the MLA through analysis of its origins, its dominant medical culture, and its intricate network of physician leaders.
A guide to the practice of stem cell transplantation, its status in the treatment of various disorders and the problems that arise after transplantation, aimed at the whole transplant team. An up to date guide to best practice in the use of stem cell transplantation, covering current status in the treatment of malignant and non-malignant conditions, practical aspects and problems such as infection and graft versus host disease. Has a practical, accessible approach with free use of algorithms, list tables. Aimed at the whole transplant team - this is an interdisciplinary field. International contributor team with editors in the UK and USA. Illustrated in colour throughout.
Attitudes to GM crops continue to generate tension, even though they have been grown commercially for over 20 years. Negative sentiment towards their development limits their adoption in Western countries, despite there being no evidence of harm to human health. These unfounded concerns about genetically modified crops have also inhibited uptake in many countries throughout Africa and Asia, having a major impact on agricultural productivity and preventing the widespread cultivation of potentially life-saving crops. GM Crops and the Global Divide traces the historical importance that European attitudes to past colonial influences, aid, trade and educational involvement have had on African leaders and their people. The detrimental impact that these attitudes have on agricultural productivity and food security continues to be of growing importance, especially in light of climate change, drought and the potential rise in sea levels – the effects of which could be mitigated by the cultivation of GM and gene-edited crops. Following on from her previous books Genes for Africa, GM Crops: The Impact and the Potential and Food for Africa, Jennifer Thomson unravels the reasons behind these negative attitudes towards GM crop production. By addressing the detrimental effects that anti-GM opinions have on nutrition security in developing countries and providing a clear account of the science to counter these attitudes, she hopes to highlight and ultimately bridge this global divide.
The Ultimate Geography Bee Resource Guide Geography Bees are hot, with millions of fourth through eighth graders competing in National Geographic—sponsored Bees every year! This indispensable guide will systematically prepare your child to beat the competition and win! Inside you'll discover: ·Important rules, the best strategies, and essential insider tips ·How to avoid the most common pitfalls ·Proven study techniques from teachers and parents ·Facts about every U.S. state and every country in the world ·1,001 practice Bee questions and answers ·And much more! School geography is no longer a matter of simply memorizing U.S. states and capitals. Today's students must also know the physical, political, economic, and cultural geography of the world, with current events thrown in for good measure. Because many states now mandate geography comprehension for students, this must-have resource for students, parents, and teachers will help any child become a geography whiz kid—and maybe even win a scholarship to college!
Signal transduction is any process by which a cell converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another. Processes referred to as signal transduction often involve a sequence of biochemical reactions inside the cell, which are carried out by enzymes and linked through second messengers. In many transduction processes, an increasing number of enzymes and other molecules become engaged in the events that proceed from the initial stimulus. Responses of cells to environmental signals, toxins and stressors have profound implications for diverse aspects of human health and disease including development, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, asthma, heart, autoimmune diseases and cancer. The delineation of the signal transduction pathways affected in these and other complex human diseases are likely to present new avenues for therapeutic intervention and understanding of human disease mechanisms.
Immunity is as old as illness itself, yet historians have only just begun to take up the challenge of reconstructing the modern transformation of attempts to protect against disease. Crafting Immunity assembles in one volume the most recent efforts of an international group of scholars to place the diverse practices of immunity in their historical contexts. It is this diversity that provides the book with its greatest source of strength. Collectively, the papers in this volume suggest that it was the craft-like, small-scale, and local conditions of clinical medicine that turned the immunity of individuals and populations into biomedical objects. That is to say, the modern conception of immunity was at least as much the product of the work of healing as it was the systematic result of discoveries about the immune system. Working outside the narrow confines of laboratory histories, Crafting Immunity is the first attempt to set the problems of immunity into a variety of social, technological, institutional and intellectual contexts. It will appeal not only to historians and sociologists of health, but also to social and cultural historians interested in the biomedical creation of modern health regimens.
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