Mediating Medicine

Mediating Medicine
Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine
Willem de Blécourt & Cornelie Usborne (eds)
2004, Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan.

Mediating MedicineMediating Medicine was the original title!

Synopsis:

Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine: Mediating Medicine is a pioneering contribution to this new field of medical history which offers a careful reconstruction of the complex web of communications and re-configurations involved in the weave of medicine in the past. The contributors are international scholars who explore issues as diverse as heart dissection, childbirth, masturbation, animal care, hermaphroditism, orthopaedics, `miracle drugs’, smallpox and sex advice in different European cultures from the 1600s to the present day. But they all explore the role of mediation: how information about sickness was shaped and exchanged by various means ranging from hagiographies and almanacs to private letters and newspapers. Mediation could achieve reconciliation in the encounter between a patient and a doctor or healer, but it could also be an instrument of authority and domination, or conversely, resistance and liberation.”

Table of contents

reviews:

– Bulletin of the History of Medicine 79.4 (2005): 808-809.

– Medical History 49.3 (2005): 387-388.