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Routledge Studies in the Social History of Medicine

About the Book Series

The social history of medicine has become recognized as a major field of historical enquiry. Aspects of health, disease, and medical care now attract the attention not only of social historians but also of researchers in a broad spectrum of historical and social science disciplines. The Society for the Social History of Medicine, founded in 1969, is an interdisciplinary body, based in Great Britain but international in membership. It exists to forward a wide-ranging view of the history of medicine, concerned equally with biological aspects of normal life, experience of and attitudes to illness, medical thought and treatment, and systems of medical care. Although frequently bearing on current issues, this interpretation of the subject makes primary reference to historical context and contemporary priorities. The intention is not to promote a sub-specialism but to conduct research according to the standards and intelligibility required of history in general.

29 Series Titles


Medicine, Health and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1600-2000

Medicine, Health and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1600-2000

1st Edition

Edited By Steve Sturdy
September 03, 2013

Medicine is concerned with the most intimate aspects of private life. Yet it is also a focus for diverse forms of public organization and action. In this volume, an international team of scholars use the techniques of medical history to analyse the changing boundaries and constitution of the public...

Social Histories of Disability and Deformity Bodies, Images and Experiences

Social Histories of Disability and Deformity: Bodies, Images and Experiences

1st Edition

Edited By David M. Turner, Kevin Stagg
August 07, 2013

Collecting together essays written by an international set of contributors, this book provides an important contribution to the emerging field of disability history. It explores changes in understandings of deformity and disability between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, and reveal the ways ...

Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal Social and Cultural Histories of Norms and Normativity

Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal: Social and Cultural Histories of Norms and Normativity

1st Edition

By Waltraud Ernst
October 19, 2012

This fascinating volume tackles the history of the terms 'normal' and 'abnormal'. Originally meaning 'as occurring in nature', normality has taken on significant cultural gravitas and this book recognizes and explores that fact. The essays engage with the concepts of the normal and the ...

Shaping Sexual Knowledge A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe

Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe

1st Edition

Edited By Lutz Sauerteig, Roger Davidson
October 10, 2012

The history of sex education enables us to gain valuable insights into the cultural constructions of what different societies have defined as 'normal' sexuality and sexual health. Yet, the history of sex education has only recently attracted the full attention of historians of modern sexuality. ...

Medicine, the Market and the Mass Media Producing Health in the Twentieth Century

Medicine, the Market and the Mass Media: Producing Health in the Twentieth Century

1st Edition

Edited By Virginia Berridge, Kelly Loughlin
September 25, 2012

This collection opens up the post war history of public health to sustained research-based historical scrutiny. Medicine, the Market and the Mass Media examines the development of a new view of 'the health of the public' and the influences which shaped it in the post war years. Taking a broad ...

Mental Illness and Learning Disability since 1850 Finding a Place for Mental Disorder in the United Kingdom

Mental Illness and Learning Disability since 1850: Finding a Place for Mental Disorder in the United Kingdom

1st Edition

Edited By Pamela Dale, Joseph Melling
March 21, 2012

Taking forward the debate on the role and power of institutions for treating and incarcerating the insane, this volume challenges recent scholarship and focuses on a wide range of factors impacting on the care and confinement of the insane since 1850, including such things as the community, Poor ...

Community Nursing and Primary Healthcare in Twentieth-Century Britain

Community Nursing and Primary Healthcare in Twentieth-Century Britain

1st Edition

By Helen M. Sweet, with Rona Dougall
February 23, 2012

This book takes a fresh look at community nursing history in Great Britain, examining the essentially generalist and low profile, domiciliary end of the professional nursing spectrum throughout the twentieth century. It charts the most significant changes affecting the nurse’s work on the district ...

Madness, Architecture and the Built Environment Psychiatric Spaces in Historical Context

Madness, Architecture and the Built Environment: Psychiatric Spaces in Historical Context

1st Edition

Edited By James Moran, Leslie Topp, Jonathan Andrews
December 09, 2011

This is the first volume of papers devoted to an examination of the relationship between mental health/illness and the construction and experience of space. This historical analysis with contributions from leading experts will enlighten and intrigue in equal measure. The first rigorous scholarly ...

New Directions in Nursing History International Perspectives

New Directions in Nursing History: International Perspectives

1st Edition

Edited By Susan McGann, Barbara Mortimer
December 08, 2011

This collection of essays reflects the current interdisciplinary and international nature of the history of nursing scholarship. Covering a range from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, this book draws on research from eleven different countries to address: the issues of ...

Sex, Sin and Suffering Venereal Disease and European Society since 1870

Sex, Sin and Suffering: Venereal Disease and European Society since 1870

1st Edition

Edited By Roger Davidson, Lesley A. Hall
December 08, 2011

This volume brings together for the first time a series of studies on the social history of venereal disease in modern Europe and its former colonies. It explores, from a comparative perspective, the responses of legal, medical and political authorities to the 'Great Scourge'. In particular, how ...

The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 New Perspectives

The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919: New Perspectives

1st Edition

Edited By David Killingray, Howard Phillips
December 08, 2011

The Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-19 was the worst pandemic of modern times, claiming over 30 million lives in less than six months. In the hardest hit societies, everything else was put aside in a bid to cope with its ravages. It left millions orphaned and medical science desperate to find ...

Women and Smoking since 1890

Women and Smoking since 1890

1st Edition

By Rosemary Elliot
November 25, 2011

The changing face of the female smoker, from the lady smokers of the late nineteenth century to the lone mother of the late twentieth century, suggests that the history of smoking among women is not just about the assimilation of women into a male practice, but about the changing, and varied, ...

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