New books and a new member of staff in the library

Natalie in Library Room 1

This week we have news books and a lovely new member of staff.  Natalie is working here for the summer, while our regular staff member Bethan is away.  Natalie is currently a graduate trainee and works at the Oxford University History Faculty Library.  She is an expert at using our online library catalogue SOLO and accessing e-resources through OxLIP+.

We also have some more new books.

Physick and the family: health, medicine and care in Wales, 1600-1750 by Alun Withey (Manchester University Press, 2011) RC498.2 WIT 2011

One of the Wellcome Unit Library’s favourite bloggers (dralun.wordpress.com/), Dr Withey’s book uses primary sources to examine how medical knowledge was disseminated in early modern Britain orally and in print and how the sick were cared for in their homes and communities. Reviewed in Social History of Medicine 25(3).

Desperate Housewives, Neuroses and the Domestic Environment 1945-1970 by Ali Haggett (Pickering and Chatto, 2012) HQ1075 HAG 2012

This book is part of the Studies for the Society for the Social History of Medicine series.  Haggett’s aims to ‘explore the various aspects of the dometic role in more depth, in order to provide a more nuanced appraisal of women’s experience’ (p.12). Chapters examine mid-twentieth century medical understandings of affective disorders, personal accounts of anxiety and depression and representations of anxiety and depression in the medical and popular press.

Pickering and Chatto offer some sample pages for free on their website.


Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Low Country by Peter McCandless (CUP, 2011) RA418.3.U6 MCC 2011

McCandless explores diseases in the region of Carolina, the ‘wealthiest and unhealthiest’ region in North America.  An excerpt is available online on the CUP website. Reviewed in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 67(2).

An Introduction to the Social History of Medicine: Europe Since 1500 by Keir Waddington (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) R484 WAD 2011

This is a comprehensive single volume work covering a wide variety of topics including nursing, surgery, medicine and religion and medicine and empire.

The Moses of Malaria by Jan Peter Verhave (Erasmus, 2011) QL757 VER 2011

This books examines the work of Nicholaas H. Swellengrebel (1885-1970), who was a biologist that specialised in the study of malaria.  Verhave highlights how Swellengrebel’s approach bridge the debates between those who wanted to control mosquitoes and those who wanted to eradicate them.  Reviewed in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine 86(1).

Related links: Wellcome Unit Library’s Library Thing | SOLO

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