Monthly Archives: November 2012

New books in the Wellcome Unit Library

We have added some new titles to our book display in Library Room 1.  You can keep up to date with all our new acquisitions on LibraryThing or subscribe to our new books RSS feed.

Contagions: how commerce has spread disease
by Mark Harrison (Yale, 2012)
WEL shelfmark: RA651 HAR 2012

Written by the director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford, Professor Mark Harrison, this books examines the relationship between disease and the social, political and economic effects of commerce.

The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch
by Contance Classen (University of Illinois Press, 2012)
WEL shelfmark: GN279.T68 CLA 2012

Dr Classen‘s latest volume on the senses examines the history of the sense of touch from the medieval to the modern period.  The author’s previous works (also available in the Bodleian Libraries) include The Book of Touch (2005) and Aroma: the cultural history of smell (1994)

Doctor Do-Good: Charles Duguid and Aboriginal Advancement, 1930s-1970s
by Rani Kerin (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2011)
WEL shelfmark: GN666 KER 2011

Dr Charles Duguid was a Scottish doctor who moved to Austrialia and campaigned for the civil rights of Austrialian Aborigines.  This book is based on Dr Kerin‘s PhD thesis on Dr Duguid.

Duelling Surgeon, Colonial Patriot: The Remarkable Life of William Bland
by Robert Lehane (Austrialian Scholarly Publishing, 2011)
WEL shelfmark: DU172.B47 LEH 2011

William Bland was a London-born surgeon who was sent to Australia as a prisoner after a duel. He was actively involved in many aspect of Austrialiam society, including legislative development, the founding of eductional and medical institutions and a doctor and surgeon who published in various medical journals.

Related Links Contact Us | Recent Acquisitions on LibraryThing | Search for books on SOLO

Wellcome Unit Seminar Monday 26 November

Humble dog from Darwin’s Expression of Emotions…
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images

Michaelmas Term 2012 History of Medicine Seminar Series
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine,
Seminar Room, 47 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PE

The following seminars will be held at on Mondays at 2.15pm
Coffee will be available from 2.00pm

‘Health and Medicine in Britain and its Empire’
Convener: Professor Mark Harrison

Week 8 – 26 November
Michael Worboys, University of Manchester
“Saving the Lives of Our Dogs”: The Development of Canine Distemper Vaccine in Interwar Britain

About the speaker
Professor Michael Worboys is Professor at the Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester. His research is focused in three connected areas: the history of infectious diseases; how research findings are translated into clinical practices; and science, medicine and the making of the modern domestic dog. Hi most recent book on infectious diseases was entitled Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Rabies in Britain, 1830-2000 (2007), co-authored with Dr Neil Pemberton. Research for the book on rabies led to a project on pedigree dog breeding in Victorian Britain, which will look at the growth of the dog fancy and the creation of fancy dogs. In January 2012, he began a new project entitled ‘Pedigree Chums: Science, medicine and the remaking of the dog in the twentieth century,’ exploring how changing ideas and practices on breeding, feeding, training and treating altered the physical form, bodily function, behaviour, health and meanings of different types of dog: pet, show, working, laboratory and stray-dangerous.

Selected publications

  • Robert W G Kirk and Michael Worboys. (2011). ‘Medicine and species: one medicine, one history’. In Mark Jackson (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine. (pp. 561-577). Oxford: Oxford University Press Copy available in Wellcome Unit Library atR131 OXF 2011
  • Worboys, M. (2010). ‘Health and Disease’. In Michael Sappol and Stephen P. Rice (Ed.), A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire (1800 – 1920). (pp. 61-86). Oxford Copy held in Bodleian Social Science Library
  • Pemberton N, Worboys, M. (2007). Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Rabies in Britain, 1830-2000. Palgrave Copy available in Wellcome Unit Library at  RA644.R3 PEM 2007

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Wellcome Unit Seminar 19 November

Strip of rolled cinchona bark, India, 1860-1910
Credit: Science Museum, London.

Michaelmas Term 2012 History of Medicine Seminar Series
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine,
Seminar Room, 47 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PE

The following seminars will be held at on Mondays at 2.15pm
Coffee will be available from 2.00pm

‘Health and Medicine in Britain and its Empire’
Convener: Professor Mark Harrison

Week 7 – 19 November
Rohan Deb Roy, University of Cambridge
Science, Materials and Empire: Making Pure Quinine in British India, 1867-1890

About the speaker

Rohan Deb Roy is a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, and is currently rewriting his doctoral dissertation (‘Malarial Connections: Diagnostic Categories, Medical Authorities and Market Situations in British India and beyond, 1820–1912’) into a book manuscript. This work draws upon historical literature about the disease-causing entity ‘malaria’, the drug quinine, cinchona plants and mosquitoes. It revisits the concept of empire by exploring complex concatenations of conversations about imperial agency and nonhuman actancy. He has also begun research on a newer project, which focuses on metaphors and materials associated with the category ‘insects’ in South Asian history between the late eighteenth and mid twentieth centuries.

Selected publications

  • ‘Maladies of Modernity: Malaria and the Making of Burdwan Fever’, in Saurabh Dube (ed.) Modern Makeovers: The Oxford Handbook of Modernity in South Asia, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, July 2011. Copies held in the Bodleian Libraries  017878937 ]

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New website and article on mental health institutions

Devon County Mental Hospital website

The Devon Country Mental Hospital website takes you on a fascinating journey through the history of the Devon County Lunatic Asylum at Exminster. Based on archival case notes and supplemented by Medical Superintendents’ and Commissioners of Lunacy’s reports as well as interviews with former staff, the website tells the stories of real patients and their journey into, and life within, the asylum, hoping to highlight changes in the legislation and care of people suffering from mental health problems.

Hosted by Exeter University, the site is based on a series of Wellcome Trust funded projects carried out since 2007 by Dr Nicole Baur and Prof Jo Melling (Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter), in collaboration with John Draisey from the Devon Heritage Centre (DHC).

Devon County Mental Hospital homepage

Collectors Weekly article on Willard Asylum

Another interesting article this week (discovered on Twitter from @KarenAbbott via @2nerdyhistgirls) was published in Collectors Weekly on the suitcases of patients the Willard Asylum.  Hunter Oatman-Stanford’s article, entitled ‘Abandoned Suitcases Reveal Private Lives of Insane Asylum Patients examines Jon Crispin’s project to photograph the suitcases that patients at the Willard Asylum in New York State brought with them when entering the institution.  The suitcases that were left in the institution, often when patients died and no one claimed their belongings, were kept by staff even after the asylum closed.  The collection has been photographed by Crispin in added to the New York State Museum.

(c) Market Street Media

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Courses on finding and using images next week

The following sessions are open to members of Oxford University.  History of medicine students and academics are likely to be particularly interested in these courses, given the wealth of relevant images out there, from pictures taken by missionaries to early engravings of the human body.

ARTstor and Bridgeman: Using images in teaching and learning

Tuesday 20 November, 14:00-16:00
The course examines two major digital image collections subscribed to by the University – ARTstor and Bridgeman Education – geared to research and teaching in the humanities, history of science and medicine, and social sciences. Viewing, presenting and managing images are also covered.
Booking at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TIMS

Digital images: Sourcing, adapting and safe keeping

Tuesday 13 November, 09:15-12:15
Digital images are a valuable part of your research, sometimes critically so. This three hour session will introduce you to some of the key issues that you need to be aware of when sourcing, adapting and using digital images. Although the focus is the use of images in an academic context, the ideas covered are equally relevant to your personal image collections.
Booking at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TIMY

(c) Bridgeman Eduction. Results page for a search on Leprosy

Related Links: WISER courses | OUCS courses

Wellcome Unit Seminar Monday 12 November

Medical history of the expedition to the Niger.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Michaelmas Term 2012 History of Medicine Seminar Series
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine,
Seminar Room, 47 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PE

The following seminars will be held at on Mondays at 2.15pm
Coffee will be available from 2.00pm

‘Health and Medicine in Britain and its Empire’
Convener: Professor Mark Harrison

Week 6 – 12 November
Vaughan Dutton, University of Oxford
Using Jungian Analytical Psychology to do History: An Imaginal Analysis of the 1841 Niger Expedition

About the speaker
Vaughan Dutton initially trained as a psychologist in South Africa, after which he spent time working around Africa, particularly East and Southern Africa. He is currently working on the Wellcome Trust-funded project ‘From Sail to Steam: Health, Medicine and the Victorian Navy’ here at the Unit.  His strand of research in particular examines the role of medicine in naval exploration, currently focussing on the 1841 expedition, which experienced appallingly high mortality rates as a result of malaria and yellow fever.  While part of his work consists of describing this expedition and especially the medical aspects, he is simultaneously developing a deeper post colonial narrative.

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