‘Structures of Medical Knowledge’
Conveners: Drs Erica Charters and Elise Smith
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine,
Seminar Room, 47 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PE
The seminars are on Mondays at 2.15pm
Coffee will be available from 2.00pm
The first of the termly Unit seminars will be held on Monday
Week 1 – 14 October
Laura Dawes, University of Cambridge
Childhood Obesity in America: Biography of an Epidemic
Laura Dawes is the Events and Outreach Officer at the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, whose research interests include the history of medicine since 1800; health activism; medicine and the law; public health; and childhood obesity. Laura has recently finished a book titled Husky John and Chubby Jane: A Century of Childhood Obesity in America which will be published by Oxford University Press (USA) in 2014. The book examines changes in understanding, diagnosis and treatment of childhood obesity since 1900. The later part of the book is about legal and public health approaches to the current childhood obesity epidemic. Her new project is a medical history of “phossy jaw”, a disease of 19th century match manufacturers. A similar condition today affects myeloma cancer sufferers who are treated with bisphonates. Along with investigating the nature of phossy jaw and its treatment, the book looks at the role doctors played—or failed to play—in early industrial hygiene and safety regulation. She also writes the Doctor Then blog, on the history behind current medical events at www.doctorthen.wordpress.com.
Publications:
- Dawes, Laura (2014 forthcoming), Husky John and Chubby Jane: A Century of Childhood Obesity in America, Oxford University Press, New York.
- Dawes, Laura (2013), “’Just a quack who can cure cancer’”: John Braund, and regulating cancer treatment in New South Wales, Australia”, Medical History, 57 (2): 206-225.
- Dawes, Laura (2012), “When subjects bite back: the Bristol Cancer Help Centre Study and increasing consumer involvement in UK medical research in the 1990s”, British Journal for the Social History of Medicine, 25 (2): 500-519.
- Dawes, Laura (2006) “Sex and Surveillance”, Harvard Summer Review, Issue 12: 41-46.
