Monthly Archives: March 2018

Opening Hours w/b 2nd April

Our opening hours next week will be as follows:

Monday & Tuesday: CLOSED for Easter break
Wednesday: 2pm-4.30pm
Thursday & Friday: 2.15pm-5pm

We look forward to welcoming readers back after Easter! If you would like to visit the library, do contact us to arrange your appointment.

‘Illustration of patient visiting a physician, 14th century.’ . Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY

Easter Closure: 26th March-3rd April

Due to staff holiday over the Easter period, the Library will be closed from Monday 26th March to Tuesday 3rd April inclusive. We will reopen at 2pm on Wednesday 4th April.

Check back on our Twitter page for further details of opening hours.

Any email enquiries will be answered on our return. Many thanks for your patience!

Medicinal Chocolate! ‘Trade-card ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s Milk Chocolate” . Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY

Opening Hours w/b 19th March

Our opening hours for next week will be:

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday: 2.15pm-5pm
Wednesday: 2pm-4.30pm

If you would like to use the library’s resources, you can contact us by phone or email to arrange your visit.

Please note that unfortunately the computers and study table in Room 2 are still unavailable due to ongoing refurbishment works. However, books can still be read in the Wellcome Unit’s lovely Resource Room!

Have an excellent weekend!

‘Parker’s Tonic : the great health and strength restorer’. [Trade card]. New York: Hiscox & Co. [between 1870 and 1879?]. Credit: ‘Ephemera Collection: QV: Advertising: 1850-1.’ Wellcome Collection. CC BY

“The Human Body and World War II”- Interdisciplinary Conference, Oxford English Faculty, 23-24 March 2018

“The Human Body and World War II”

Interdisciplinary Conference, Oxford English Faculty, 23-24 March 2018

‘Drawing together international researchers working in the humanities and medical sciences, this conference will explore the diverse effects of World War II on the perception and representation of the human body. Challenging disciplinary and geographic boundaries, we aim to stimulate dialogue between different fields of research and to intervene in current discussions concerning embodiment and disability studies, medical humanities, and writing the history of the wartime and postwar body.’

Keynote speakers: Professor Laura Salisbury (University of Exeter) and Dr Roderick Bailey (University of Oxford).

To view the full programme and to register your attendance, please visit https://humanbody2018.wordpress.com, or email humanbody2018@gmail.com

New Books: Medical Students and Left-Handers!

Our new books received in the last month include studies on medical education in Ireland, diagnostic practices in Victorian asylums, medical technology and public health in former Soviet regions, malaria in 19th-century India, and the history of left-handedness.

See our full range of new titles on LibraryThing: https://www.librarything.com/catalog/WelLibOxford/yourlibrary

Laura Kelly, Irish medical education and student culture, c.1850-1950 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017)
‘The first comprehensive history of medical student culture and medical education in Ireland’ over this hundred-year period. Using sources including periodicals, literary works, administrative records, and first-hand written and spoken accounts, Laura Kelly looks at the academic and extra-curricular experiences of students, how these experiences shaped their identities as medical professionals, and how they were perceived within their wider communities. The book also highlights divisions of religion, class and gender within this medical sphere.

Olga Zvonareva, Evgeniya Popova & Klasien Horstman (eds.), Health, technologies, and politics in post-Soviet settings: navigating uncertainties (New York, NY: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2017)
The introduction to this edited volume begins with a trend recognised by studies of science and technology; politics and healthcare mutually shape each other, and instead of bringing certainty through the solutions they offer, new medical technologies often stimulate ‘the emergence of new questions and dilemmas’ (p. 3). This uncertainty is multiplied when these technologies are situated in post-Soviet regions, which have their own unique political and social uncertainties. The book’s approach is to encourage ‘critical learning’ by bringing together the disciplines of science and technology studies, and post-socialism studies. Chapters include case studies on egg donation, radiation science, and the development of new drugs.

Jennifer Wallis, Investigating the body in the Victorian asylum (New York, NY: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2017)
A study which links the histories of medicine, psychiatry, science and the body, this book uncovers the common practice of late nineteenth-century doctors to seek bodily evidence for the causes and symptoms of mental illnesses, using both clinical tests on patients and postmortem dissections. Jennifer Wallis uses the West Riding Asylum in Yorkshire as her main case study. Taking an ‘anatomical approach that aims to mirror contemporary processes of investigation’ (p. 14), the chapters cover various body parts in turn: skin, muscle, bone, brain and fluids.

Howard I. Kushner, On the other hand : left hand, right brain, mental illness, and history (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017)
An exploration of the ‘medical and cultural history of left-handedness’. Alongside his own experiences as a left-hander, Kushner considers the relationships, medically or socially constructed, between handedness, linguistics, taboo, disability and social tolerance. Chapters include: the reasons that have been posited for left-hand preference, the ways in which different cultures measure and judge handedness, and the psychological stereotyping of left-handers as criminals or creative geniuses.

Rohan Deb Roy, Malarial subjects : empire, medicine and nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)
In this study which links the history of medicine and science with empire and postcolonial studies, Rohan Deb Roy explores ‘the makings and persistence of malaria as an enduring diagnostic category’ (p.3) of disease and cure. In the long nineteenth century this category was not a straightforward medical diagnosis, but linked together various illnesses, plants, insects and other malarial objects which became, in the context of imperial rule, ‘objects of natural knowledge and social control’. Using British government and Bengali sources, chapters explore the growing of cinchona plants, the manufacture of quinine, and the making of the ‘Burdwan Fever’ epidemic.

 

 

 

Opening Hours w/b 12th March

Our opening hours for next week will be as follows:

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday: 2.15pm-5pm
Wednesday: 2pm-4.30pm

If you would like to use the library, send us an email to arrange your visit.

Please note that unfortunately the computers and study table in Room 2 are unavailable due to ongoing refurbishment works. However, library users can study in the Wellcome Unit’s lovely Resource Room.

Have a lovely weekend!

‘Text: advertisement for Daffey’s Elixir, 18th century’ . Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY

Opening Hours w/b 5th March

Weather permitting, our opening hours for next week will be as below. Stay tuned for any updates on our Twitter.

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday: 2.15pm-5pm
Wednesday: 2pm-4.30pm

If you would like to visit, do send us an email!

Please note that unfortunately the computers and study table in Room 2 are unavailable due to ongoing refurbishment works. However, library users can study in the Wellcome Unit’s lovely Resource Room.

Have a warm and safe weekend!

‘Angier’s Emulsion, Lung Healer: Lady in the snow’ . [Magazine insert]. London: The.
Angier Chemical Company Ltd., [1907]. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY