Tag Archives: #newbooks

New books in the Wellcome Unit Library

book displayWe have had some fascinating new books in the Library over the past few weeks.

Chagas Disease: History of a Continent’s Scourge by Francois Delaporte (Fordham University Press, 2012)
RA644.C26 DEL 2012

Translated by Arther Goldhammer and with a foreword by Todd Myers, this is a translation of the original 1999 French version, La maladie de Chagas.  The rear cover carried praise from Prof William Bynum, describing the book as a ‘skillful dissection’ of Chagas disease (also called American trypsomiasis).  Beginning with the identification of the disease within the social context of late 19th century and early 20th century Brazil to the scientific  criticism around around Chagas’ research and a re-evaluation of the disease.  Thsi volume weaves in analysis of knowledge about the disease was constructed and re-contructed over three decades.

Related books in the Wellcome Unit Library

  •  Forgotten people, forgotten diseases : the neglected tropical diseases and their impact on global health and development by Peter J. Hotez (ASM Press, 2008) at shelfmark RC961 HOT 2008
  • Race, place, and medicine : the idea of the tropics in nineteenth century Brazilian medicine by Julyan G. Beard (Duke University Press, 1999) at shelfmark RC962.B6 PEA 1999
  • The history of yellow fever : an essay on the birth of tropical medicine by François Delaporte (MIT Press, 1991) at shelfmark RC210 DEL 1991

Global Movements, Local Concerns: Medicine and Health in Southeast Asia edited by Laurence Monnais and Harold J. Cook (NUS Press, 2012)
RA5141.S68 GLO 2012

This is an edited volume of 11 conference papers from the 2006 International Conferenc on the History of Medicine in Southeast Asia.  Focusing on the 19th and 20th centuries, the papers cover a variety of topics and diseases.  Chapters include Michael G. Vann on ‘Hanoi in the Time of Cholera: Edpidemic Disease and Racial Power in the Colonial City’ and Yu-Ling Huang on ‘HIV/AIDS Epidemic and the Politics of Access to Medicines in Thailand: A Study of the Health Impact of Globalization.’

Related books in the Wellcome Unit Library

  • Southern medicine for Southern people : Vietnamese medicine in the making edited by Laurence Monnais, C. Michele Thompson and Ayo Wahlberg at shelfmark (Cambridge Scholars, 2012) R644.V52 SOU 2012
  • Death and disease in Southeast Asia : explorations in social, medical and demographic history edited by Norman G. Owen at shelfmark (OUP, 1987) RA541.S68 DEA 1987

Female Sexual Inversion: Same-Sex Desires in Italian and British Sexology, c.1870-1920 by Chiara Beccalossi (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
HQ75.6.I8 BEC 2012

Dr Chiara Beccalossi was a speaker at last term’s Wellcome Unit Seminars on the History of Medicine.  Divided into three parts, the book first introduces the historical context of sexuality in turn of the century Britain and Italy and the formation of the concept of sexual inversion.  Part two examines Italian and British psychiatry, asylums and gynaecology. Finally, part three provides four cases studies, including one on ‘Havelock Ellis and sex psychology’.

Related books in the Wellcome Unit Library

  • Dangerous sexualities : medico-moral politics in England since 1830 by Frank Mort (Routledge, 2nd ed, 2000) at shelfmark HQ32 MOR 2000
  • Hermaphroditism, medical science and sexual identity in Spain, 1850-1960 by Richard Cleminson and Francisco Vázquez García (University of Wales Press, 2009) at shelfmark RC883 CLE 2009
  • Sexual knowledge, sexual science : the history of attitudes to sexuality  edited by Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich (CUP, 1994) at shelfmark HQ60 SEX 1994

Related Links Search SOLO Library CatalogueSee our latest acquisitions on LibraryThing | Recommend a book for us to buy | Contact Us

The Neurological Patient in History

A few weeks ago we received a copy of Jacyna and Casper’s new book The Neurological Patient in History.  One the of the Wellcome Unit members, Lynsey Shaw, has reviewed the book for Reviews in History.  Lynsey is a Wellcome Trust funded doctoral student, studying administrative and therapeutic practices of the Royal Air Force neuropsychiatric branch during the Second World War.
Lynsey gives a positive review of The Neurological Patient in History, concluding that it

…is a valuable and welcome addition to the historiography. It not only places the neurological patient firmly in the spotlight, it also encourages readers to re-examine the patient using fresh and thought-provoking lines of enquiry.

The book is nestling on our rather full shelves in Library Room 2 at shelfmark RC338 NEU 2012.

Related links: SOLO library catalogue | Wellcome Unit Library contact page

 

More new books in the library Vietnamese medicine, plague and tuberculosis

We have another bunch of exciting new books in the library this week.

You can subscribe to our LibraryThing list to get alerts when new books arrive in the Wellcome Unit Library.

New titles include:

Southern Medicine for Southern People: Vietnamese Medicine in the making by Laurence Monnais (Cambridge Scholars, 2012) R644.V52 SOU 2012

This is an edited volume that developed from the 2006 conference on the History of Medicine in Southeast Asia.  Chapters include Ayo Wahlberg’s discussion of ‘Family Secrets and the Industrialisation of Herbal Medicine in Postcolonial Vietnam’ and editor Laurence Monnais’ ‘Traditional, Complementary and Perhaps Scientific? Professional Views of Vietnamese Medicine in the Age of French Colonialism.

The publishers have made a sample PDF available online.

Plague, Fear and Politics in San Francisco’s Chinatown by Guenter Risse (Johns Hopkins University, 2012) RC176.C2 RIS 2012

Risse’s examines the social aspects of bubonic plague outbreak in the early 1900s San Francisco.  It considers the social conflicts between public health officials and the inhabitants of the city’s Chinatown area. Risse’s other books, Hospital Life in Enlightenment Scotland and Mending Bodies Saving Souls: a history of hospitals are also available in the library.

Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination by Katherine Byrne (CUP, 2011) PR149.T83 B97 BYR 2011

Dr Byrne uses examples from Victorian literature, including Dickens’ Dombey and Sons and Bram Stoker’s Dracula to conside the cultural associations made with tuberculosis in the 19th century.

A comprehensive review of the book is available on the British Society for Literature and Science website and a PDF excerpt is available online from CUP.

Related links: Wellcome Unit Library Recent Acquisitions page | LibraryThing

New books in the library – war surgery, Spanish flu and more

This week we have some new books in the library and a varity of history of medicine topics:

  • American Pandemic: the lost world of the 1918 influenza epidemic by Nancy K Bristow (OUP, 2012) RA640.I6 BRI 2012

OUP describe the book as a

…much-needed corrective to the silence surrounding the influenza outbreak. It sheds light on the social and cultural history of Americans during the pandemic, uncovering both the causes of the nation’s public amnesia and the depth of the quiet remembering that endured. Focused on the primary players in this drama–patients and their families, friends, and community, public health experts, and health care professionals–historian Nancy K. Bristow draws on multiple perspectives to highlight the complex interplay between social identity, cultural norms, memory, and the epidemic.

If you like this, you might also like to read Phillips and Killingray’s edited volume The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19: news perspectives (RD150.4 SPA 2003)

  • War Surgery 1914-1918 by Thomas Scotland and Steven Hey (eds) (Helion, 2012) RD WAR 2012

History blogger James Daly describes the edited volume enthusiastically:

This is a brilliant book. Considering that the editors and contributors are medical professionals, it reads incredibly well as a history book – much more readable than many a military history text!

As well as a number of detailed tables, the books includes a variety of photos, include some particularly gory ones of post-surgery intestines.

  • For the Health of the Enslaved: slaves, medicine and power in the Danish West Indies, 1803-1848 by Niklas Thode Jensen (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2012) RA456.V57 JEN 2012

Danish publishers Museum Tusculanum Press summarise the text:

Through a series of case studies the author demonstrates how the Danish West Indian government implemented policies of medical control concerning the enslaved, but also that this did not take place without resistance. Opposing perceptions of health and interests of economy and security clashed in the colonial situation. The investigations reveal that in a comparative Caribbean perspective, Danish West Indian health policies were often quite unique and successful, but also that the health of the enslaved was a contested field staging an ongoing power struggle between the planters, the colonial administration and the slaves themselves in the waning years of human bondage in the New World.

The four page table of contents is available to view online – it gives a good overview of the areas covered in the book.

  • Infectious Disease in India, 1892-1940 : policy-making and the perception of risk by Sandhya L. Polu (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) RA643.7.I4 POL 2012

The contents, introduction and index to this book are available to read online for free, via the publisher’s website.  Polu examines various diseases, including malaria, cholera and yellow fever and uses them to

analyze how factors such as health diplomacy, epidemiology, trade, imperial governance, medical technologies, and cultural norms, operated within global and colonial conceptions of risk to shape infectious disease policies in colonial India. (More on Palgrave Macmillan’s site)

Related Links: Recommend a book for the library to purchase | Search SOLO library catalogue | Contact us to make an appointment to visit the library | See all our new books on LibraryThing

New books in the library

Today we added two new books to the Wellcome Unit Library’s shelves:

Foucault’s History of Madness RC 438 FOU 2009

Weisz’s The Medical Mandarins: the French Academy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries R504 WEI 1995

Both the books are on reading lists for advanced papers in the MSc History of Science, Medicine and Technology at the University of Oxford.

Related links: Wellcome Unit Library website | SOLO Library Catalogue | More about the HSMT MSc course

New book in the Wellcome Unit Library

Today we received a new book for the library:

A nurse at the front: the Great War diaries of Sister Edith Appleton
edited by Ruth Cohen (Imperial War Museum, 2012).
Shelfmark: D630.A66 APP 2012

Edith Appleton, or Edie, was a nurse on on the front line during the First World War.  She worked in military hospitals and casualty clearing stations in France and Belgium from 1914-1919 and kept detailed diaries.  Her diaries are presented in this volume along with a foreword from Michael Morpurgo, introduction from editor Ruth Cohen and an appendix by Sue Light on British Military Nurses in the Great War.

Edie recounts details of her personal life and reaction to her experiences along with  details of the casualties, their injuries and the medical staff.   An extract of the book is available to read for free online.  Sue Light’s appedix is available online for free from the Western Front Association.

Accompanying information is available online from http://www.edithappleton.org.uk/.  This includes photographs of the original diaries, an index list of the people mentioned in the diaries and other biographical information about Edith Appleton.

Related Links: Edit Appleton’s homepage | Western Front Association | Sue Light’s Scarlet Finders website (about military nurses) | Wellcome Unit Library homepage | new books at the Wellcome Unit Library