The issues constituting the history of medicine are consequential: how
societies organize health care, how individuals or states relate to
sickness, how we understand our own identity and agency as sufferers or
healers. In Locating Medical History: The Stories and Their Meanings,
Frank Huisman, John Harley Warner, and other eminent historians explore
and reflect on a field that accommodates a remarkable diversity of
practitioners and approaches.
At a time when medical history is facing profound choices about its
future, these scholars explore the discipline in the distant and recent
past in order to rethink its missions and methods today. They discuss
such issues as the periodic estrangement of medical history from
medicine, the influence of Foucault on the writing of medical history,
and the shifts from social to cultural history and back again. Chapters
explore the early history of the field, its transformations since the
1970s, and its prospects for the future.
With diverse constituencies, a multiplicity of approaches, styles, and
aims is both expected and desired. This volume locates medical history
within itself and within larger historiographic trends, to provide a
springboard for discussions about what the history of medicine should
be, and what aims it should serve.
Contributors: Olga Amsterdamska, University of Amsterdam; Warwick
Anderson, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Allan M. Brandt, Harvard
Medical School; Theodore M. Brown, University of Rochester; Roger
Cooter, University College London; Martin Dinges, Institut für
Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung; Alice Domurat Dreger,
Michigan State University; Jacalyn Duffin, Queen's University; Elizabeth
Fee, National Library of Medicine; Mary E. Fissell, The Johns Hopkins
University; Danielle Gourevitch, École Pratique des Hautes Études; Anja
Hiddinga, University of Amsterdam; Ludmilla Jordanova, University of
East Anglia; Alfons Labisch, Heinrich-Heine-University; Hans-Uwe Lammel,
University of Rostock; Sherwin B. Nuland, Yale University; Vivian
Nutton, University College London; Roy Porter, formerly University
College London; Susan M. Reverby. Wellesley College; David Rosner,
Columbia University; Thomas Rütten, University of Newcastle upon Tyne;
Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach, University of Greifswald; Christiane Sinding,
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale
