Kaylie Bergeson

16 December 2021

The Bulletin of the History of Medicine Historiographical Review

The Bulletin of the History of Medicine, published by the Johns Hopkins University

Press, is a long running historical journal dedicated to analyzing the social and cultural impacts

of medicine as well as the development and invention of key medical achievements. From 1939

to the present, it has published articles on a wide variety of regions, time periods, and disciplines

within the medical field. This report will analyze the Bulletin over the span of eighty years at an

interval of twenty years - 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, and 2020 - pulling from the summer issues of

each year.1 I chose summer at random before looking at the journal in order to minimize bias

based on my personal interest in any particular issue’s topics. Overall, I took four articles from

each of the five years (twenty in total) as samples to represent the journal’s progression as a

whole. In order to conduct this historiographical report, I will focus on several categories

demonstrating either continuity or change over time from 1940 to 2020. First, I will analyze

content, where I will examine the scope of the articles, the diversity of their contents, and

specificity of the topics. I will then address the source material and use of evidence, followed by

the use of language both in terms of writing style and use of medical terminology. Finally, I will

address the demographics of the authors to see how their background has shaped their articles.

The Bulletin of the History of Medicine represents history with a consistent emphasis on

medicine in culture and how it relates to other disciplines. However, the study of these concepts

over time evolves drastically from broad to specific. There is a generally upward sloping trend in

1 Due to length constraints, three articles were taken from either fall or spring of the same year. These articles are
D.C. Epler, Jr.’s Fall 1980 article “Bloodletting in Early Chinese Medicine and its Relation to the Origin of
Acupuncture”, Alexandra Bamji’s Spring 2020 article "Blowing Smoke Up Your Arse: Drowning, Resuscitation,
and Public Health in Eighteenth-Century Venice", and Nadja Durbach’s Spring 2020 article "Dead or Alive?
Stillbirth Registration, Premature Babies, and the Definition of Life in England and Wales, 1836–1960."
 1

the sheer number of sources, the variety of sources used, and the creativity in which the evidence

is used. The increased professionalism in language and growing diversity of the articles’ scope

contributed positively to the arguments of the Bulletin’s articles, as did the increased general

knowledge of medicine terminology and presence of female authors.

Before deconstructing the articles and their content, I will address the variety of questions

asked from 1940 to 2020. 1940 was a unique year for the Bulletin compared to future volumes

due to the broad research goals - none of the four articles discussed a specific region, country, or

time period, and all read like a textbook or encyclopedia entry. In his 1940 article “Did Dentistry

Evolve From the Barbers, Blacksmiths, or From Medicine?”, Bernhard Weinberger states “In the

short time at my disposal, naturally only a brief and disjointed account is possible, to cover the

four thousand years since our first record of early dental operations. Long gaps between

important periods must be made, and only certain phases will be considered which I am certain

will help to give a clearer concept of how dentistry reached its present position.”2 This trend of

very general topics that span wide time frames and geographic regions continues well into the

1980s, where progression remains the primary focus of the articles rather than a more thorough

examination of a single event or person. T. D. Davidson’s “A Survey of Some British Veterinary

Folklore” (1960) and Steven J. Peitzman’s “‘Thoroughly Practical’: America’s Polyclinic

Medical Schools” (1980) exemplify more recent articles emphasizing progression in medicine,

shown through chronological organization. These articles sought to consolidate and verify

existing information rather than answer specific questions.

By contrast, the articles of the 2000s zeroed in on extremely specific topics. For example,

Alexandra Bamji’s 2020 article “Blowing Smoke Up Your Arse: Drowning, Resuscitation, and

2 Bernhard Wolf Weinberger. “Did Dentistry Evolve From the Barbers, Blacksmiths or From Medicine?” Bulletin
of the History of Medicine 8, no. 7 (1940): 965–966. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44440553.
 2

Public Health in Eighteenth-Century Venice" chose a singular topic, century, and city, compared

to Jean Captain Sabine’s 1940 article on the classification of blood which spanned over two

thousand years of medical theory. Similarly, Nadja Durbach’s article "Dead or Alive? Stillbirth

Registration, Premature Babies, and the Definition of Life in England and Wales, 1836–1960",

also from 2020, is a painstakingly detailed account of the scientific, legal, and philosophical

implications of stillbirth registration, another very specific topic in a very specific location and

period. The narrowed scope of the twenty-first century articles allowed the authors to create a

more nuanced and comprehensive view of their subject, contrary to the simplified “overview''

style of most of the earlier articles.

However, the differences in the scope of the articles did not change the journal’s

emphasis on the progression of medical history. Each author took great care in creating a detailed

timeline indicating the lead-up to the paper’s topic and the effects of the period or topic in

question. They were careful to explain why each scientific belief was held in the first place, why

the belief was questioned, and how scientists or physicians went about changing the belief if it

was initially wrong. In addition, every article was consistent in its attempt to represent medical

history as a part of the culture it derived from, rather than writing about it in a vacuum. For

example, Nadja Durbach made clear in her introduction that “[Stillbirth registration’s] primary

significance lies in its relationship to the history of the modern state's biopolitical role in

regulating and thus defining life itself, which has had implications for abortion, reproductive

technologies, cloning, stem cell research, genetic engineering, and fetal homicide laws among

other wide-reaching and highly controversial bodily issues.”3 This emphasis on culture and

politics set the Bulletin apart from other medical history journals and scientific writing.

3 Nadja Durbach. "Dead or Alive? Stillbirth Registration, Premature Babies, and the Definition of Life in England
and Wales, 1836–1960." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94, no. 1 (2020): 66. Accessed December 13, 2021,
doi:10.1353/bhm.2020.0002.
 3

Despite the wide range of topics and medical disciplines addressed throughout the

journal, there was not a lot of geographic diversity. Fourteen of the twenty articles were centered

around Europe, and four of those articles focused solely on Britain or British scholars. Of the

remaining six articles, three were based on American medical history, leaving only three that

went outside the realm of European and American topics. There was no clear trend in geographic

diversity over time, as these three articles were spread over multiple decades (one in 1940, one in

1980, and one in 2000). Within this narrow global view, however, many unique topics were

explored throughout the twenty sampled papers. The history of disease was the most prominent

focus, with papers focusing on conditions like tuberculosis, cholera, skin disease, gas gangrene,

and deficiency diseases. Multiple papers also focused on the development of medicine through

specific disciplines, such as the evolution of dentistry or veterinary medicine. Finally, several

papers dedicated their research to the history of the practice of medicine, such as the

development of attendant nursing, the rise of polyclinic medical schools, and the shift from folk

medicine to modern medicine. Therefore, in content, the treatment of history remained consistent

throughout the Bulletin and the geographic scope remained consistently narrow, despite the

significant changes in topics and timespan of the articles.

Beyond content, the most obvious change I observed throughout the Bulletin’s

publication was the sheer amount of sources used in every article between 1940 and 2020. For

example, Robert S. Drews’ 1940 article “The Rôle of the Physician in the Development of Social

Thought” contained just 32 footnotes in its 36 single-spaced pages, a fraction of the 126

footnotes found in Alexandra Bamji’s 2020 article of the same length. This lack of sources was

not unique to Drews - “The Decline of Tuberculosis, with Special Reference to its Generalized

Form” by Esmond R. Long contained 26 footnotes in its 25 pages, and “A History of the
 4

Classification of Human Blood Corpuscles (Part I)” by Jean Captain Sabine contained only six!

With the exception of one 1980 article (Steven Feierman’s “Explanation and Uncertainty in the

Medical World of Ghaambo”), the articles after 1940 became more saturated with sources, most

boasting upwards of 100 footnote citations and external references. Beyond showing how

expectations of proper citation have changed over time, this detail emphasizes how much past

scholarship is valued when writing history.

The variety of sources has also become more distinct since 1940. T. D. Davidson, in his

1960 article “A Survey of Some British Veterinary Folklore,” provides a perfunctory list of his

sources in the second paragraph of his essay - “The sources of our present knowledge of early

folklore and veterinary data consist of chronicles, histories, court and manor rolls, records of

trade guilds, Anglo-Saxon magical and medical texts, including herbal and animal medicines,

and a wide variety of collectanea comprising diaries, stillroom and everyday books.”4 Most

articles did not list out their sources as conveniently, but made use of just as many types of

sources - “Electroconvulsive Therapy in the Shadow of the Gas Chambers”, by multiple authors

in 2020, makes specific reference only to “the help of primary sources and eyewitness accounts,”

but pulls from sources as varied as psychiatric academic journals, oral testimonies from victims

of ECT, laboratory records, and blood samples of victims.5 This diversity is in stark contrast to

all of the 1940 articles. Due to their content being reconstructive rather than original history, the

1940 authors relied overwhelmingly on previous scholarship to supplement their work. In one

amusing 1940 example, Jean Captain Sabine described one of his sources as “a very dull treatise

4 T. D. Davidson. “A Survey of Some British Veterinary Folklore.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 34, no. 3
(1960): 199. Accessed December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44450064.
5 Herwig Czech, Gabor S. Ungvari, Kamila Uzarczyk, Paul Weindling, and Gábor Gazdag. "Electroconvulsive
Therapy in the Shadow of the Gas Chambers: Medical Innovation and Human Experimentation in Auschwitz."
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94, no. 2 (2020): 245. Accessed December 13, 2021,
doi:10.1353/bhm.2020.0036.
 5

of the textbook type.”6 Textbooks, earlier academic journals, and the writings of previous

historians featured far more than first-hand accounts and primary sources. Therefore, the amount

and variety of sources between 1940 and 1960 underwent a drastic change, but has remained

relatively consistent since.

The use of quantitative evidence also increased drastically at the beginning of the 21st

century. Despite medicine being a very scientific discipline, there is a surprising lack of

quantitative evidence such as lab reports, statistics, and government records pre-2000. Out of the

twenty articles, Alexandra Bamji in “Blowing Smoke Up Your Arse: Drowning, Resuscitation,

and Public Health in Eighteenth-Century Venice” does the best job of analyzing statistical

evidence due to the paper’s tight focus. She attributes her sources in precise detail, such as this

passage - “Drownings were recorded in Venice’s comprehensive civic death registers that were

compiled by clerks employed by the Health Magistracy.”7 Compared to earlier papers, the

narrow scope of Bamji’s topic allows her to use statistics like the aforementioned death records

to great effect. Before 2000, the only paper to use significant quantitative evidence was Esmond

Long’s analysis of the decline of tuberculosis, which cited mortality rate figures to prove that

tuberculosis did have a significant pattern of decline worth studying.8 The timespan of other

early articles did not allow for in-depth statistical evidence in the same way the narrow scope of

the 21st century articles did, because the subject matter was too generalized to introduce

individual statistics.

6 Richard H. Follis. “Cellular Pathology and the Development of the Deficiency Disease
Concept.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 34, no. 4 (1960): 292. Accessed December 13, 2021,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/44449715.
7 Carlo Ginzberg. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2013).
8 Bamji, Alexandra. "Blowing Smoke Up Your Arse: Drowning, Resuscitation, and Public Health in Eighteenth-
Century Venice." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94, no. 1 (2020): 34. Accessed December 13, 2021,
doi:10.1353/bhm.2020.0001.
 6

Besides the amount and types of sources used, the use of available evidence in the articles

also changed significantly over time. As a history of medicine, the Bulletin has the unique

opportunity to study medical sources as historical documents. D. C. Epler Jr.’s paper on

bloodletting in early Chinese medicine demonstrated new applications for ancient texts; “when

these ancient texts [on acupuncture techniques] are approached as historical documents, rather

than as source books that can be continually reinterpreted for medical practitioners, then they

indicate vast differences between the early use of needles and the present form of acupuncture.”9

Conversely, several articles that focus on folklore and the impact of religion on medicine change

the interpretation of texts from historical to medical. For example, in “Explanation and

Uncertainty in the Medical World of Ghaambo,” Steven Feierman explains the religious aspect

of disease in Ghaambo by describing how important classifying an illness as spiritual or natural

can be to practitioners; “Shemng'indo contrasts duazi as a "natural" condition ("the duazi of

God"), and duazi as a consequence of sorcery ("of medicine-making"), but to the patient who is

suffering from a cough, the diagnosis is not immediately clear.”10 Without the introduction of

sources based in religion and related texts, it would be impossible to accurately study medicine

in a cultural or social context.

In addition, several authors throughout the years made use of case studies to optimize

their evidence. Richard H. Follis’ 1960 article “Cellular Pathology and the Development of the

Deficiency Disease Concept” is an example of a case study done on pathologist Rudolf Virchow.

Follis states at the beginning of his article, “To cite all of the sources available to Virchow is not

necessary. We need only mention two standard treatises with which we know he was familiar.”11
9 Esmond R. Long. “The Decline of Tuberculosis, with Special Reference to its Generalized Form.” Bulletin of the
History of Medicine 8, no. 6 (1940): 819–43. Accessed December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44440541.
10 John Spears. “Folk Medicine and Popular Attitudes Toward Disease in the High Alps, 1780-1870.” Bulletin of
the History of Medicine 54, no. 3 (1980): 304. Accessed December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44441268.
11 Robert S. Drews. “The Rôle of the Physician in the Development of Social Thought.” Bulletin of the History of
Medicine 8, no. 7 (1940): 874. Accessed December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44440548.
 7

The rest of this article picks apart the available sources of the time in a very similar way to Carlo

Ginzberg’s The Cheese and the Worms, a famous microhistory that pieces together the

protagonist’s opinions and beliefs through reasonable assumptions of contemporary works he

read.12 Follis likewise used sources such as popular medical texts, treatises, and lecture notes to

analyze what Virchow would have known and what he couldn’t have known about cellular

pathology based on his own writings and the writings available to him. From there, he was able

to draw conclusions about why cellular pathology developed on the timeline it did. Case studies

also featured heavily in articles like Hannah Murphy’s "Skin and Disease in Early Modern

Medicine: Jan Jessen's De cute, et cutaneis affectibus (1601)" from 2020 and William D.

Sharpe’s “Thomas Linacre, 1460-1524: An English Physician Scholar of the Renaissance” from

1960, both of which focused on specific people in order to make wider assumptions about skin

disease and Renaissance influence on English medicine, respectively. Especially when compared

to the wide-reaching conclusions of the 1940 articles, case studies contribute to the Bulletin’s

increasing emphasis on producing original, creative histories, rather than confirming the

accuracy of past scholarship.

The quality of the writing from 1940 to 2020 has also undergone significant changes.

From 1940 to 1980, the writing style is often reminiscent of creative writing pieces, using fluid

and artistic language to describe people, events, and setting. After 1980, the language became

noticeably more clinical and professional. John Spears’ 1980 article “Folk Medicine and Popular

Attitudes Toward Disease in the High Alps, 1780-1870” in particular showcases the earlier

writing style perfectly. Putting the audience into the mindset of a 19th century peasant, he writes

“At every moment, before him and behind him rose the entrancing spectacle of the southern Alps

12 Hannah Murphy. "Skin and Disease in Early Modern Medicine: Jan Jessen's De cute, et cutaneis affectibus
(1601)." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94, no. 2 (2020): 183. Accessed December 13, 2021,
doi:10.1353/bhm.2020.0034.
 8

- immense mountains in the crystal air, radiant sunlight, a fierce blue sky. The ever-blowing

wind mixed odors of growing crops with a cool breath from the empty regions above.”13

Although many of the 21st century articles begin with a quippy anecdote related to the topic,

introductions do not exceed a paragraph, and John Spears’ artistic descriptions of the Alps would

seem wildly out of place. By 2020, the language is stripped down significantly to contain only

what is strictly necessary.

The consolidation of language over time is also plainly evident in each author’s

presentation of their thesis. The 1940 article “The Rôle of the Physician in the Development of

Social Thought” by Robert S. Drews has a thesis as vague as its title; “The rôle of the physician

in the development of social thought encompasses the historical migration of the medical

intellect from the sphere of orthodox medicine to the realm of social philosophy.”14 By

comparison, Hannah Murphy’s 2020 article on the study of skin diseases states very plainly:

“This article makes three related arguments.”15 Murphy dedicates the entire page following that

statement to breaking down each of her three arguments and how they intersect. In some articles,

like Charles Rosenberg’s report on the cause of cholera in 1960, it was difficult to find a clear

thesis at all. The introduction of Rosenberg’s article explains different public opinions about

cholera as a contagious disease, then transitions into a discussion of professional discourse

surrounding the classification of cholera.16 While the full title may reveal the intentions of his

research, he fails to explain his argument for the real cause of cholera until the very end of the

13 Charles Rosenberg. “The Cause of Cholera: Aspects of Etiological Thought in Nineteenth Century America.”
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 34, no. 4 (1960): 331–33. Accessed December 13, 2021,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/44449717.
14 Derek S. Linton. “The Obscure Object of Knowledge: German Military Medicine Confronts Gas Gangrene
during World War I.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74, no. 2 (2000): 291–316. Accessed December 13, 2021,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/44445448.
15 T. D. Davidson (1960) and D. C. Epler (1980) did not publish their full names, and I could not find any further
information on them to determine their gender. These articles have been omitted from these numbers.
16 Jean Captain Sabine. “A History of the Classification of Human Blood Corpuscles (Part I).” Bulletin of the
History of Medicine 8, no. 5 (1940): 700. Accessed December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44442737.
 9

paper. Overall, the clarity of the articles’ theses contributes directly to the reader’s understanding

of the Bulletin as a whole, and there has been a marked improvement over time in the

conciseness and precision of the journal’s language.

The use of medical terminology in the Bulletin has also grown exponentially since 1940 -

as the scope narrowed, the medical jargon increased. Derek Linton’s 2000 article about gas

gangrene research in World War I, for example, takes the reader through the research process in-

depth. He explains the causes of wound infection diseases and the effects of anaerobic bacteria

on the body in addition to describing the methodology and timeline of those concepts being

discovered.17 In addition to this article, many of the sampled articles require some prior

knowledge of basic anatomy, biology, and chemistry. This change marks a clear difference in the

way the Bulletin treats its audience, but for the most part they are aware that their base audience

is made up of historians. Whether it is because of medical education becoming more accessible

or the targeted audience of the journal becoming more specialized, there are higher expectations

of prior knowledge in the 21st century than there were in the 20th. Until the 21st century articles,

there are very few barriers to understanding the medical language of the Bulletin, and in all of the

sampled papers I have come across simplified explanations of medical terms that fill the gaps.

Regardless of its audience, the demographics of the authors in the Bulletin have clearly

experienced change since 1940. Out of the 20 sampled articles, only five were written by women

compared to the thirteen written by men.18 All five of the articles written by women were

published in 2000 or 2020, making the journal exclusively male-dominated in the decades

before. There is not enough data on the authors to infer meaningful conclusions over time about

the authors’ races or ethnicities. Overall, however, the lack of geographic diversity in the
17 D. C. Epler. “Bloodletting in Early Chinese Medicine and its Relation to the Origin of Acupuncture.” Bulletin of
the History of Medicine 54, no. 3 (1980): 337. Accessed December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44441269.
18 Feierman, Steven. “Explanation and Uncertainty in the Medical World of Ghaambo.” Bulletin of the History of
Medicine 74, no. 2 (2000): 320-21. Accessed December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44445449.
 10

subjects of the Bulletin and the lack of female authors until the 21st century suggest slow

development in the intersectionality of the journal, despite gradual improvement.

The Bulletin of the History of Medicine has demonstrated significant growth within the

eighty year period I conducted this report. In the content and emphasis on progression through

history, it has consistently maintained its strengths. Otherwise, it has improved on its

shortcomings, such as the amount and variety of sources used, as well as the professionalism of

its language. There have been minimal but important improvements in terms of diversity in

authors and geographic concentrations. These changes and continuities are all interconnected -

for example, the trend of broad to specific topics has definitely been affected by historians’

ability to write about new scientific developments. As the more clinical style of writing emerged

and medical terminology became more commonplace, authors could forgo the more basic

questions of 1940 and interact with more complex scientific concepts. Likewise, the narrowed

scope of the articles allowed the authors to engage with more diverse sources within a single

period, rather than taking more general sources from a wide timeframe.

The Bulletin’s emphasis on placing medicine within a wider context has absolutely been

fulfilled throughout the course of its publication up to the present. I chose this journal rather than

similar publications specifically because of this emphasis, and I was impressed by its consistency

on this front. Whether it was connecting the use of herbal poultices in the alps to French

economics or resuscitation techniques in Venice to politics, the journal produced a true history of

medicine.
 11

References

Bamji, Alexandra. "Blowing Smoke Up Your Arse: Drowning, Resuscitation, and Public Health

in Eighteenth-Century Venice." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94, no. 1 (2020):

29-63. Accessed December 13, 2021, doi:10.1353/bhm.2020.0001. Discusses drownings

in 18th century Venice, focusing on the pattern of deaths by drowning, technologies

created around it, and the impact of drownings on social, religious, and cultural

approaches to death.

Blackwell, Marilyn Schultz. “Keeping the ‘Household Machine’ Running: Attendant Nursing

and Social Reform in the Progressive Era.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74, no. 2

(2000): 241–64. Accessed December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44445446.

Examines the BMAA and the development of nursing as a professional career in

conjunction with the increasing desire to use nurses to improve conditions for poor

women. Discusses how attendant nursing demonstrated and contributed to class and

gender divides by examining the role of nurses at home and in the workplace.

Czech, Herwig, Gabor S. Ungvari, Kamila Uzarczyk, Paul Weindling, and Gábor Gazdag.

"Electroconvulsive Therapy in the Shadow of the Gas Chambers: Medical Innovation and

Human Experimentation in Auschwitz." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94, no. 2

(2020): 244-266. Accessed December 13, 2021, doi:10.1353/bhm.2020.0036. Provides

background on the early history of ECT, with emphasis on the cruel and deadly ways it

was used in Nazi Germany.

Davidson, T. D. “A Survey of Some British Veterinary Folklore.” Bulletin of the History of

Medicine 34, no. 3 (1960): 199–232. Accessed December 13, 2021,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/44450064. This article discusses veterinary medicine pre-

 12

modern medicine, which consisted of folklore and magical elements. It goes through

multiple groups of charm and amuletic cures for animals, explaining treatments through a

wide variety of creative sources.

Drews, Robert S. “The Rôle of the Physician in the Development of Social Thought.” Bulletin of

the History of Medicine 8, no. 7 (1940): 874–908. Accessed December 13, 2021,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/44440548. Analyzes the patterns of medical thought that have

gone from “socio-centric” in Ancient Greece and Rome to physio- , bio- , and psycho-

centric thinking which has led to a different understanding of the body in modern times in

relation to our psychology and social customs.

Durbach, Nadja. "Dead or Alive? Stillbirth Registration, Premature Babies, and the Definition of

Life in England and Wales, 1836–1960." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94, no. 1

(2020): 64-90. Accessed December 13, 2021, doi:10.1353/bhm.2020.0002. Examines

how the introduction of the stillbirth registration sparked the need for new definitions of

living and dead, and how that impacted obstetrics and premature care up until the 20th

century. Emphasizes that the state’s definition of life is constantly changing and affects

“life” more than a scientific definition of life.

Epler, D. C. “Bloodletting in Early Chinese Medicine and its Relation to the Origin of

Acupuncture.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 54, no. 3 (1980): 337–67. Accessed

December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44441269. Using ancient Chinese

textbooks, this article analyzes first the understanding of blood and circulation, followed

by an outline of the origins of bloodletting and acupuncture processes to create a

timeline.

Feierman, Steven. “Explanation and Uncertainty in the Medical World of Ghaambo.” Bulletin of
 13

the History of Medicine 74, no. 2 (2000): 317–44. Accessed December 13, 2021,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/44445449. Case study attempting to reconcile African

traditional healing with science-based medicine in history and analyze the differences

between different schools of medical thought with respect to social custom in Ghaambo.

Follis, Richard H. “Cellular Pathology and the Development of the Deficiency Disease

Concept.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 34, no. 4 (1960): 291–317. Accessed

December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44449715. Studies the development of

the definition “deficiency disease,” which is exemplative of new directions in medical

thinking which changed from purely biology and thinking that disease could only be a

surplus of bad things rather than an absence of good things, hence “deficiency”, which

led to a new era of accurate diagnoses and treatments.

Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Studies the life of Menocchio, a 16th

century peasant at the height of the Inquisition. Analyzes popular and elite culture

through a deep case study that exemplifies the importance of oral and written culture in

history.

Hardy, Anne. “‘Straight Back to Barbarism’: Antityphoid Inoculation and the Great War, 1914.”

Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74, no. 2 (2000): 265–90. Accessed December 13,

2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44445447. Examines the complications of

immunization the British army against typhoid based on arguments between medical

professionals advocating for it and the government wavering between the rights and

responsibilities of individuals and communities.

Linton, Derek S. “The Obscure Object of Knowledge: German Military Medicine Confronts Gas
 14

Gangrene during World War I.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74, no. 2 (2000):

291–316. Accessed December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44445448. Examined

the accuracy of historians praising German wartime contributions to medicine by

discussing the successes and difficulties to German gas gangrene studies.

Long, Esmond R. “The Decline of Tuberculosis, with Special Reference to its Generalized

Form.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 8, no. 6 (1940): 819–43. Accessed December

13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44440541. Impresses on the audience a sense of

how significant the decline of tuberculosis was as a medical achievement and a shift in

thinking from individual care to dealing with disease as a community.

Murphy, Hannah. "Skin and Disease in Early Modern Medicine: Jan Jessen's De cute, et cutaneis

affectibus (1601)." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94, no. 2 (2020): 179-214.

Accessed December 13, 2021, doi:10.1353/bhm.2020.0034. Asserts three clear

arguments: skin disease was a common issue in the 16th century, the concerns were

treated through surgery and disease analysis rather than anatomy and physiology, and Jan

Jessen should be used as a representative of his time, not the only voice of the period.

Peitzman, Steven J. “‘Thoroughly Practical’: America’s Polyclinic Medical Schools.” Bulletin of

the History of Medicine 54, no. 2 (1980): 166–87. Accessed December 13, 2021,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/44442946. Seeks to explain the commonalities between the

polyclinic schools and the social climate in which the “polyclinic phenomenon” began.

Rosenberg, Charles. “The Cause of Cholera: Aspects of Etiological Thought in Nineteenth

Century America.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 34, no. 4 (1960): 331–54.

Accessed December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44449717. Discusses the

 15

various theories proposed in the 19th century about the causes of cholera and why those

theories were proposed based on available knowledge.

Sabine, Jean Captain. “A History of the Classification of Human Blood Corpuscles (Part I).”

Bulletin of the History of Medicine 8, no. 5 (1940): 696–720. Accessed December 13,

2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44442737. A straightforward approach to describing

the path of development of an accurate description of human blood, explaining different

key figures, their experiments, and their findings in a linear fashion.

Sharpe, William D. “Thomas Linacre, 1460-1524: An English Physician Scholar of the

Renaissance.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 34, no. 3 (1960): 233–56. Accessed

December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44450065. Biography of Thomas

Linacre, examining his medical achievements and social impact based on relationships

with other scholars and nobility.

Spears, John. “Folk Medicine and Popular Attitudes Toward Disease in the High Alps,

1780-1870.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 54, no. 3 (1980): 303–36. Accessed

December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44441268. Examined rural medical

practices from 1780 - 1870 by analyzing social trends, cultural influence of doctors and

medical practitioners, and how peasants in the high Alps dealt with disease as a whole.

Warner, John Harley. “Physiological Theory and Therapeutic Explanation in the 1860s: The

British Debate on the Medical Use of Alcohol.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 54,

no. 2 (1980): 235–57. Accessed December 13, 2021,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/44442950. Examines the different beliefs about alcohol as a

therapeutic tool compared with the temperance movement of the 1860s through scientific

progression and social arguments.

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Weinberger, Bernhard Wolf. “Did Dentistry Evolve From the Barbers, Blacksmiths or From

Medicine?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 8, no. 7 (1940): 965–1011. Accessed

December 13, 2021, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44440553. Analyzes the origins of

dentistry as coming from medicine by disproving barbers and blacksmiths as viable

theories and describing, in detail, dentistry as it evolved all the way from Ancient Egypt.