Steve Sturdy - Medicine, Health and the Public Sphere in Britain, 1600-2000 (Studies in the Social History of Medicine)

Cover

Page i

Medicine, Health and the Public Sphere in Britain, 16002000

Medicine is concerned with the most intimate aspects of private life. Yet it is also a focus for diverse forms of public organization and action. In this volume, an international team of scholars use the techniques of medical history to analyse the changing boundaries and constitution of the public sphere from early modernity to the present day.

Following the pathbreaking work of Jrgen Habermas, historians and sociologists have tended to think of the public sphere primarily as a site of discourse and opinion formation. The medical historians collected here expand this perspective to include other kinds of social action, ranging from the redefinition of doctor-patient relations in the seventeenth century to the regulation of in vitro fertilization in the 1990s.

In a series of detailed historical case studies, contributors examine the role of various public institutionsboth formal and informal, voluntary and statutoryin organizing and co-ordinating collective action on medical matters. In so doing, they challenge the determinism and fatalism of Habermass overarching and functionalist account of the rise and fall of the public sphere.

Of essential interest to historians and sociologists of medicine, this book will also be of value to historians of modern Britain, historical sociologists, and those engaged in studying the work of Jrgen Habermas.

Steve Sturdy is lecturer in the History of Medicine at the Science Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh. With Michael Barfoot and Christopher Lawrence he is currently writing up a project on clinical science in inter-war Edinburgh. His publications include War, Medicine and Modernity (Sutton, 1998) and Medicine and the Management of Modern Warfare (Rodopi, 1999), both jointly edited with Roger Cooter and Mark Harrison.

Page ii

Routledge Studies in the Social History of Medicine

Edited by Bernard Harris, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Southampton, Joseph Melling, University of Exeter and Anne Borsay, University of Wales at Lampeter.

The Society for the Social History of Medicine (SSHM) was founded in 1969, and exists to promote research into all aspects of the field, without regard to limitations of either time or place. In addition to this book series, the Society also organizes a regular programme of conferences, and publishes an internationally recognized journal, Social History of Medicine. The Society offers a range of benefits, including reduced-price admission to conferences and discounts on SSHM books, to its members. Individuals wishing to learn more about the Society are invited to contact the series editors through the publisher.

The Society took the decision to launch Studies in the Social History of Medicine, in association with Routledge, in 1989, in order to provide an outlet for some of the latest research in the field. Since that time, the series has expanded significantly under a number of series of editors, and now includes both edited collections and monographs. Individuals wishing to submit proposals are invited to contact the series editors in the first instance.

1. Nutrition in Britain

Science, scientists and politics in the twentieth century

Edited by David F.Smith

2. Migrants, Minorities and Health

Historical and contemporary studies

Edited by Lara Marks and Michael Worboys

3. From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency

Historical perspectives on people with learning disabilities

Edited by David Wright and Anne Digby

4. Midwives, Society and Childbirth

Debates and controversies in the modern period

Edited by Hilary Marland and Anne Marie Rafferty

5. Illness and Healing Alternatives in Western Europe

Edited by Marijke Gijswit-Hofstra, Hilary Marland and Hans de Waardt

Page iii

6. Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 15001700

Edited by Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham

7. The Locus of Care

Families, communities, institutions and the provision of welfare since antiquity

Edited by Peregrine Horden and Richard Smith

8. Race, Science and Medicine, 17001960

Edited by Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris

9. Insanity, Institutions and Society, 18001914

Edited by Bill Forsythe and Joseph Melling

10. Food, Science, Policy and Regulation in the Twentieth Century

International and comparative perspectives

Edited by David F.Smith and Jim Phillips

11. Sex, Sin and Suffering

Venereal disease and European society since 1870

Edited by Roger Davidson and Lesley A.Hall

12. The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 19181919

New perspectives

Edited by Howard Phillips and David Killingray

13. Plural Medicine, Tradition and Modernity, 18002000

Edited by Waltraud Ernst

14. Innovations in Health and Medicine

Diffusion and resistance in the twentieth century

Edited by Jenny Stanton

15. Contagion

Historical and Cultural Studies

Edited by Alison Bashford and Claire Hooker

16. Medicine, Health and the Public Sphere in Britain, 16002000

Edited by Steve Sturdy

17. Medicine and Colonial Identity

Edited by Mary P.Sutphen and Bridie Andrews

Page iv

This page intentionally left blank.

Page v

Edited by Steve Sturdy