Les frontières médicalisées

Medicalising borders. Selection, containment and quarantine since 1800



Editors: Sevasti Trubeta, Christian Promitzer, and Paul Weindling

Manchester University Press

Online Publication Date: 11 May 2021
eISBN: 9781526154675 

The subject of this volume is situated at the point of intersection of the studies of medicalisation and border studies. The authors discuss borders as sites where human mobility has been and is being controlled by biomedical means, both historically and in the present. Three types of border control technologies for preventing the spread of disease are considered: quarantine, containment and the biomedical selection of migrants and refugees. These different types of border control technologies are not exclusive of one another, nor do they necessarily lead to total restrictions on movement. Instead of a simplifying logic of exclusion–inclusion, this volume turns the focus towards the multilayered entanglement of medical regimes in attempts at managing the porosity of the borders. State and institutional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic provide evidence for the topicality of such attempts. Using interdisciplinary approaches, the chapters scrutinise ways in which concerns and policies of disease prevention shift or multiply borders, as well as connecting or disconnecting places. The authors address several questions: to what degree has containment for medical reasons operated as a bordering process in different historical periods including the classical quarantine in the Mediterranean and south-eastern Europe, in the Nazi-era, and in postcolonial UK? Moreover, do understandings of disease and the policies for selecting migrants and refugees draw on both border regimes and humanitarianism, and what factors put limits on the technologies of selection? Show Less

Nurse Practitioner History Research Scholar Award

Nurse Practitioner History Research Scholar Award

Call for Submissions


The Bjoring History Center invites applications for the Nurse Practitioner History Research Scholar Award for 2021. Its goal is to advance historical scholarship on practitioners and disseminate it to an international audience.

For the third year in a row, a donor has made a generous gift of $5,000. The deadline for proposals is June 1, 2021, with the intention that the recipient use the award the following academic year.


Eligibility: Any student pursuing a DNP or PhD, or an established scholar. This award is not limited to nursing scholars; other historians of medicine and health care are encouraged to apply.


Applicants must provide a full research proposal, including:

• A concise statement of the research they wish to conduct
• A narrative describing the project, within the context of the present state of historical knowledge, including background, sources and appropriate citations
• Identification of resources to be used
• An itemized budget detailing how the funds will be used
• A current CV

Send proposals and supporting materials to: Dominique Tobbell, PhD, Director of the Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry at the University of Virginia, at dtobbell@virginia.edu. Notification of award will be made by July 1, 2021.


The recipient must agree to provide a research presentation to selected faculty (and the donor, if desired) upon completion of the project. In addition, they must produce a submission-ready paper for publication and a letter of thanks for the donor.


For more information, visit the Bjoring History Center website: https://www.nursing.virginia.edu/nursing-history/fellowship/

La santé dans la presse

La santé dans la presse 

 

Exposition

L'exposition "La santé dans la presse. Livres, journaux et publics au 18e siècle" porte avant tout sur des questions de santé hors des milieux médicaux auprès d’un public non spécialiste. S'appuyant sur les fonds du département de la Réserve de la bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, elle montre l’importance des périodiques et des livres imprimés dans la mise à disposition de savoirs et des nouvelles sur la santé.

Cette exposition a été conçue par Maria Conforti (Istituto e Museo di Storia della Medicina, Sapienza Università di Roma) et Yasmine Marcil (laboratoire CIM, Institut de la communication et des médias, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle).

83 documents y sont présentés à travers 7 parties thématiques :

• L’essor de la presse en Europe au 18e siècle
• Les débats sur l’inoculation
• Santé et voyage : le scorbut et la navigation
  
• La vogue du mesmérisme
• Les livres de médecine pour tous
• Les maladies des femmes, l’accouchement, l’allaitement
• Le succès de l’anatomie

 

Désordre dans la production et l'opérationnalisation des preuves biomédicales

Messiness in the production and operationalization of biomedical evidence 

Call for papers

We are soliciting papers for a special issue in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science on the topic “Messiness in the production and interpretation of biomedical evidence”. The special issue will be co-edited by Thomas Bonnin (Université Clermont-Auvergne) and Charlotte Brives (CNRS, Centre Emile Durkheim).

Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2021.

The second half of the 20th century witnessed the rise of an experimental ideal in the production and interpretation of biomedical evidence. In this period, the emblematic randomized controlled trial rose to a hegemonic position. The practices and normative prescriptions of the Evidence-Based Medicine movement play an increasingly influential role beyond medicine, notably in policy evaluation. Social scientists (historians, sociologists, philosophers, STS scholars, anthropologists…) have documented the history, material and conceptual underpinnings, strengths and limits of these recent upheavals. This special issue is a novel contribution to this rich literature, through a focus on the notion of “messiness”.

Messiness, at first sight, is an obstacle. It is something that needs to be tamed in order to successfully produce and interpret biomedical evidence. Can there be good clinical evidence about a “messy” disease? How to build operationalizable data with “messy” populations? This search for order and standardization is simultaneously risky. Achieving internal validity can trade-off with external validity, hence with a loss of relevance to real-world situations. It can also carry problematic assumptions and harness existing power relations.

Messiness, then, can also be seen as something to be embraced, as a positive recognition of a pervasive complexity and relationality at play in medical practice. How to account for the complex dynamics of multi-scalar and multi-actor physiological processes? Is it possible to integrate multiple lines of evidence in a rigorously standardized way? Can there always be a tidy way to translate biomedical evidence into real-life applications? In this view, messiness is an asset to the creation and interpretation of biomedical evidence, a space of freedom to be exploited in a sea of methodological, material and regulatory constraints.

In this issue, we propose an interdisciplinary exploration of the ambivalent nature of messiness in the creation and interpretation of biomedical evidence. We welcome contributions across the spectrum of the social sciences to create exchanges and confrontations of discipline-specific approaches, claims and concepts. The emphasis is on an analysis of case studies from 20th/21st-century biomedicine on the following topics:

• Sources and levels of messiness in the creation and operationalization of biomedical evidence. How and why is something considered messy/simple?
• When and why is messiness an asset/an obstacle to the creation and operationalization of biomedical evidence?
• Why is evidence needed? What is considered good evidence? What is this evidence good for?
• What tensions arise from the appropriation and valuation of biomedical evidence?

Please submit your paper via the Editorial Manager (VSI: Biomedical evidence), prepared for anonymous review by September 1, 2021.

La vasectomie

Opération Vasectomie. Histoire intime et politique d’une contraception au masculin.



Élodie Serna

 

Libertalia
Parution : 21 mai 2021
ISBN physique : 9782377292066  

Depuis un siècle, des hommes font le choix de la vasectomie. Louée pour ses prétendues vertus rajeunissantes par des médecins, prônée comme réponse à la question sociale par des eugénistes et des néomalthusiens, adoptée comme méthode de contraception clandestine par des anarchistes, la stérilisation masculine fait parler d’elle en Europe dès les années 1920. Grâce à la simplicité de sa technique, elle est envisagée après la Seconde Guerre mondiale comme une solution face à la peur d’une explosion de la population mondiale. En France, elle demeure longtemps une pratique quasi exclusive des milieux libertaires avant d’entrer enfin dans les cabinets médicaux.

La contraception masculine – notamment la vasectomie – suscite un intérêt croissant. Elle interroge la relation des hommes à la virilité ainsi que le partage des responsabilités contraceptives. Mais au-delà des questions de genre, réintégrer la vasectomie dans l’histoire et l’actualité de la contraception permet de décaler le regard sur les enjeux politiques de la procréation. Et de poser une question toute simple : alors les gars, quand est-ce que vous vous y mettez ?

Élodie Serna est docteure en histoire contemporaine. En 2018, elle a soutenu à l’université de Genève sa thèse préparée sous la direction de Sylvie Aprile et Sandrine Kott, Faire et défaire la virilité. Les stérilisations masculines volontaires en Europe dans l’entre-deux-guerres (à paraître, PUR). Chercheuse indépendante associée à l’université de Lille, elle poursuit ses travaux de recherche, notamment au croisement de l’histoire de la médecine et de la sexualité.

Dante et les sciences de l'Homme

Dante and the Sciences of the Human: Medicine, Physics, Soul
 

Call for papers

 

Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, March 30 – 2 April 2022

In October 2021, the Center for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance will join the worldwide celebrations for the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death (1321–2021) with an international online symposium dedicated to Dante’s poetry and science. Gathering scholars who approach his work and times from interdisciplinary perspectives, the webinar will address how Dante shaped an understanding of the human body and mind, and his relationship with medical and scientific thought in his philosophical and literary production.

Building on this interdisciplinary event, and sponsored by the Dante Society of America, this panel intends to continue the conversation on Dante’s legacy in the early modern era. The panel will address how Dante shaped an understanding of the human body and mind, and how his solutions had an influence in early modern times. By analyzing Dante’s early modern legacy within medical and scientific thought, this panel aims to reassess the multifaceted reuses of Dante’s philosophical and literary oeuvre.

We invite papers and ongoing research projects on different disciplinary and methodological perspectives, included but not limited to:

• Medieval science and medicine, and their legacy in the early modern debates;
• Dante’s approaches to the body/soul problem, and its influence in later discussions;
• The reception and influence of Dante’s philosophical prose, especially for questions related to medicine and science;
• Vernacular poetry and science between the Middle Ages and the early modern era;
• Science, medicine, and literature in the commentary tradition to the Commedia;
• Early modern rewritings of Dante, with a focus on medical and scientific questions;
• Dante and the visual arts, approaching the body;
• Questions of embodiment in the reception of Dante.

The panel is open to scholars and researchers from various fields and career stages. As per RSA policy, graduate students who are currently working on completing their final degree program will be considered as well, if their materials are directly related to their advanced degree (i.e., not term papers).

Please send your proposals to Dr. Matteo Pace at mpace1@conncoll.edu by June 15th, and in your submission please include: paper title (15-word maximum); abstract (150-word maximum); curriculum vitae; PhD or other terminal degree completion date (past or expected).

Louis XIV, un souverain diabétique

Louis XIV, un souverain diabétique Ou De Regis Gallicorum re medica
 

Françoise Guillon-Metz, Mélanie Guerin-Boyer

 

L'Harmattan
Collection : Médecine à travers les siècles
Broché - format : 13,5 x 21,5 cm • 218 pages
Date de publication : 19 mai 2021 

ISBN : 978-2-343-23231-7

Ce livre nous fait découvrir un Roi-Soleil en tant que simple patient, avec ses fragilités, soumis s'il en fut et opposant parfois à ses médecins, déployant sous nos yeux le monde médical de la cour, autre acteur du théâtre de Versailles. Il s'appuie sur le Journal de Santé du roi, oeuvre des trois premiers médecins de Louis XIVqui couvre la période du règne et constitue le témoignage des différentes pathologies dont a souffert le roi. Le diabète de type II va être démasqué, malgré l'absence de biologie, au fi l de ce Journal, qui est aussi une bonne façon de se familiariser avec les théories médicales du XVIIesiècle.

Les archives de l'hôpital Brompton

Graft, grace and gratitude: encounters with the Brompton Hospital archive

Talk by Giskin Day, Imperial College London


18.00-19.00 GMT, Thursday 10 June 2021

This event is FREE. Please register via Eventbrite (link below)

It is a Zoom event.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/graft-grace-and-gratitude-encounters-with-the-brompton-hospital-archive-tickets-151437101447


Giskin Day discusses her work on gratitude in healthcare, and the Brompton Hospital archives held at Barts Health NHS Trust Archives.


Giskin Day is a Principal Teaching Fellow at Imperial College London where she leads on medical humanities, a discipline that explores the cultural contexts of medicine. She is also studying for a PhD in health sciences research at King’s College London on the topic of the expression and reception of gratitude in healthcare. In her talk she will discuss her experiences working with material from the historic archives of the Royal Brompton Hospital, and the findings of her research so far.


This is the first in a series of free online talks, organised by Barts Health NHS Trust Archives and Museums, from researchers who have spent time in our archives. Visit our ‘Events’ page to find out about further talks as they are announced: https://www.bartshealth.nhs.uk/barts-health-archives