Shock, Physiological Surgery, and George Washington Crile: Medical Innovation in the Progressive Era
by Peter English

Over the centuries, shock has been a particular concern of surgeons both because traditionally they have treated the injured and maimed and because in cutting people surgeons necessarily create wounds that, if left unattended, may lead to shock.

The investigation into the history of shock soon spread beyond the history of ideas to the history of ways of diagnosing and treating shock. As a formidable operative complication, the prevalence of shock influenced major trends in surgery. Although the surgeon had always confronted shock when called upon to treat injuries, his appreciation of circulatory collapse increased markedly in the 1880s. In part, this greater awareness resulted from his willingness to perform more extensive, or radical, operations.

Alerted to the rising incidence of shock and other operative complications, many surgeons joined to reform operative technique in a movement generally known as "physiological surgery" because of the significant role physiological experimentation played in the reform. Using shock as a specific example, this book probes the growth of physiological surgery from a desire for safer operations to the beginnings of a science of human injury.

Rheumatic Fever in America and Britain: A Biological, Epidemiological, and Medical History
by Peter English

Rheumatic Fever in America and Britain is the first book to examine comprehensively a disease that has been a moving target for physicians and health care workers. A disease of skin, brain, heart, connective tissue, blood, tonsils, and joints bound to a member of the streptococcus family of bacteria, this illness has practically disappeared from the present-day scene. Yet in 1940 more than one million Americans suffered from the heart disease that followed the ravages of rheumatic fever. It struck nearly 2 percent of all school-aged children, filling hospitals, convalescent homes, and special schools.

Rheumatic fever rose in prevalence throughout the nineteenth century, reaching its peak in that century's last decades, and then steadily declined—both in occurrence and severity—throughout the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, acute rheumatic fever was largely a disease of children and young adults. Another remarkable epidemiological change occurred during the twentieth century; rheumatic fever shifted its character, became milder, and in doing so allowed its victims to live longer, if disabled lives. As this disease so altered, adults increasingly became its victims.

Dr. Peter C. English explores both the shifting biological nature of this disease and the experiences of physicians and patients who fought its ravages. Using insights from biology, epidemiology, and social history, Dr. English—both a physician and medical historian—is uniquely suited to unravel this disease's epidemiological and cultural complexities.

Beyond Consent: Seeking Justice in Research
edited by Jeffrey P. Kahn, Anna C. Mastroianni, Jeremy Sugarman

Although research policies once emphasized the protection of research subjects through processes such as informed consent and careful assessments of the risks to subjects, they now increasingly promote the inclusion of subjects in research. Beyond Consent examines the concept of justice in considering research with human subjects, paying particular attention to claims about important populations including: children, the vulnerable sick, women, people of color, and subjects in international settings.

Ethics of Research with Human Subjects: Selected Policies and Resources
edited by Jeremy Sugarman, Anna C. Mastroianni, and Jeffrey P. Kahn

Over the last decade, there has been a burgeoning number of policies related to research with human subjects. This increase in the number of policies, as well as their shifting emphases, can make it difficult to keep up with current requirements. Ethics of Research with Human Subjects is designed to help mitigate some of the difficulties associated with policies regarding research with human subjects by including many of the relevant policies and providing finding aids to help determine which policies apply when designing or overseeing clinical research.

Ethics in Primary Care
edited by Jeremy Sugarman

Ethics in Primary Care provides accessible information about ethical issues that arise in primary care settings. Unlike many books in medical ethics, Ethics in Primary Care helps answer practical questions when making ethical choices in different clinical situations. Included are matters of truth telling, refusal of treatment, competency and decision-making capacity, and inappropriate requests for treatment.

Methods in Medical Ethics
edited by Jeremy Sugarman and Dan Sulmasy

Medical ethics is now a field that employs multiple methods, derived from the humanities and social sciences, including anthropology, economics, epidemiology, history, law, literature, medicine, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology. Methods in Medical Ethics examines many of the important methodological approaches to medical ethics, including their techniques, applications, strengths, and weaknesses.

The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Margaret Humphreys, Editor

The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences is published quarterly by Oxford University Press, 2001 Evans Road, Cary, NC 27513-2009. Periodicals Postage Paid at Cary, NC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Journals Customer Service Department, Oxford University Press, 2001 Evans Road, Cary, NC 27513-2009.

Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States
by Margaret Humphreys

In Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States, Margaret Humphreys presents the first book-length account of the parasitic, insect-borne disease that has patterns, economic development, and the quality of life at every level of American society, especially in the South.

Humphreys approaches malaria from three perspectives: the parasite's biological history, the medical response to it, and the patient's experience of the disease. She asks how the parasite thrives and eventually becomes vulnerable, how professionals came to know about the parasite and learned how to fight it, and how people viewed the disease and came to understand and support the struggle against it.

Legal Issues in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine
by Angela Roddey Holder

Is a frozen embryo a person? If so, what sort of rights does it have? Under what circumstances may a thirteen year old be committed, have an abortion, or, with her baby, be thrown out of her parents' home? This book by Angela Roddey Holder is an up-to-date survey of legal issues ranging from pre-conception through adolescence that are confronted by obstetricians, pediatricians, clinical researchers, and lawyers.

Holder discusses the legal issues that arise about artificial reproduction, pre-natal diagnostic or counseling problems, and fetal research. She then deals with the child who is dying-either a Baby Doe or an older child-in terms of what treatment must be given according to law. She explains whether the child or adolescent has a right to medical care without parental knowledge, and the special regulations that must be followed when the child is a research subject or transplant donor. Holder delineates the physician's duty in a custody case involving one of his patients or in a child abuse case. After exploring the legal issues that emerge in psychiatric treatment of children and adolescents, she concludes with a presentation of the minor's rights regarding abortions, contraception, and sterilization requested by the minor's parents.

Medical Malpractice Law
by Angela Roddey Holder

The comprehensive reference to medical malpractice law for physicians and attorneys. Revised and updated to include the many biomedical and constitutional issues that have arisen since publication of the successful first edition, this volume discusses recent court decisions involving medicaid, abortion, sterilization under duress, minors' rights, and the enormous expansion of law involving medical research and the right to die.

YELLOW FEVER AND THE SOUTH
by Margaret Humphreys

In the last half of the nineteenth century, the American South was plagued by yellow fever epidemics. This tropical disease stalked the South's steaming urban areas, killing its victims with overwhelming hepatitis and hemorrhage. Its toll was devastating; in the notorious 1878 epidemic alone, 20,000 people died in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys.

Margaret Humphreys tells the dramatic story of yellow fever in the urban South, and of the attempt of public health officials to contain it. Humphreys explores the ways in which yellow fever hampered commerce, frustrated the scientific community, and eventually galvanized local and federal authorities into forming public health boards. Discovering that the desire to nurture economic growth lay at the heart of the South's public health strategy, she shows how the disease's impact on trade forced state governments to spend money on public health. Yellow fever was also central to the growth of the US Public Health Services. Humphreys pays particular attention to the various theories for stopping the disease and to the constant tension between state and federal officials over how public funds should be spent.

Old Paint:  A Medical History of Childhood Lead-Paint Poisoning in the United States to 1980
by Peter C. English

Old Paint documents the history of lead-paint poisoning in the United States and the evolving responses of public health officials and the lead-paint industry to this hazard up to 1980, by which time lead had been banned from gasoline and paint. Peter C. English traces lead poisoning from a rare, but acute problem confined to a small group of children to the discovery by the end of the 1940s of the dangers of the crumbling lead-painted interiors of inner-city dwellings. He draws on a wide range of primary materials not only to illuminate our understanding of how this health hazard changed over time, but also to explore how diseases are constructed and evolve.

The Machine in the Nursery: Incubator Technology and the Origins of Newborn Intensive Care
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)
by Jeffrey P. Baker

In this monograph Baker compares the strikingly different paths taken by newborn medicine in France and the United States at the turn of the century by exploring the history of the infant incubator. The invention of this device in 1880 marked the first time physicians rather than mothers took responsibility for the medical care of the newborn. But the reluctance of women in the era of home birth to bring their newborns to the hospital made effective care nearly impossible. The book examines the controversies that followed, in which American physicians focused on the incubator itself while the French subordinated the device to a broader program centered on the mother rather than technology.