This talk explores how and why the casualty department was transformed over the course of the 20th century, going from a chaotic, under-staffed and under-resourced backwater to a high-tech domain with highly specialized staff and services. Using examples from both sides of the Atlantic, the talk pays particular attention to the ways in which the emergency department became a space of sifting, sorting, and segregation in the "front stage" of the hospital. Speaker: Associate Professor Dr Graham Mooney, Institute of the History of Medicine, John Hopkins University

Casenotes: A History of Medicine Podcast

Ep.62 - Graham Mooney - From Casualty Room To A&E, History Of A Hospital Space

The 1890s were a critical decade in the novel science of immunology. Emerging developments in bacteriology and tropical medicine revealed numerous microorganisms responsible for epidemic diseases. Putative vaccines and antitoxins emerged against typhoid fever, bubonic plague and diphtheria. Another strand of immunology from this period, however, has largely been overlooked. Collaborating with researchers around the globe, Professor Thomas Fraser at the University of Edinburgh generated numerous antivenenes, including several developed against Australian snake venoms. This presentation reveals how a President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh collaborated with a former student in the colony of Queensland to develop the theory and practice of applied immunology. Speaker: Dr Peter Hobbins, Department of History, University of Sydney

Ep.61 - Peter Hobbins - Edinburgh's Forgotten Contribution To Antivenoms

During the last 100 years, the treatment of diabetes mellitus in Britain underwent radical transformation. One of the most striking features of twentieth-century diabetes care was the increasing amount of self-management of the disease. In this talk, Dr Martin Moore explores how medical thought, patient experience and everyday practice of self-management were also influenced by broader structures in British politics, culture, and society.

Ep.60 - Martin Moore - Sugar and Spikes - Historical Approaches to Diabetes Treatment

Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica (1543) is a landmark publication in the history of medicine, well known for its illustrations. Yet, the actual function of these illustrations within Vesalius own project of classical anatomy has not always been appreciated. In this talk, Dr Kusukawa examines the different - and often ingenious - ways in which Vesalius used anatomical images in his book. Speaker: Dr Sachiko Kusukawa (University of Cambridge)

Ep.59 - Sachiko Kusukawa - Vesalius And The Canon Of The Human Body

After WWII, British doctors and politicians thought that they could import the perfect solution for dental illness: drinking water fluoridation. But the campaigns they faced brought together the libertarian Right, the socialist Left, advocates of ‘real foods’ and the nascent Green movement. Anti-fluoridisers campaigned for ‘freedom’ against an interfering government, amid medical scandals such as the Thalidomide tragedy. This talk uses the controversy to explore the historical relationship between the body, civil rights, consumerism, the citizenry and the medical profession. Speaker: Professor Glen O'Hara (Oxford Brookes University)

Ep.58 - Glen O'Hara - ‘Inadmissable and Cruel’ Fear and Risk in Britain’s Post-War Fluoride Debate

In the 1600s Peter Sartorius, a citizen and surgeon of Strasbourg, compared syphilis to ‘an angry dog’, which viciously threatened communities. These talks investigate the past, and present, of this notorious sexually transmitted disease. From stereotypes and scaremongering to laboratories and diagnostics. Mona O’Brien explores how Europeans came to understand syphilis and some of the measures that they enacted in an attempt to control it during the period from the first pandemic outbreak (c.1495) until the 17th century. Speaker: Dr Mona O’Brien (University of Glasgow)

Ep.57 - Mona O’Brien - Controlling An Angry Dog - Understanding And Managing The French Disease

In this talk Dr Allan Beveridge discusses the nineteenth centry Scottish pioneer of psychiatric medicine Sir Alexander Morison and the collection of illustrations of asylum patients which he commissioned. Speaker: Dr Allan Beveridge (History and Humanities Editor of the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh)

Ep.56 - Allan Beveridge - Sir Alexander Morison and The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases

The place of the public within public health is a critical issue for contemporary public health in Britain. Whether it involves appealing to individuals to stop smoking, or asking patients what they think of health services, the ‘public’ is constantly constructed and reconstructed within public health policy and practice. This talk seeks to set these concerns in historical context, aiming to explore and explain the changing place of the public within public health in post-war Britain. Speaker: Dr Alex Mold (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)

Ep.55 - Alex Mold - Placing the public in public health: Public health in Britain, 1948-2010

William Orpen (1878-1931) produced numerous pictures of doctors and artists. Orpen suggests that in medical diagnostics, as in the production and evaluation of artworks, specialised visual skills are required. In his painting A Mere Fracture (1901), which depicts a doctor examining a leg for a fracture, Orpen showed the close observation of surface detail and the knowledge of anatomy that he believed was required of artists. At the same time, in this painting and others like it, the artist included visual illusions and distorted mirror reflections, which cast doubt over the reliability of vision. Speaker: Dr Keren Hammerschlag (Georgetown University)

Ep.54 - Keren Hammerschlag - William Orpen: looking at bodies in medicine and art

The military success of a fighting force depends in large part on the availability of fit, healthy troops, but the austere conditions of war often conspire to allow disease to flourish, and in every armed conflict up to very recent times, disease has claimed more victims than has battle injury. Beverly Bergman, a former military consultant public health physician who is now researching veterans’ health at the University of Glasgow, explores in this talk how the development of an understanding of the principles of public health in wartime during the late nineteenth century helped to protect troops exposed to the challenging conditions of the First World War. Speaker: Dr Beverly Bergman (University of Glasgow)

Ep.53 - Beverly Bergman - Military Public Health from the Crimea to World War One

In Scotland’s enlightenment a bride stabs her husband on their wedding night; a nobleman kills his brother; a veteran kills his devoted wife – who then pleads mercy for him on her deathbed. Over centuries the law has recognised that those with mental disorders may not be held accountable for their actions – but even if acquitted they may not necessarily go free. This talk considers the origins of Scotland’s ‘insanity’ law and what ancient themes are still relevant today. Speaker: John Crichton, Chair of RCPsych in Scotland

Ep.52 - John Crichton - Forensic Psychiatry From Plato to the Modern ‘Insanity’ Defence

During the last 100 years, the treatment of diabetes mellitus in Britain underwent radical transformation. One of the most striking features of twentieth-century diabetes care was the increasing amount of self-management of the disease. In this talk Dr Mark Strachan discusses the latest, cutting-edge research currently being undertaken in Edinburgh. Speaker: Dr Mark Strachan (Consultant Physician in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Acute Medicine at the Western General Hospital)

Ep.51 - Mark Strachan - Sugar and Spikes - Current Approaches to Diabetes Treatment

Between the French Revolution and WWI, Europe and America witnessed a golden age of medical image-making. The first generation of mass-market anatomical and pathological textbooks and atlases offered crisp, detailed colour illustrations of the human body in health and sickness, but they also embodied – literally – a revolution in ideas about life, disease and death. Drawing on the images collected in his award-winning book – a collaboration between the Wellcome Library and Thames & Hudson – Richard Barnett explores a corpus of art that is beautiful and morbid, singular and sublime. Speaker: Dr Richard Barnett (Independent Scholar)

Ep.50 - Richard Barnett - The Theatre of Anatomy

The 1800s saw a series of scandals concerning individuals being locked away in lunatic asylums – the victims of unscrupulous persons who wanted to be rid of a ‘difficult’ family member, spouse or friend. But who were the victims of this trade? And to what extent was it carried on? Why was it a problem for the wealthy and less so for the poor? Was a male head of household simply able to ‘put away’ an unwanted wife or disobedient daughter? Sarah Wise examines a number of disputed lunacy cases, ranging from the 1820s to the 1890s - including the unsavoury incident that Sir Alexander Morison himself became embroiled in. Speaker: Sarah Wise, Independent Scholar

Ep.49 - Sarah Wise - Gaslight Stories - Women In White, Eccentric Heirs, Inconvenient People

Dr Burney uses the notorious case of the serial murderer John Christie (1953) to explore the contours of English homicide investigation at mid-century and detail the broader ‘forensic culture’ within which the case unfolded. Crucial to the Christie story is the way that forensic pathology and forensic science operated in a relationship of mutual dependence, and how this reflected an effort on the part of participants to forge a new culture of ‘team-driven’ forensic investigation as a self-conscious corrective to a prior model based on individual ‘virtuosity’. In particular, the Christie case enables an examination of the ways that English murder investigation was shaped by new approaches to the crime scene and by developments in lab-based analysis of crime scene objects which reconfigured the relationship between bodies, spaces, and traces. Speaker: Dr Ian Burney (University of Manchester)

Ep.48 - Ian Burney - The House Of Murder: The Emergence Of The Forensic Team

A History of Medicine Podcast based on lectures and events from academics at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh