The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine celebrates the richness and variety of medical history around the world. In recent decades, the history of medicine has emerged as a rich and mature sub-discipline within history, but the strength of the field has not precluded vigorous debates about methods, themes, and sources. Bringing together over thirty international scholars, this handbook provides a constructive overview of the current state of these debates, and offers new directions for future scholarship. There are three sections: the first explores the methodological challenges and historiographical debates generated by working in particular historical ages; the second explores the history of medicine in specific regions of the world and their medical traditions, and includes discussion of the 'global history of medicine'; the final section analyses, from broad chronological and geographical perspectives, both established and emerging historical themes and methodological debates in the history of medicine.1. Introduction ; PART ONE: PERIODS ; 2. Medicine and health in the Graeco-Roman world ; 3. Medieval medicine ; 4. Early modern medicine ; 5. Health and medicine in the Enlightenment ; 6. Medicine and modernity ; 7. Contemporary history of medicine and health ; PART TWO: PLACES AND TRADITIONS ; 8. Global and local histories of medicine: interpretative challenges and future possiblities ; 9. Chinese medicine ; 10. Medicine in Islam and Islamic medicine ; 11. Medicine in Western Europe ; 12. History of medicine in Eastern Europe, including Russia ; 13. North America ; 14. Latin America ; 15. History of medicine in Sub-Saharan Africa ; 16. Medicine and colonialism in South Asia since 1500 ; 17. History of medicine in Australia and New Zealand ; PART THREE: THEMES AND METHODS ; 18. Childhood and adolescence ; 19. Medicine and old age ; 20. Death ; 21. Historical demography and epidemiology: the meta-narrative challenge ; 22. Chronic illness and disease history ; 23. Public health ; 24. The political economy of health care in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ; 25. Health, work, and environment: a Hippocratic turn in medical history ; 26. History of science and medicine ; 27. Women, health, and medicine ; 28. Health and sexuality ; 29. Medicine and the mind ; 30. Medical ethics and the law ; 31. Medicine and species: one medicine, one history ; 32. Histories of heterodoxy ; 33. Oral testimony and the history of medicine ; 34. Medical films and television: alternative paths to the cultures of biomedicine