Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. History
  4. History of Medicine
  5. Content listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

14580 results in History of Medicine

Page 101 of 729

  • 2 - The Enchantment of Cosmopolitan Science: Student Life at the Dutch East Indies Medical Colleges

  • Hans Pols, University of Sydney
  • Book:
    Nurturing Indonesia
    Published online:
    14 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2018, pp 46-70

  • Summary

    Medical education in the Dutch East Indies commenced in 1902 when a two-year course for vaccinators was established in Batavia. In 1902, the school was renamed STOVIA (School for the Education of Native Physicians) and offered a nine year training program. At that time, student life was distinctly European. Students spoke Dutch, were instructed in the latest findings of Western medical science, and spent their spare time in a metropolitan city. They had busy extracurricular lives playing sports, participating in student associations, reading newspapers, and partying. They believed intensely in the power of medical science, which they saw as quintessentially rational and scientific, and were filled with pride in their school and in their future profession. The medical colleges were unusual colonial laboratories which blurred the boundaries between native and European, brown and white. During their education, students transgressed the distinctions which constituted colonial society. Medical students endlessly performed and celebrated their western and modern identities. Graduates emerged with hybrid identities and found it difficult to find their place in colonial society.

  • Introduction: Colonial Dreams, National Awakenings, and Cosmopolitan Aspirations

  • Hans Pols, University of Sydney
  • Book:
    Nurturing Indonesia
    Published online:
    14 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2018, pp 1-20

  • Summary

    On 20 May 1908, a group of medical students at the Batavia Medical College founded Boedi Oetomo (Noble Endeavour), an association that advocated access to modern education for all Javanese. Boedi Oetomo is now widely viewed as Indonesia’s first nationalist organisation as many Indonesians view the former medical college as a place where a new form of political awareness emerged. The medical students who founded Boedi Oetomo were recipients of the most advanced form of education available in the Indies. They advocated to bring education, progress, and the fruits of modern science, technology, and medicine to Java and then to the archipelago. Today, the building of the Batavia Medical College houses the Museum of National Awakening to commemorate the founding of Boedi Oetomo and the political engagement of Indonesian physicians and medical students during the colonial era.

Nurturing Indonesia
  • Medicine and Decolonisation in the Dutch East Indies
  • Hans Pols
  • Published online:
    14 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2018
  • Hans Pols proposes a new perspective on the history of colonial medicine from the viewpoint of indigenous physicians. The Indonesian medical profession in the Dutch East Indies actively participated in political affairs by joining and leading nationalist associations, by publishing in newspapers and magazines, and by becoming members of city councils and the colonial parliament. Indonesian physicians were motivated by their medical training, their experiences as physicians, and their subordinate position within the colonial health care system to organise, lead, and join social, cultural, and political associations. Opening with the founding of Indonesia's first political association in 1908 and continuing with the initiatives of the Association of Indonesian Physicians, Pols describes how the Rockefeller Foundation's projects inspired the formulation of a nationalist health programme. Tracing the story through the Japanese annexation, the war of independence, and independent Indonesia, Pols reveals the relationship between medicine and decolonisation, and the role of physicians in Asian history.

  • 8 - Medical Heroism and the Indonesian Revolution

  • Hans Pols, University of Sydney
  • Book:
    Nurturing Indonesia
    Published online:
    14 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2018, pp 183-203

  • Summary

    On 17 August 1945, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed Indonesia’s independence at a modest ceremony in front of Sukarno’s house. The Dutch government refused to recognise Indonesia’s independence because it did not want to relinquish its former colonies. The Indonesian revolution was a lengthy and violent conflict, with numerous civilian casualties and systematic violence by Dutch military forces, including summary executions. Indonesia’s medical profession suffered as an unprecedented number of alternate career paths opened to medical students and young physicians. Some became military officers; others politicians, bureaucrats, ambassadors, or businessmen. In January 1946, the instructors at the Indonesian Medical School moved to Klaten, Solo, Yogyakarta, and Malang, the heartland of the Indonesian Republic, to continue medical teaching under demanding and often dangerous circumstances. Medical students furthered the cause of independence by joining the Indonesian armed forces and treating casualties near the front lines. Their work reinforced the strong association between physicians and Indonesian nationalism.

  • 6 - The Great Depression: Rockefeller Initiatives and Medical Nationalism

  • Hans Pols, University of Sydney
  • Book:
    Nurturing Indonesia
    Published online:
    14 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2018, pp 138-160

  • Summary

    The Depression decimated the economy of the Dutch East Indies, causing hardship for Europeans and Indonesians alike. Since the majority of Indies physicians were employed by the Public Health Service, they suffered economic hardship. The political climate became ruthlessly oppressive and authoritarian. The Association of Indies Physicians lay dormant until the late 1930s when it was revived by Indies physician and Volksraad delegate Abdul Rasjid. In 1935, Rasjid visited a health demonstration project of the Rockefeller Foundation which aimed to demonstrate how the health of poor and rural populations could be improved through health education and the provision of basic medical care in modest clinics. Rasjid enthusiastically adopted its principles as the foundation of his own medical nationalism. Rasjid’s leadership transformed the political orientation and professional outlook of Indonesian physicians. He encouraged his colleagues to focus on the plight of the Indonesian population and to see medicine as a vital means of nation building.

  • 1 - Abdul Rivai: Medicine and the Enticement of Modernity

  • Hans Pols, University of Sydney
  • Book:
    Nurturing Indonesia
    Published online:
    14 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2018, pp 21-45

  • Summary

    From the 1880s, indigenous intellectuals in the Dutch East Indies tirelessly promoted progress, development, and education as essential in realising a modern society. Indies physicians, who, until the 1920s, had received the highest level of education available in the Indies, were natural leaders in the movement advocating progress. Abdul Rivai was a pioneer among them. His desire for equality with Europeans motivated him to obtain a medical degree in the Netherlands. During his studies, he published an influential weekly magazine, the Bintang Hindia. When the Volksraad, the colonial parliament, was established in 1918, he was elected as a member and frequently criticised the colonial administration. Because of their education, Indies physicians were very close to Europeans. Yet despite their desire for equality, they found themselves in an ambiguous and paradoxical social position. While the pursuit of professional advancement was rewarded in specific situations, Indies physicians were hardly ever considered equal to Europeans. In reaction, many developed an almost obsessive concern with their own place and with that of their profession in colonial society.

  • 4 - Professional Aspirations and Colonial Ambivalence: The Association of Indies Physicians

  • Hans Pols, University of Sydney
  • Book:
    Nurturing Indonesia
    Published online:
    14 August 2018
    Print publication:
    09 August 2018, pp 93-115

  • Summary

    Upon graduation, students of the Batavia and Surabaya Medical Colleges were confronted with the realities of colonial life and the realisation that the social position of Indies physicians was ambiguous and contested. They were denied entry into the European social sphere, snubbed by the upper layers of the traditional aristocracy, and received the least desirable appointments in the colonial health service. Because of their unenviable social position, some Indies physicians became involved in organised protest and political activism. Pursuing emancipation and equality with Europeans, they founded the Association of Indies Physicians in 1909 to have a public voice. The Association provided mutual support, represented their interests, and lobbied for better remuneration and improved working conditions. Above all, it attempted to enhance the social status of Indies physicians. The activism of Indies physicians inspired several debates on the status of Indies physicians. They often figured in debates on the nature and direction of the Dutch colonial project as a whole.

  • 6 - Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and Suicide

  • Noble Jonathan
  • Book:
    That Jealous Demon, My Wretched Health
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2018, pp 143-186

  • Summary

    We poets in our youth begin in gladness:

    But thereof come in the end despondency and madness

    William Wordsworth, ‘Resolution and Independence’, 1807

    Some Psychiatric Disorders

    A. Non-organic disease

  • Neuroses

  • • Anxiety

  • • Depression

  • • Obsessive-compulsive disorder

  • • Paranoia

  • Psychosis

  • • Schizophrenia

  • • Bipolar affective disorder (previously known as manic-depressive psychosis)

  • Personality disorder

  • • Alcoholism

  • • Other addictions

  • • Psychopathy

    • B. Organic brain disease

  • • Dementias

  • - Alzheimer's disease

  • - Niemann Pick disease (aka Pick's)

  • - Senile dementia (arterio-sclerotic)

  • • Wernicke's encephalopathy (alcoholism)

  • • General paralysis of the insane, or GPI (third-stage syphilis)

    • Diseases in group B, unlike those in A, are diseases whose consequences would be identifiable at an autopsy.

    Introduction: Mental Illness Having already regarded alcoholism as a mental disturbance, we now consider other psychiatric disorders. It is a complicated group of disorders and more difficult to categorise than physical diseases, but the list above attempts a simple, if somewhat dated, classification. At some stage in their lives at least 25% of the Western population will report psychological illness. The question is where variations within a socially accepted range of normality merge into an illness. There have been repeated attempts to assess the role of madness in creativity. Is mental illness a positive driving force or an inhibition when considering the end product, be that a painting, novel or symphony? In a review of mental illness the names of great composers featured less than those of painters, poets or writers.

    If we consider composers discussed in other chapters, it is clear that many fit into the list. Ravel (Chapter 3) had pre-senile dementia, and Rachmaninov (Chapter 10) and Elgar (Chapter 2) were melancholic, if not frankly depressive. Sibelius (Chapter 2) sometimes drank too much. Musorgsky (Chapter 5) did suffer from alcoholic dementia. Donizetti, Smetana and Wolf (Chapter 4) developed general paralysis of the insane (GPI). This chapter is confined to composers with major non-organic psychiatric problems (group A) which were sufficient to affect their compositional abilities or become life-threatening and/or to require periods of institutional care.

    It is interesting to reflect on past psychiatric care. Straitjackets and padded cells are all but gone, and with them immersion in hot and cold baths.

  • 9 - Breathless: Respiratory Diseases

  • Noble Jonathan
  • Book:
    That Jealous Demon, My Wretched Health
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2018, pp 257-284

  • Summary

    As tho’ to breathe is life

    Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Ulysses’,1842

    Introduction

    After heart failure, we pass to the other common causes of breathlessness and weakness, namely bronchial and lung conditions. There is a popular image of the tragic composer coughing his last in an impoverished attic. Although it is almost a cliché, there have been examples, with some raising the question of how composition occurred at all.

    Respiratory disease affects either the airways to the lungs or the lungs themselves. The airways convey inspired air through the larynx (voicebox) to the trachea (windpipe) and thence to the bronchi and their smaller multiple divisions, the bronchioles. The action of the chest is to expand, thereby creating a negative pressure in the pleural cavity, which is the membranous sack surrounding a lung. That in turn causes the sponge-like lung to expand, sucking the fresh air in during inspiration. The basic lung mechanism is an exchange membrane, wherewith oxygen in the inspired air is transferred to the blood. Then, as the chest pressures reverse, the lung shrinks as we expire and exhale carbon dioxide.

    There are several broad groups of lung disease:

  • Pulmonary embolus (PE), which we encountered in Chapter 8, involves a circulating blood clot, usually from a deep veino thrombosis (DVT), obstructing the pulmonary artery, the main blood vessel through which stale blood is pumped to the lungs, in order to be refreshed with oxygen and relieved of carbon dioxide. Sadly a PE can be fatal.

  • Lung cancer is usually (but not always) a malignant tumour of the lining of the bronchi. Although a very serious condition, it carries a better prognosis with modern treatment than it did twenty-fi ve years ago.

  • Chronic obstructive airways disease (COAD) is a group of diseases wherewith there is partial obstruction to air being exhaled. Th is causes back-pressure, one result of which is that the actual lung tissue becomes distended (emphysema); that, in turn, causes the chest to apparently enlarge (barrel chest). Th ere are several classic causes of COAD:

  • a Asthma – because of spasm in the walls of the bronchioles, which narrows them, making it more diffi cult to exhale.

  • 5 - Alcoholism

  • Noble Jonathan
  • Book:
    That Jealous Demon, My Wretched Health
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 September 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2018, pp 125-142

  • Summary

    Drunkenness is a temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness

    Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, 1930

    Introduction

    Just as syphilis has been over-diagnosed, we come to alcohol, another perceived result of over-indulgence. Of Breitenfeld's seventy- seven ‘substance abusers’ amongst composers, the major culprit was alcohol. So we see reputations inaccurately disfigured in musical pathography. An even more vital question is whether alcohol fuels creativity. Alcoholism is a disease and not a crime, although sadly either may lead to the other. There are good basic definitions of alcoholism. Pragmatically, the wisest one is possibly that the sufferer is a person who apprehends that he or she has a problem but is incapable of doing anything about it. The World Health Organization categorises criteria, but Kessell and Walton stressed the importance of a diagnostic gradient; this is difficult with today's national obsession with tick-boxes. They also highlighted the permanent physical damage that is a consequence of chronic alcoholism. That the social drinker, who deliberately and enjoyably gets tipsy occasionally, is not an alcoholic has been a comfort for many of us. More importantly, the excessive drinker is not necessarily an alcoholic, being separated from the latter by the absence of an inexorable deterioration over the years. The key is decline and dependence, and in 2001 there were said to be 2.8 million dependent drinkers in the UK.

    With some alcoholics the condition initially is a pleasure; they are usually the self-indulgent type. For most it is a condition from which the patient would dearly love to be free. One day an inborn error of metabolism may be discovered with, hopefully, cures structured thereupon. Reformed alcoholics have to remain teetotal because drinking any alcohol may trigger their illness. Such self-discipline is admirable. Meanwhile, there are identifiable psychological, social and geographical factors predisposing to alcoholism. What is striking is the paucity of true alcoholics amongst composers. There is one simple reason for composers being so relatively free of this disease: established alcoholism is inconsistent with sustained, serious musical composition. That novelists and poets may have been apparently more susceptible is beyond the scope of this book.

Page 101 of 729