Nancy Tomes

Continuity and Contingency: The Medical-Historical World according to Charles E. Rosenberg

F EW American historians of medicine and health care are as well known as Charles E. Rosenberg. Since his first book, The Cholera Years, appeared in 1962, the conceptual frameworks Charles (as everyone calls him) developed and refined in his many publications have formed the historiographic backbone of our field. His interests in history have been so catholic, and his personal support of individuals so wide-ranging, that several generations of scholars have been shaped by his influence. Yet perhaps because his influence has been so pervasive, his impact on the history of medicine remains largely unarticulated and unexamined. This roundtable represents a first effort to articulate and examine that influence. The articles gathered here were first presented at a conference held 18–19 June 2004, at Harvard University, where Charles currently holds the position of Ernest E. Monrad Professor in the Social Sciences in the Department of the History of Science. Unlike the conventional festschrift, the conference did not mark Charles’s retirement, but rather represented a celebration of his continued productivity as a thinker and as a mentor. Co-sponsored by the Harvard History of Science Department and the

Is There a Rosenberg School

Since his first book The Cholera Years appeared in 1962, Charles Rosenberg has had an enormous influence on the history of medicine. Not the least of that influence has been exercised through his role as a graduate teacher, advisor, and mentor. This article compares Rosenberg’s work with that of his students, to see if there is such a historiographic identity as the “Rosenberg School.” The authors, two Rosenberg students from different generations, conclude that there is not such a school, at least in the classic sense of the term. Yet they argue that certain common assumptions, or “Rosenberg Rules,” have been passed on from Rosenberg to the other scholars he has influenced. They also discuss the challenges they have encountered in applying Charles’s conceptual framework, worked out primarily in pre-1920 terms, to the late twentieth-century history of American medicine.

Beyond the "Two Psychiatries": Jack Pressman's Last Resort and the History of Twentieth-Century American Psychiatry: Introduction

After Jack Pressman’s death in June 1997, friends and colleagues sought various ways to honor his memory. With the help of Guenter Risse, Jack’s colleague at the University of California at San Francisco, I organized one such event for the 1998 annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine in Toronto, Canada: a lunchtime symposium titled “Beyond the ‘Two Psychiatries’: A Roundtable Discussion of the History of Twentieth-Century American Psychiatry.” Guenter Risse chaired the session, and shared his own personal reflections on Jack’s career at the University of California at San Francisco. In preparing their presentations, the other participants—John Burnham, Ellen Dwyer, and Joel Braslow—were asked to comment on two related questions: first, what problems does writing the history of twentieth-century psychiatry pose for scholars; and second, how does Jack’s work point to directions that future work should take? The papers in this Bulletin collection are revised versions of the talks that they gave at the Toronto meeting. As we all realized in organizing this symposium, Jack’s death could not help but affect the way his colleagues read what turned out to be his final piece of scholarship. Jack died shortly after finishing Last Resort: Psycho-

The History of Medicine in the Digital Age

Digital forms of communication are rapidly changing the landscape of humanities research in the United States. As little as five years ago, that research circulated primarily as static print texts—chiefly journals, articles, and books—access to which required the privileges of a university library. While this traditional print scholarship continues to be extremely important, what counts as a knowledge product is coming to include a wide range of digital forms such as blog posts, podcasts, websites, and Twitter feeds that their makers can share with anyone who has access to the Internet, usually at little to no cost. Many historians, including historians of medicine, have begun to embrace these new media forms and the opportunities they offer to reach a broader audience. At the same time, these trends are also anxiety-producing, a response apparent at the luncheon workshop on “The AAHM in the Digital Age” held at the 2013 annual meeting in Atlanta. Much of that anxiety stems from a concern that the new digital forms of scholarship will undercut the quality and legitimacy of the older print forms. In the context of dwindling library budgets and institutional support for humanities scholarship, the idea of promoting new digital forms of knowledge production may seem risky. Precisely because the use of digital media has come to be seen as trendy, yet another academic buzzword thrown around to curry administrative favor or build an academic reputation, many academics see reason to beware their spread. For historians of medicine, this kind of caution comes easily, in that our own research affirms the perils of an uncritical hankering to align with the latest trends in science and technology. We instinctively distrust any sort of triumphalist narrative that promotes digital technologies as the answer to the latest declaration of a humanities “crisis.”1 But as the history of medicine also teaches us, technologies in and of themselves do not “cause” anything; it is how they are used that makes for different outcomes. In that spirit, we propose in this article to take a closer look at how our fellow historians of medicine are using new forms of digital media. As their work shows, using digital tools to create different forms of knowledge does not mean demeaning or diluting traditional academic scholarship. In fact, the combination of new and old forms of knowledge production and dissemination can help both to prosper. The work historians of medicine are undertaking under the umbrella of “digital humanities” aims to create both different kinds of knowledge and new path-

The patient as consumer watchdog.

For better and worse, the roles of doctor shopper and patient watchdog will likely remain prominent and vexing features of American patienthood for decades to come.

The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life

Preface: Memories of Disease Past Introduction: The Gospel of Germs Part I: The Gospel Emergent, 1870-1890 Apostles of the Germ Whited Sepulchers Entrepreneurs of the Germ Part II: The Gospel Triumphant, 1890-1920 Disciples of the Laboratory Tuberculosis Religion The Domestication of the Germ Part III: The Gospel in Practice, 1900-1930 Antisepticonscious America The Wages of Dirt Were Death The Two-Edged Sword Part IV: The Gospel in Retreat The Waning of Enthusiasm Epilogue: The Gospel of Germs in the Age of AIDS Notes Acknowledgments Index