The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine (review)

In this latest entry in the Oxford Handbook series, an able group of authors reviews the historiography of a wide range of areas related to the history of medicine, as well as offering suggestions for future research. The editor has crafted this book with two ambitious goals, both intending to demonstrate that the history of medicine is relevant for contemporary policy analyses and also hoping to show that medical history can have instrumental value as an intellectual bridge between the worlds of medicine and of history. These are ambitious goals, and to a great extent the contributors succeed in meeting them.

The volume opens with an insightful, overarching introduction to the past several decades of work in the history of medicine by the editor, Mark Jackson. The remainder of the book has a tripartite structure. The first section comprises seven chapters reviewing medical history by historical periods, from the ancient world to the present day. The next section, ten chapters, examines medical history as related to place. Sanjoy Bhattacharya opens by showing how the history of smallpox eradication simply cannot be understood absent a global perspective. The remaining chapters in this section travel widely around the globe, touching on six of the seven continents. Several authors caution against the too-common tendency to apply frameworks originally created for the history of Western medicine to write the history of non-Western medicine. The handbook’s last section, seventeen chapters in all, deftly covers a wide range of themes and methods. These include not only the expected topics (childhood, old age, death, public health, ethics) but also some relatively surprising and welcome essays, such as ones discussing heterodoxy, and film and television. One of the more stimulating essays, by Robert G. W. Kirk and Michael Worboys, appeals for more attention to species and interspecies relations. The authors note the “disappearance of the animal in medical history” (p. 571) and make a plea for reintegration of histories of veterinary and human medicine.

This is a well-written, useful set of essays. Despite the inclusion of a wide range of geographically based chapters, the overall center of gravity remains solidly Western, although authors often highlight the plurality and malleability of historical assumptions within the Western world. Readers from outside of Great Britain will likely note a strong tendency to focus on British events and structures.

The handbook will prove valuable for many readers, serving to enlighten both those new to the field and those who have been writing and teaching medical history for some time. Advanced undergraduate or graduate students studying medical history who want a concise introduction to a specific topic will find this an excellent place to start, including both a critical analysis of the literature and useful suggestions for further reading. It will also be useful for graduate students in departments of history who are not focusing on medical history, but whose work would benefit from engagement with the history of medicine.

This is a “handbook,” not an encyclopedia, and some gaps in coverage are inevitable. There is relatively little on some professions that play a central role in medical care, such as nursing, pharmacy, and other health professions. And most surprising, especially for a book intended to have an impact on contemporary and future practice, the authors by and large have relatively little to say about the history of actual, on-the-ground, nitty-gritty practice of clinical medicine. For example, in many Western countries the medical experience for patient and physician alike is shaped by ubiquitous clinical practice guidelines, guidelines generated by the relatively new field of health services research, that research itself in part a product of information-manipulating technology. All of these themes have a rich history, but attempts to address that history receive scant attention. The history of clinical practice is largely absent. The history of technology in general is relatively underdiscussed. One chapter offers refreshing and well-done attention to the important...