American Association for the History of Medicine: Report of the Sixty-Ninth Annual Meeting

The sixty-ninth Annual Meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine was held in Buffalo, New York, 9–12 May 1996 at the Hyatt Regency- Buffalo Hotel.

The following summary has been prepared by the Secretary-Treasurer, J. Worth Estes, and is intended for the information of the members of the Association. The official minutes and reports are preserved in the office of the Secretary.

Program

Thursday, 9 May

AAHM Council Meeting

Opening Reception

Friday, 10 May

Plenary Session: Welcome and Presidential Address, J. Worth Estes, presiding

Why Does Gout Also Befall Some Women?

Thomas G. Benedek

Concurrent Sessions

• Session 1.A: Starstruck Scholars: Medicine in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Luke Demaitre, presiding

  • Medical Scholars at the University of Paris, 1250–1400
    Cornelius O’Boyle

  • Medicine and Astrology in Late Medieval Montpellier: The Case of Epidemics
    Ralph Drayton

  • Laurent Joubert’s Contribution to Sixteenth-Century Physiology of Laughter
    Vera Cecília Machline

• Session 1.B: Doctors’ Disorders: Aspects of Mental Disease in the Nineteenth Century, Toby Gelfand, presiding

  • The Insane between Doctor and Police: New Evidence on Philippe Pinel’s “Moral Treatment” at Salpêtrière Hospice, 1802–1805
    Dora B. Weiner

  • “Their Mothers’ Sons”: War Neuroses, Maladjusted Veterans, and Overprotective Mothers
    Hans Pols

  • Remembering “Nostalgia”: Memory Disorders, Military Medicine and the American Civil War
    Lisa Herschbach

• Session 1.C: No Place Like Home: Healthcare and the Domestic Environment, Charles Rosenberg, presiding

• Twilight Homes: Redesigning the End of Life in Los Angeles, 1870–1930
  David C. Sloane

• At Home in the Modern Hospital, 1918–39
  Annmarie Adams

• The Pathology and Hygiene of Housework
  Allison L. Hepler

Luncheon Sessions

• Celebrating 150 Years of Medical Technology: History from the Collections of the National Museum of American History
  Ramunas Kondratas, moderator
  Pat Gossell, Judy Chelnick, Terry Sharrer, and Audrey Davis, panelists

• Piecing Together the Past: Reconstructing Medical Life through Ephemera
  Sheila K. O’Neill, chair and moderator
  Katherine Ott, Scott Eberle, speakers
  Archivists and Librarians in the History of the Health Sciences, sponsor

Concurrent Sessions

• Session 2.A: Border Crossings: Transcultural and Colonial Medicine, John Harley Warner, presiding

  • Red-Hair Medicine Imported into Japan in the Eighteenth Century
    Harm Beukers

  • The Rise of Western Medicine and the Decline of Traditional Medicine in Korea, 1876–1910
    Jong-Chan Lee and Chang-Duck Kee

  • Familiar in Myth, Unfamiliar in Practice: Bubonic Plague in Hong Kong and Calcutta, 1894–1896
    Molly Sutphen

  • Meanings of Midwifery: Government Responses to Japanese-American and African-American Midwives
    Susan L. Smith

• Session 2.B: State and the Art: Legal and Legislative Aspects of Medicine, Ted Brown, presiding

  • Dying to be Beautiful: The 1933 FDA “Chamber of Horrors”
    Gwen Kay

  • Hans Eppinger’s Life and Afterlife: Texts in the Unmaking of History
    M. Michael Thaler

  • The Federal Government’s Use of Medicare to Integrate Hospitals, 1965–67
    P. Preston Reynolds

  • Increasing Homogeneity, Risking Suits: Origins of the Malpractice Crisis of the 1970s
    Neal C. Hogan

• Session 2.C: Debating Alcohol and Drug Addiction in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century America, Sarah Tracy, presiding

  • Panel Presentations

  • “Drinking Mothers”: Female Alcoholism and Reproductive Issues in the United States, 1900–1960
    Michelle McClellan

  • Creating FAS, or: Doctors Can Discover Disease but It Takes a Whole Society to Make a Syndrome
    Janet Golden

  • Constructing Addict Identities: Opiate Addicts at Philadelphia General Hospital in the 1920s
    Caroline Jean Acker

  • The Methadone Make-Over of Marie Nyswander
    David T. Courtwright
    John Burnham and David Musto, commentators and discussion

The Fielding H. Garrison Lecture

• “Bedside Manners in the Middle Ages”
  Michael McVaugh

Saturday, 11 May

Concurrent Sessions

• Session 3.A: Rules and Regulation: Women, Hormones, and Society, Alison Li, presiding

  • Gym Periods and Monthly Periods: The Question of Exercise and Menstruation in American Physical Education, 1900–1940
    Martha H. Verbrugge

  • “Endocrine Perverts” and “Derailed Menopausals”: Sex Role Expectations and Mental Instability During Menopause, 1900–1935
    Judith A. Houck

  • Packaging the Pill
    Patricia Gossel

• Session 3.B: Patients’ Progress: The Asylum from the Patient’s Perspective, Jack D. Pressman, presiding

  • Accounts of Abuse of Toronto Insane Asylum Inmates: Historical Evidence and Methodological...