Project MUSE®: Canadian Journal of Health History - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Canadian Journal of Health History.daily12026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 33 (2016) through vol. 42 (2025)Latest Articles: Canadian Journal of Health HistoryTWOProject MUSE®Canadian Journal of Health History2816-64772816-6469Latest articles in Canadian Journal of Health History. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Introduction: Mothering, Medicine, and Health
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984753
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Mothers are central to the stories we tell about medicine and health. They have been seen as critical healthcare workers in their own families, doctors have been called on to mother their patients, and over the last century, both pregnancy and motherhood have been medicalized. In this special issue, we shift the focus from motherhood as a constructed and contested identity to mothering as an action. As a broad and inclusive analytic term, mothering prompts us to look for relationships of care beyond traditional definitions of kinship. All of our papers include biological mothers in one way or another, and two focus in particular on the relationship between a famous physician and his mother. But this collection of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallIntroduction: Mothering, Medicine, and Health2026-03-12text/htmlen-USIntroduction: Mothering, Medicine, and Health2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®627762026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Unearthing Mother–Midwives: Black Women's Hidden Legacy in Canadian Maternal Care
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984754
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Before arriving in the Americas, African women and men, in some ethnic groups, were the primary caregivers of pregnant women, and reproductive health care providers for their communities. Their expertise was typically acquired through apprenticeships.1 These responsibilities became the purview of enslaved and free women following the transatlantic slave trade. Scholarship on Black women in the Americas has articulated the historical importance of maternal newborn care and reproductive healthcare as crucial factors shaping the experiences of these women and pubescent girls. As part of the "economics of slavery," Black women not only were forced into childbearing but also were denied the opportunity to mother their
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallUnearthing Mother–Midwives: Black Women's Hidden Legacy in Canadian Maternal Care2026-03-12text/htmlen-USUnearthing Mother–Midwives: Black Women's Hidden Legacy in Canadian Maternal Care2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®1818702026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Dhai, Ayah, and Anglo-Indian Mother: Rivalry in the Nursery in Nineteenth-Century British India
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984755
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In the last thirty-five years, the study of Indian and Anglo-Indian women in nineteenth-century British India has emerged as a rich field of inquiry within historical, literary, political, anthropological, and sociological approaches to the colonial situation under the British Raj.1 This essay examines a subset of that study: the fraught relationships between the Anglo-Indian memsahib mother2 and those female Indian servants most intimately involved in the nursing and care of her children: the dhai (wet nurse), who was hired for a brief time to breastfeed an infant, and the ayah (nursemaid), who cared for the child for an extended time after weaning.3 Although this essay focuses primarily on the memsahib–dhai dyad
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallDhai, Ayah, and Anglo-Indian Mother: Rivalry in the Nursery in Nineteenth-Century British India2026-03-12text/htmlen-USDhai, Ayah, and Anglo-Indian Mother: Rivalry in the Nursery in Nineteenth-Century British India2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®1075762026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Au-delà de la maternité sociale : Les femmes médecins de Chine du Sud et la redéfinition du modèle professionnel féminin au début du XXe siècle
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984756
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Dans le récit autobiographique qu'elle rédige une fois rentrée aux États-Unis en 1918, la Dre. Mary Hannah Fulton, fondatrice de l'école de médecine pour femmes Hackett (Hackett Medical College for Women) située à Guangzhou en Chine du Sud, se désole à plusieurs occasions que des femmes diplômées de l'institution qu'elle a mise sur pied abandonnent leur carrière pour se marier et de fonder une famille1. Elle cite en exemple le cas de la Dre. Mei Enlian qui, lorsqu'elle épouse un pasteur chinois à la fin des années 1910, quitte ses fonctions de doyenne et de professeure à Hackett. S'appuyant sur sa propre expérience, ainsi que sur celle de ses collègues féminines, la Dre. Fulton tient pour acquis que la Dre. Mei n'a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallAu-delà de la maternité sociale : Les femmes médecins de Chine du Sud et la redéfinition du modèle professionnel féminin au début du XXe siècle2026-03-12text/htmlen-USAu-delà de la maternité sociale : Les femmes médecins de Chine du Sud et la redéfinition du modèle professionnel féminin au début du XXe siècle2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®804192026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Mothering Machines: The Promise of Infant Incubators in the Early Twentieth Century
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984757
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In Ellis Parker Butler's short novel, The Incubator Baby (1906), we meet a tiny infant named Marjorie, who weighed less than 2 pounds at birth (Figure 1). As she gazes out at the world from inside a small glass box we hear her inner thoughts: the incubator was comfortable, "the air was soft and balmy and very warm," but while "dozens of faces peered at her curiously" she searched in vain for the one person she most wanted, which was her mother.1 When Marjorie's mother finally does arrive she checks Marjorie's "temperature, sanitation, alimentation, digestion and other scientific things"; she takes notes, makes a chart, and leaves without even glancing at her daughter. Marjorie is quite disappointed, not wanting her
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallMothering Machines: The Promise of Infant Incubators in the Early Twentieth Century2026-03-12text/htmlen-USMothering Machines: The Promise of Infant Incubators in the Early Twentieth Century2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®913922026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Mothercraft, "Clean" Midwifery, and Child Care: "Scientific" Motherhood Advice at Health Exhibitions in Colonial Bengal
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984758
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By the early twentieth century, anxieties about high infant mortality as a critical public health problem became visible in print media across British India and beyond. The project of uplifting the "ignorant" Indian mother together with "clean midwifery" versus "dirty midwifery" debates were central to both colonial and nationalist "civilising missions."1 "Scientific motherhood" advice was popularly promoted as "mothercraft," an ideology of child care and a set of practices that emphasized discipline and precision under medical supervision.2 Together with "modern" midwifery that aimed to improve childbirth conditions, these reforms were considered by colonial and nationalist medical practitioners as indispensable
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallMothercraft, "Clean" Midwifery, and Child Care: "Scientific" Motherhood Advice at Health Exhibitions in Colonial Bengal2026-03-12text/htmlen-USMothercraft, "Clean" Midwifery, and Child Care: "Scientific" Motherhood Advice at Health Exhibitions in Colonial Bengal2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®1646422026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12The Letters of Jean Jefferson Penfield and Wilder Penfield: Two Readings
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984759
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Wilder Penfield, the famous Canadian neurosurgeon who founded the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) in 1934, carried on an abundant correspondence with his mother, Jean Jefferson Penfield, from his childhood until her death in 1935. This two-way conversation-in-writing, which can be consulted at the Osler Library at McGill University,1 is part of the vast archival legacy left by the physician. Relative to other sources, the letters have been understudied by historians. This correspondence provides ample information about middle-class Anglo-American families in general and, in particular, the life of an Anglo-American woman who raised three children without a husband. It chronicles early twentieth-century
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallThe Letters of Jean Jefferson Penfield and Wilder Penfield: Two Readings2026-03-12text/htmlen-USThe Letters of Jean Jefferson Penfield and Wilder Penfield: Two Readings2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®102402026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Place and Space in the Letters of Wilder Penfield and Jean Jefferson Penfield
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984760
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Wilder Penfield, the American-born Canadian neurosurgeon who founded the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) in 1934, carried on an extensive, life-long correspondence with his mother, Jean Jefferson Penfield.1 These curated letters hold information on landmark events in the famous doctor's life including special opportunities in his education, travel, and family life.2 They also signal how perceptions of place and space kept Penfield and his mother connected. On 26 July 1926, he described the function of Jean's letters to him as connections to home, which completed him, and as counterpoints to his dizzyingly busy lifestyle. Mostly the letters served as simulations of being together. "I'm just writing so as to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallPlace and Space in the Letters of Wilder Penfield and Jean Jefferson Penfield2026-03-12text/htmlen-USPlace and Space in the Letters of Wilder Penfield and Jean Jefferson Penfield2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®804042026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12"Captain of the Citadel": The Figure of the Mother across Wilder Penfield's Professional and Domestic Spheres
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984761
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[Hippocrates] went to the doorway and looked around the screen; he then stepped inside. His mother was dressed and sitting at the loom, but he saw that she was asleep. Her hands lay in her lap where they had fallen; her head rested against the warp. He looked at her and a wave of tenderness swept over him. Her graying hair shone smooth in the light of the lamp. Her face was so calm and strong. How much help and strength had come from her to him! How much support and joy she had given his father through many years!"Mother," he said softly.She started up. "Oh! I must have fallen asleep!"She put her arms about him and held him tight, not saying anything for a time. He bent his head and his lips touched her hair. The
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmall"Captain of the Citadel": The Figure of the Mother across Wilder Penfield's Professional and Domestic Spheres2026-03-12text/htmlen-US"Captain of the Citadel": The Figure of the Mother across Wilder Penfield's Professional and Domestic Spheres2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®1027452026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Mobilizing Mothers and Empowering Women: Comprehensive Rural Health Projects in India and Bangladesh
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984762
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Carl Taylor, founder and longtime chair of the Johns Hopkins University Department of International Health, drew on decades of experience leading public health programs in India, East Africa, and China in asserting that "mothers are the most numerous, the most important and the most effective health workers in the world."1 As Taylor had long observed and come to recognize, it was the mothers in South Asian villages, in consultation with other mothers, who made the important medical decisions for their families, on nutrition, ante- and post-natal care, childbirth, vitamins, vaccinations, and available therapeutic drugs. Given the often prohibitive expense (including the opportunity costs) of seeking treatment at
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallMobilizing Mothers and Empowering Women: Comprehensive Rural Health Projects in India and Bangladesh2026-03-12text/htmlen-USMobilizing Mothers and Empowering Women: Comprehensive Rural Health Projects in India and Bangladesh2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®1107452026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12"Who Were the 'Experts' Here Anyway?": Mothering, Architecture, and Terminal Illness in Oxford, 1978–95
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984763
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The first appeal leaflet for Helen House featured two cover images: a forget-me-not and a hand-drawn house (Figure 1). The pale blue five-petalled flower had become an emblem of Helen House during the planning stages. The house was surrounded by a garden and a fence, with a pathway leading up to its front door. Its gabled roof and simple, four-square-windowed facade exposed it as the handiwork of a child. It had been sketched in 1947 by a then-five-year-old Frances Dominica Ritchie, who by the 1980s had become a paediatric nurse, an Anglican sister, and a founding member of the Helen House team. The drawing was of her childhood home and was intended to comfort her brother who, at the time, was sick in hospital. The
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmall"Who Were the 'Experts' Here Anyway?": Mothering, Architecture, and Terminal Illness in Oxford, 1978–952026-03-12text/htmlen-US"Who Were the 'Experts' Here Anyway?": Mothering, Architecture, and Terminal Illness in Oxford, 1978–952026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®746352026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Paul Potter (3 April 1944–3 April 2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984764
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The Canadian Society for the History of Medicine (CSHM) has lost a brilliant scholar and a good friend with the death of Paul Potter on his 81st birthday. Paul served the CSHM in many roles, including as co-editor of the Bulletin (1990–1995), secretary treasurer (1996–2002), Vice-President, President, and Past-President (2003–2009).Paul was predeceased by his parents Joseph C. Potter (1992), a bookkeeper, and Iola Mary Potter (2003), a home economics teacher, and his younger sister Martha Slattery (2005). His maternal grandfather, Dr. M. J. O. Walker (d. 1946), had been a 1907 Queen's medical graduate. Paul's much-loved aunt, nurse Phyllis Walker (d. 2012), served overseas with the armed forces and later as a head
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallPaul Potter (3 April 1944–3 April 2025)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USPaul Potter (3 April 1944–3 April 2025)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®209722026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12The Hour of Absinthe: A Cultural History of France's Most Notorious Drink par Nina S. Studer (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984765
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L' absinthe est une boisson alcoolisée emblématique de la société française de la Belle Époque. Avec sa couleur verte caractéristique, ses publicités et sa mauvaise réputation, elle marque encore de nos jours l'imaginaire collectif. Interdite en France en 1915, cette décision a contribué en partie à apaiser les mouvements de tempérance tout en ne touchant pas aux alcools dits « hygiéniques » comme le vin, la bière et le cidre. Dans cet ouvrage, l'historienne Nina S. Studer, spécialiste des différentes formes de boissons à l'époque contemporaine, s'attache à contextualiser et déconstruire un certain nombre de mythes associés à l'absinthe à partir de sources issues de la presse populaire et des discours médicaux.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallThe Hour of Absinthe: A Cultural History of France's Most Notorious Drink par Nina S. Studer (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USThe Hour of Absinthe: A Cultural History of France's Most Notorious Drink par Nina S. Studer (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®78092026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print by Melissa Reynolds (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984766
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The premodern pursuit of natural knowledge typically brings to mind medieval scholastic tradition or its abandonment by seventeenth-century scientists. In Reading Practice, Melissa Reynolds shifts attention to ordinary English people who, she argues, engaged wholeheartedly in acquiring natural knowledge.In 1605, Sir Francis Bacon claimed that such ordinary folks were primarily craftspersons who apprehended the natural world through trial and error, unencumbered by the "musty [medieval] textual tradition" (4). Reynolds reveals the fallacy in this, demonstrating that, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries especially, non-Latinate Englishmen and women eagerly sought natural knowledge through time-honoured
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallReading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print by Melissa Reynolds (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USReading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print by Melissa Reynolds (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®95962026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Early Modern Naval Health Care in England, 1650–1750 by Matthew Neufeld (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984767
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For a period of over one hundred years, from the mid-seventeenth century until the late-eighteenth century, British naval health care on land depended, in whole or in part, on the services of private care givers and nurses. These care givers, many of whom were women, provided for sick and injured sailors in a network of residences and public houses that surrounded Britain's naval ports, a system known as "town quarters", later supplemented by a smaller number of private contract-hospitals. Subsequent centuries have not been kind to the reputation of this system, and both naval officials and historians have criticized its unhygienic lodgings and abundant opportunities for desertion and drinking. According to this
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallEarly Modern Naval Health Care in England, 1650–1750 by Matthew Neufeld (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USEarly Modern Naval Health Care in England, 1650–1750 by Matthew Neufeld (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®113582026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Le soin des pauvres. Vocations féminines dans le Paris du XIXe siècle par Anne Jusseaume (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984768
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Dans une somme impressionnante et passionnante, tirée de son travail de thèse de doctorat, l'historienne française Anne Jusseaume retrace l'histoire des hospitalières dans le Paris du 19e siècle. Ces sœurs de charité, terme choisi par l'autrice pour se référer à l'ensemble des sœurs de son corpus, s'organisent en différents instituts religieux aux règles et à l'organisation spécifiques. Mais toutes ont, comme apostolat principal, le soin des pauvres.Navigant grâce à un glossaire fort utile en fin d'ouvrage, celui-ci s'organise en trois parties. La première « Au service des pauvres », permet en trois chapitres de planter les prérequis nécessaires à la compréhension du propos. Tout d'abord, il s'agit de définir plus
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallLe soin des pauvres. Vocations féminines dans le Paris du XIXe siècle par Anne Jusseaume (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USLe soin des pauvres. Vocations féminines dans le Paris du XIXe siècle par Anne Jusseaume (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®82562026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Seized by Uncertainty: The Markets, Media, and Special Interests That Shaped Canada's Response to COVID-19 by Kevin Quigley et al. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984769
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When the novel coronavirus ravaged Wuhan in 2019, Canadian health officials looked on with trepidation. They knew Canada was vulnerable and, as the title of this book reminds us, they were seized by uncertainty.Canada was nowhere near ready for COVID-19. Despite some experience fighting off SARS, and despite the looming threat of Ebola and influenza, Canada's two pandemic early warning systems had languished: the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) was so understaffed it didn't even issue a warning, and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) was so preoccupied with health promotion it grossly underestimated the perils of the disease (285–7). There was no Canadian sentinel on guard to measure the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallSeized by Uncertainty: The Markets, Media, and Special Interests That Shaped Canada's Response to COVID-19 by Kevin Quigley et al. (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USSeized by Uncertainty: The Markets, Media, and Special Interests That Shaped Canada's Response to COVID-19 by Kevin Quigley et al. (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®113372026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Made to Order: The Designing of Animals by Margaret E. Derry (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984770
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Professor Margaret Derry's monograph about animal breeding through the ages may have been better served by its original working subtitle, "Designing Animals and Impact on Human Society, 17th to 21st Century," which she includes on her University of Guelph faculty biography webpage. This deceptively short monograph—comprising less than two hundred pages—covers a sweepingly broad time range. While the focus is on the past three centuries, and the study is geographically centred on North America and Europe, Derry's survey of the history of the human practice of the "designing" of animals begins with breeding theory and methodology in Roman times.Derry is an adjunct professor at the University of Guelph (Ontario
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallMade to Order: The Designing of Animals by Margaret E. Derry (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USMade to Order: The Designing of Animals by Margaret E. Derry (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®67722026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12Hungry and Starving: Voices of the Great Soviet Famine, 1928–1934 by James R. Gibson (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/984771
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A crisis perhaps overshadowed by the events of the Great Depression and the subsequent Second World War, the Soviet Famine of the late 1920s and early 1930s is a disaster not as well discussed in public circles as it is in academia. James Gibson's Hungry and Starving: Voices of the Great Soviet Famine, 1928–1934 delivers a well-deserved and vigorous academic analysis on the subject. Examining the famine in various terms and attributes, including duration, causes, extent, and perhaps impact, Gibson gives voice to those across the Soviet Union who keenly felt the effects of years of famine, including "Russians, Ukrainians, Western Siberians and Central Asians, Volga Germans and Don Cossacks, Kazakhs and Kalmyks" (4)
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-18T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/699/image/coversmallHungry and Starving: Voices of the Great Soviet Famine, 1928–1934 by James R. Gibson (review)2026-03-12text/htmlen-USHungry and Starving: Voices of the Great Soviet Famine, 1928–1934 by James R. Gibson (review)2026-03-122026TWOProject MUSE®74262026-05-18T00:00:00-05:002026-03-12