Project MUSE®: Health and History - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Health and History.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 8 (2006) through current issueLatest Articles: Health and HistoryTWOProject MUSE®Health and History1839-33141442-1771Latest articles in Health and History. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Contested Territory: The History and Politics of Hospital Infection Prevention and Control in Australia 1960–2000
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987641
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Hospital-acquired infections are a relatively recent problem, becoming prominent during the nineteenth century when the effects of urbanisation and advances in medical sciences combined to increase demand for hospital beds in industrialised countries. Frequent overcrowding led to escalating hospital infection rates and patient deaths, and prompted rediscovery of the basic principles of infectious disease prevention, which had been known for centuries, but often neglected. Milestones in hospital infection prevention and control (IPC) during this period have been well-documented as the basis of modern hospital IPC.1Medical, nursing, and hospital practices in Australia, including IPC, have their origins in those of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmallContested Territory: The History and Politics of Hospital Infection Prevention and Control in Australia 1960–20002026-04-14text/htmlen-USContested Territory: The History and Politics of Hospital Infection Prevention and Control in Australia 1960–20002026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®1327932026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Labour Reactions to State and Federal Economic Policy During the 1919 Influenza Pandemic in New South Wales
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987642
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On 11 January 1919, the Royal Mail Steamer Niagara berthed in Sydney Harbour. This was the boat believed to have brought pandemic influenza to New Zealand on 12 October 1918, a tragedy which had so far claimed almost nine thousand lives. At first, the men onshore refused to unload it.1 The Sydney Firemen's and Deckhands' Union explained that in light of infection risks, seamen would not begin unloading until three demands were satisfied: a wage increase of 35 shillings per month, five hundred pounds' insurance against influenza, and guaranteed sick pay in the event of infection.2 True to their word, the unionists did not resume work until 20 January, after the Australasian United Steam Navigation (A.U.S.N) Shipping
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmallLabour Reactions to State and Federal Economic Policy During the 1919 Influenza Pandemic in New South Wales2026-04-14text/htmlen-USLabour Reactions to State and Federal Economic Policy During the 1919 Influenza Pandemic in New South Wales2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®1211252026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Intellectual Disability Nursing in New South Wales (1969 to 1985): The Voices of Nurses who Trained for the Mental Retardation Certificate
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987643
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With temperatures predicted to be in the low 20s and the chance of showers in Sydney, 34 children and 11 staff boarded a bus at Stockton Hospital bound for Taronga Zoo for a day out at the end of January, 1972. The five-and-a-half-hour bus trip to Sydney was to provide parents, especially those unable to visit their children at Stockton Hospital, with an opportunity to spend time with their children. The children were given drinks, ice-creams, and other goodies all bought with ward funds to sustain them throughout the morning. One of the children was the youngest daughter of a Mrs Pat Buckle, of Killara on Sydney's North Shore. Mrs Buckle's 11-year-old daughter had been admitted to Stockton Hospital for care after
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmallIntellectual Disability Nursing in New South Wales (1969 to 1985): The Voices of Nurses who Trained for the Mental Retardation Certificate2026-04-14text/htmlen-USIntellectual Disability Nursing in New South Wales (1969 to 1985): The Voices of Nurses who Trained for the Mental Retardation Certificate2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®660972026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Dr Sydney Allen, Homosexuality, and New Plymouth Prison, 1928–1957
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987644
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In 1949, Sydney Chalmers Allen, the medical officer at New Plymouth Prison in the North Island of New Zealand, wrote to Berkeley Lionel Dallard, the government's controller general of prisons. Allen described his difficulty with a growing insistence that homosexual people should live the life they wanted:
For the most part, the homosexual is a frustrating problem. Unlike other medical problems, we seldom have the satisfaction of getting a 'cure'. These people offend because they desire to offend and have no wish to alter their mode of living or their views of life.1
This posed an existential problem to Allen who, since 1928, had overseen attempts to 'treat' the prisoners at his institution: a 'sexual reformatory'
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmallDr Sydney Allen, Homosexuality, and New Plymouth Prison, 1928–19572026-04-14text/htmlen-USDr Sydney Allen, Homosexuality, and New Plymouth Prison, 1928–19572026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®946942026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14'A Gift of Unlimited Value': Public Health and Colonial Publishing in Indonesia (1910s–1945)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987645
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Modern public health was in many ways a child of the nineteeth century, but in much of the world, provision of substantial medical facilities and essential efforts to change the fundamental context of public health by educating and changing society with modern scientific knowledge was part of the twentienth century.2 Medical schools and even university education spread throughout Asia in this period. Japan's western medical training began in the nineteenth century, but developments in areas colonised by European powers were often slower. Singapore established a medical college to train personnel in 1905, the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Government Medical School, and graduated its first Malay
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmall'A Gift of Unlimited Value': Public Health and Colonial Publishing in Indonesia (1910s–1945)2026-04-14text/htmlen-US'A Gift of Unlimited Value': Public Health and Colonial Publishing in Indonesia (1910s–1945)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®826852026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Air Vice Marshall Sir Philip Livingston: Ophthalmologist and Aviation Researcher
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987646
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At the Ophthalmological Society of Australia's meeting in 1946, the president introduced Philip Livingston as 'the visual centre—motor, sensory and psychological—of the Royal Air Force'.1 Though this may have seemed hyperbolic, his comments showed the high regard in which Livingston was held in Australian ophthalmology.Air Vice-Marshal Sir Philip Clermont Livingston KBE, CB, CStJ, AFC, KHS, MB, FRCS (Edin), MRCS, LRCP, DPH, DOMS (1893–1982) was a Canadian-born, British-trained ophthalmologist who had a distinguished career as a military officer, clinician, and
Image 1
Sir Philip Clermont Livingston in 1948. Source: ©National Portrait Gallery, London.2
researcher. He joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1919 and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmallAir Vice Marshall Sir Philip Livingston: Ophthalmologist and Aviation Researcher2026-04-14text/htmlen-USAir Vice Marshall Sir Philip Livingston: Ophthalmologist and Aviation Researcher2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®780242026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Old Black Cloud: A Cultural History of Mental Depression in Aotearoa New Zealand by Jacqueline Leckie (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987647
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In Old Black Cloud, the accomplished academic, Jacqueline Leckie, has produced a sweeping portrait of mental depression in postcolonial Aotearoa New Zealand. It contains multitudes of historical examples, related with compassion and an eye to context. The book is a fitting culmination of Leckie's expertise, self-described as 'interdisciplinary research … in health history, migration and diaspora, ethnicity, identity and gender'.1The striking cover illustration, an engraving by E. Mervyn Taylor, sets the tone. Although one reviewer described it as 'foreboding', to me the engraving evoked compassion and hope, showcasing the aesthetic and technical skills of the artist. Produced by Taylor in the depths of the Great
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmallOld Black Cloud: A Cultural History of Mental Depression in Aotearoa New Zealand by Jacqueline Leckie (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USOld Black Cloud: A Cultural History of Mental Depression in Aotearoa New Zealand by Jacqueline Leckie (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®106842026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Music in the Flesh: An Early Modern Musical Physiology by Bettina Varwig (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987648
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Music in the Flesh is an exegesis about the early modern physiology and soul of music; its power to enter a physical and spiritual being, both male and female, and influence it profoundly. Its focus is primarily but not exclusively on the 'early modern Lutheran German lands' because, as Varwig tells us, the discipline of musicology 'lags behind' the scholarship on Italian, English or French repertories from a carnal perspective' (p. xxi). The reader should forget what they think they already know about this period of music and be guided, instead, by Varwig's innovative readings and interpretations of theoretical texts and musical scores, amply illustrated and accompanied by figures and musical examples, and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmallMusic in the Flesh: An Early Modern Musical Physiology by Bettina Varwig (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USMusic in the Flesh: An Early Modern Musical Physiology by Bettina Varwig (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®83612026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14The Sydney Cove Naval Surgeons 1788–1794 by Bruce Short (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987649
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At the time of embarkation of the First Fleet destined for Australia, the Royal Navy had achieved dominance of the seas. With victory over the French at Quiberon Bay and the fall of Quebec in 1759 during the Seven Years War, this dominance was established. This meant that trade routes and the British commercial interests that depended on them had become much safer. It was the strict hierarchal organisation of the Royal Navy and its personnel that underpinned the development of this superiority. Coupled with this was the advancement in ship design which allowed the British fleet to have superior fighting ships with greater firepower and manoeuvrability, a factor that became crucial in face-to-face sea warfare.Arthur
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmallThe Sydney Cove Naval Surgeons 1788–1794 by Bruce Short (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USThe Sydney Cove Naval Surgeons 1788–1794 by Bruce Short (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®71812026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14Insulin: A Hundred-Year History by Stuart Bradwel (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987650
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The first account of what came to be known as diabetes mellitus appeared in the British Medical Journal in 1892. It described a ten-year-old boy who, despite eating well, was desperately thirsty and losing weight rapidly. In a twenty-four-hour period, he produced ten pints of urine containing an 'abundance' of sugar, before dying, emaciated, a few days later (p. 1).Diabetes has affected humankind for thousands of years. Serious illness which caused excessive thirst and copious sweet urination was reported in writings from the second century from Greece, as well as in early Ayurvedic texts and Imperial Chinese writings, highlighting how long a treatment for diabetes has been needed.Just before the development of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmallInsulin: A Hundred-Year History by Stuart Bradwel (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USInsulin: A Hundred-Year History by Stuart Bradwel (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®79542026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14A Formidable Man: The Life of John William Springthorpe by Allan Mawdsley (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987653
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Allan Mawdsley's biography of Dr John William Springthorpe (widely known as 'Springy') provides fascinating insights into the life and contributions of this early graduate of the Melbourne Medical School, and of the medical and political scene in Melbourne and beyond, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mawdsley is well qualified to write this work, given his long experience as a psychiatrist and his eminence in the Order of St John, an organisation in which Springthorpe also shone.The use of 'formidable' in the book title is appropriate. The book documents Springthorpe's substantial contributions to medicine but also his many battles against medical and political authority—a number of these the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/815/image/coversmallA Formidable Man: The Life of John William Springthorpe by Allan Mawdsley (review)2026-04-14text/htmlen-USA Formidable Man: The Life of John William Springthorpe by Allan Mawdsley (review)2026-04-142026TWOProject MUSE®78902026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-04-14