[Antike Anatomien]. / Antike Anatomien.

One still wonders today at the anatomical precision with which various ancient authors, like Homer, depict the inner body. How was it possible to get such a precise knowledge, at a period when medicine was not particularly famous for its scientific achievements? The history of the beginnings of western anatomy reveals a surprising variety: its progress, until the tremendous technical fulfilments of contemporary anatomical imaging, has been neither linear, nor spontaneous, nor even necessary. Before becoming one of the epistemological bedrocks of medicine, its history reveals itself filled with accidents, ruptures, contingencies, and actors who contributed to modify its course.

[Organ donation and the role of patients' associations in Western Switzerland]. / Le rôle des associations de patients face au don d'organes en Suisse romande.

In the context of lay mobilization in health-related areas, this article addresses the role and activities of patients' associations in connection with organ donation, on the basis of interviews carried out with thirty members of transplant patients' associations in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. First, we describe the three main categories of activities conducted by these associations. While self-help and public awareness activities are predominant, policy-oriented actions are marginal. Then, we examine the factors likely to explain why these associations have a limited capacity to be active, especially in the public sphere. Such a lack of social visibility is all the more important in the current political context, characterized by the implementation of a national action plan designed to improve organ donation.

[Medicine and pain: history of a relationship]. / Médecine et douleur: histoire d'une relation.

The vagueness surrounding the terms "suffering" and "pain" invites us to reflect upon the relationships between a physiological fact and a constitutive dimension of the human experience. History shows a constant medical preoccupation facing pain as a clinical symptom, endowed with a rich terminology, many ways of relieving pain and speculations on its diagnostic value. In the contemporary era, pain is revealed as a proper scientific object. This development accompanies an evolution of medical practices on pain that, far from representing continuous progress, adopts rather uneven and sometimes surprising outlines. As a whole, medicine is characterised by an important ambivalence when confronting pain, valuating it as an useful auxiliary or on the contrary denying the painful experience.

The tobacco industry's past role in weight control related to smoking.

BACKGROUND: Smoking is thought to produce an appetite-suppressing effect by many smokers. Thus, the fear of body weight gain often outweighs the perception of health benefits associated with smoking cessation, particularly in adolescents. We examined whether the tobacco industry played a role in appetite and body weight control related to smoking and smoking cessation. METHODS: We performed a systematic search within the archives of six major US and UK tobacco companies (American Tobacco, Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Lorillard, Brown & Williamson and British American Tobacco) that were Defendants in tobacco litigation settled in 1998. Findings are dated from 1949 to 1999. RESULTS: The documents revealed the strategies planned and used by the industry to enhance effects of smoking on weight and appetite, mostly by chemical modifications of cigarettes contents. Appetite-suppressant molecules, such as tartaric acid and 2-acetylpyridine were added to some cigarettes. CONCLUSION: These tobacco companies played an active and not disclaimed role in the anti-appetite effects of smoking, at least in the past, by adding appetite-suppressant molecules into their cigarettes.

[Medical consultation by letter in the 18th century]. / Consulter par lettre au XVIIIe siècle.

Medical consultations by letter are especially abundant in the 18th century; recent research in the history of medicine has focused on this kind of archives, hoping to get a better idea of lay medical culture and medical practice, everyday life of the patient in the early modern period, private experience of suffering, relationships between popular knowledge and medical theories of illness, as well as the major factors of the doctor-patient relationship. However, to interpret them is not an easy nor an univocal task. This article suggests to analyse medical consultations by letter as an elaborate practice, starting from the communicational structure of the material in order to legitimate a two-scale approach, i.e. from the perspective of the healer and the person who is asking for a healing advice. In the first case, we analyse the correspondence of the Bernese physician Albrecht von Haller (1708--1777), and in the second case, the correspondence of the Vaudois physician Samuel-Auguste Tissot (1728--1797), with the aim of developing an approach of systematic comparative research.