Commentary: Serving the nation, serving the people: echoes of war in the early NHS.

It is something of a cliché to speak of Britain as having been transformed by the traumas of World War II and by its aftermath. From the advent of the 'cradle to grave' Welfare State to the end of (formal) empire, the effects of total war were enduring. Typically, they have been explored in relation to demographic, socioeconomic, technological and geopolitical trends and events. Yet as the articles in this volume observe across a variety of examples, World War II affected individuals, groups and communities in ways both intimate and immediate. For them, its effects were directly embodied That is, they were experienced physically and emotionally-in physical and mental wounds, in ruptured domesticities and new opportunities and in the wholesale disruption and re-formation of communities displaced by bombing and reconstruction. So it is, perhaps, unsurprising that Britain's post-war National Health Service, as the state institution charged with managing the bodies and behaviour of the British people, was itself permeated by a 'wartime spirit' long after the cessation of international hostilities.

Compassion in nursing: Solution or stereotype?

Compassion in healthcare has received significant attention recently, on an international scale, with concern raised about its absence during clinical interactions. As a concept, compassionate care has been linked to nursing. We examined historical discourse on this topic, to understand and situate current debates on compassionate care as a hallmark of high-quality services. Documents we looked at illustrated how responsibility for delivering compassionate care cannot be consigned to individual nurses. Health professionals must have the right environmental circumstances to be able to provide and engage in compassionate interactions with patients and their relatives. Hence, although compassionate care has been presented as a straightforward solution when crisis faces health services, this discourse, especially in policy documents, has often failed to acknowledge the system-level issues associated with its provision. This has resulted in simplistic presentations of 'compassion' as inexpensive and the responsibility of individual nurses, a misleading proposal that risks devaluing the energy and resources required to deliver compassionate care. It also overlooks the need for organisations, not just individuals, to be charged with upholding its provision.

Ideology and disease identity: the politics of rickets, 1929-1982.

How can we assess the reciprocal impacts of politics and medicine in the contemporary period? Using the example of rickets in twentieth century Britain, I will explore the ways in which a preventable, curable non-infectious disease came to have enormous political significance, first as a symbol of socioeconomic inequality, then as evidence of racial and ethnic health disparities. Between the 1920s and 1980s, clinicians, researchers, health workers, members of Parliament and later Britain's growing South Asian ethnic communities repeatedly confronted the British state with evidence of persistent nutritional deficiency among the British poor and British Asians. Drawing on bitter memories of the 'Hungry Thirties', postwar rickets-so often described as a 'Victorian' disease-became a high-profile sign of what was variously constructed as a failure of the Welfare State; or of the political parties charged with its protection; or of ethnically Asian migrants and their descendants to adapt to British life and norms. Here I will argue that rickets prompted such consternation not because of its severity, the cost of its treatment, or even its prevalence; but because of the ease with which it was politicised. I will explore the ways in which this condition was envisioned, defined and addressed as Britain moved from the postwar consensus to Thatcherism, and as Britain's diverse South Asian communities developed from migrant enclaves to settled multigenerational ethnic communities.

Weighing on us all? Quantification and cultural responses to obesity in NHS Britain.

How do cultures of self-quantification intersect with the modern state, particularly in relation to medical provision and health promotion? Here I explore the ways in which British practices and representations of body weight and weight management ignored or interacted with the National Health Service between 1948 and 2004. Through the lens of overweight, I examine health citizenship in the context of universal health provision funded from general taxation, and track attitudes toward "overweight" once its health implications and medical costs affected a public service as well as individual bodies and households. Looking at professional and popular discourses of overweight and obesity, I map the persistence of a highly individual culture of dietary and weight self-management in postwar Britain, and assess the degree to which it was challenged by a new measure of "obesity" - the body mass index - and by visions of an NHS burdened and even threatened by the increasing overweight of the citizens it was created to serve.

Using Neighborhood-Level Census Data to Predict Diabetes Progression in Patients with Laboratory-Defined Prediabetes.

CONTEXT: Research on predictors of clinical outcomes usually focuses on the impact of individual patient factors, despite known relationships between neighborhood environment and health. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether US census information on where a patient resides is associated with diabetes development among patients with prediabetes. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study of all 157,752 patients aged 18 years or older from Kaiser Permanente Northern California with laboratory-defined prediabetes (fasting plasma glucose, 100 mg/dL-125 mg/dL, and/or glycated hemoglobin, 5.7%-6.4%). We assessed whether census data on education, income, and percentage of households receiving benefits through the US Department of Agriculture's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was associated with diabetes development using logistic regression controlling for age, sex, race/ethnicity, blood glucose levels, and body mass index. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Progression to diabetes within 36 months. RESULTS: Patients were more likely to progress to diabetes if they lived in an area where less than 16% of adults had obtained a bachelor's degree or higher (odds ratio [OR] =1.22, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.09-1.36), where median annual income was below $79,999 (OR = 1.16 95% CI = 1.03-1.31), or where SNAP benefits were received by 10% or more of households (OR = 1.24, 95% CI = 1.1-1.4). CONCLUSION: Area-level socioeconomic and food assistance data predict the development of diabetes, even after adjusting for traditional individual demographic and clinical factors. Clinical interventions should take these factors into account, and health care systems should consider addressing social needs and community resources as a path to improving health outcomes.

Weighting for Health: Management, Measurement and Self-surveillance in the Modern Household.

Histories of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medicine emphasise the rise of professional and scientific authority, and suggest a decline in domestic health initiatives. Exploring the example of weight management in Britain, we argue that domestic agency persisted and that new regimes of measurement and weighing were adapted to personal and familial preferences as they entered the household. Drawing on print sources and objects ranging from prescriptive literature to postcards and 'personal weighing machines', the article examines changing practices of self-management as cultural norms initially dictated by ideals of body shape and function gradually incorporated quantified targets. In the twentieth century, the domestic management of health-like the medical management of illness-was increasingly technologised and re-focused on quantitative indicators of 'normal' or 'pathological' embodiment. We ask: in relation to weight, how did quantification permeate the household, and what did this domestication of bodily surveillance mean to lay users?

Hybrid Vigour? Genes, Genomics, and History.

Is the gene 'special' for historians? What effects, if any, has the notion of the 'gene' had on our understanding of history? Certainly, there is a widespread public and professional perception that genetics and history are or should be in dialogue with each other in some way. But historians and geneticists view history and genetics very differently - and assume very different relationships between them. And public perceptions of genes, genetics, genomics, and indeed the nature and meanings of 'history' differ yet again. Here, in looking at the meaning, and the implications - the significance - of the gene (and its corollary scientific disciplines and approaches) specifically to historians, I will focus on two aspects of the discourse. First, I will examine the ways in which historians have thus far approached genes and genetics, and the impact such studies have had on the field. There is considerable overlap between the subject matter of genetics/genomics and many of the most widely used analytic categories of contemporary historiography - race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, (dis)ability, among others. Yet the impact of genetics and genomics on society has been studied principally by anthropologists, sociologists and ethicists.2 Only two historical sub-disciplines have engaged with the rise of genetics to any significant degree: the histories of science and of medicine. What does this indicate or suggest? Second, I will explore the impact of the 'gene' and genetic understandings (of, for example, the body, health, disease, identity, the family, and evolution) on public conceptions of history itself.

"The English disease" or "Asian rickets"? Medical responses to postcolonial immigration.

Do the former colonizing powers, like their former colonies, have "postcolonial medicine," and if so, where does it take place, who practices it, and upon whom? How has British medicine in particular responded to the huge cultural shifts represented by the rise of the New Commonwealth and associated postcolonial immigration? I address these questions through a case study of the medical and political responses to vitamin D deficiency among Britain's South Asian communities since the 1960s. My research suggests that in these contexts, diet frequently became a proxy or shorthand for culture (and religion, and race), while disease justified pressure to assimilate.