Miracle cures: advertisements for various medications in the Santa Fe press, Argentina (1890 -1918). / Curas milagrosas: publicidades de medicamentos varios en la prensa santafesina, Argentina (1890-1918).

In the late nineteenth century, as in other regions of Argentina and Latin America, the Santa Fe press featured a growing number of offers of health products such as tonics, pills and syrups. Aimed at a lay audience, these claimed to cure a series of conditions defined as belonging to "modern life." This article analyzes the discursive dimension of the advertisements printed between 1890 and 1918: how they organized meanings associated with these conditions, an issue that is inscribed within a broad line of research aimed at analyzing social representations of health and disease, and how they participated in the different social spheres in the constitution of modern-day Argentina.

A fines del siglo XIX, en consonancia con otras regiones de Argentina y Latinoamérica, en la prensa santafesina se incrementó la oferta de productos para la salud como tónicos, pastillas y jarabes. Ofrecidos a un público no experto, prometían curar una serie de dolencias que definían como propias "de la vida moderna". El artículo analiza la dimensión discursiva de los avisos publicitarios aparecidos entre 1890 y 1918: cómo organizaron los sentidos sobre estas dolencias, interrogante que se inscribe en una amplia línea de estudios abocada a analizar las representaciones sociales sobre la salud y la enfermedad y cómo éstas participaron en las distintas esferas sociales en la constitución de la Argentina moderna.

Curas milagrosas: publicidades de medicamentos varios en la prensa santafesina, Argentina (1890-1918) / Miracle cures: advertisements for various medications in the Santa Fe press, Argentina (1890 -1918)

Resumen A fines del siglo XIX, en consonancia con otras regiones de Argentina y Latinoamérica, en la prensa santafesina se incrementó la oferta de productos para la salud como tónicos, pastillas y jarabes. Ofrecidos a un público no experto, prometían curar una serie de dolencias que definían como propias "de la vida moderna". El artículo analiza la dimensión discursiva de los avisos publicitarios aparecidos entre 1890 y 1918: cómo organizaron los sentidos sobre estas dolencias, interrogante que se inscribe en una amplia línea de estudios abocada a analizar las representaciones sociales sobre la salud y la enfermedad y cómo éstas participaron en las distintas esferas sociales en la constitución de la Argentina moderna.

Abstract In the late nineteenth century, as in other regions of Argentina and Latin America, the Santa Fe press featured a growing number of offers of health products such as tonics, pills and syrups. Aimed at a lay audience, these claimed to cure a series of conditions defined as belonging to "modern life." This article analyzes the discursive dimension of the advertisements printed between 1890 and 1918: how they organized meanings associated with these conditions, an issue that is inscribed within a broad line of research aimed at analyzing social representations of health and disease, and how they participated in the different social spheres in the constitution of modern-day Argentina.

A concorrência na arte de partejar na cidade do Rio de Janeiro entre 1835 e 1900 / Competition in the arts of midwifery in the city of Rio de Janeiro from 1835 to 1900

Resumo Este artigo discute a concorrência entre parteiras e médicos na oferta dos serviços de partos na cidade do Rio de Janeiro entre 1835 e 1900. Foram analisadas as atas da congregação, os livros do curso de partos e de termos de exames de verificação de médicos, cirurgiões, boticários e parteiras da Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro, além de anúncios e propagandas de médicos e parteiras nas colunas "Anúncios" e "Indicações Úteis" do Jornal do Commercio . Observa-se como o aumento do número de médicos-parteiros e seus discursos científicos contribuíram para que as parteiras se vissem obrigadas a diversificar a clientela, instalando-se e atendendo em áreas populares e inóspitas.

Abstract The article discusses competition between midwives and doctors offering birth-related services in the city of Rio de Janeiro from 1835 to 1900. The research analyzed minutes from meetings, textbooks on births, and terms from qualification examinations for physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, and midwives at the Rio de Janeiro Medical School (Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro), as well as announcements by and advertisements for doctors and midwives in columns featuring advertisements and useful recommendations in the Jornal do Commercio newspaper. An increase in the number of delivery physicians, and their scientific discourses led midwives to feel an obligation to diversify their clientele, consequently establishing themselves and working in lower-class and inhospitable areas.

Marketing medicines: charting the rise of modern therapeutics through a systematic review of adverts in UK medical journals (1950-1980).

AIMS: To examine how pharmaceutical products that were first marketed between 1950 and 1980 were promoted to physicians through advertisements and briefly review advertising regulations and accuracy of the advertisements in the light of modern knowledge. METHODS: We systematically reviewed advertisements promoting drugs for specific therapeutic areas, namely central nervous system disorders (anxiety and sleep disorders, depression, psychoses, and Parkinson's disease), respiratory disorders, cardiovascular disorders, and gastrointestinal disorders. We examined about 800 issues of the British Medical Journal (1950-1980) and about 150 issues of World Medicine (1965-1984). RESULTS: Advertising material was minimally regulated until the mid-1970s. Many drugs were marketed with little preclinical or clinical knowledge and some with the expectation that prescribers would obtain further data. The peak of advertising occurred in parallel with the surge in the release of novel drugs during the 1960s, but declined markedly after the mid-1970s. Advertisements generally contained little useful prescribing information. The period we investigated saw the release of many novel pharmaceuticals in the therapeutic areas we examined, and many (or their class successors) still play important therapeutic roles, including benzodiazepines, tricyclic antidepressants, phenothiazines, levodopa, selective and non-selective ß-adrenoceptor antagonists, thiazide diuretics, ß-adrenoceptor agonists, and histamine H2 receptor antagonists. CONCLUSIONS: Advertising pharmaceuticals in the BMJ and World Medicine in 1950-1980 was poorly regulated and often lacked rigour. However, advertisements were gradually modified in the light of increasing clinical pharmacological knowledge, and they reflect an exciting period for the introduction of many drugs that continue to be of benefit today.

[Competition in the arts of midwifery in the city of Rio de Janeiro from 1835 to 1900]. / A concorrência na arte de partejar na cidade do Rio de Janeiro entre 1835 e 1900.

The article discusses competition between midwives and doctors offering birth-related services in the city of Rio de Janeiro from 1835 to 1900. The research analyzed minutes from meetings, textbooks on births, and terms from qualification examinations for physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, and midwives at the Rio de Janeiro Medical School (Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro), as well as announcements by and advertisements for doctors and midwives in columns featuring advertisements and useful recommendations in the Jornal do Commercio newspaper. An increase in the number of delivery physicians, and their scientific discourses led midwives to feel an obligation to diversify their clientele, consequently establishing themselves and working in lower-class and inhospitable areas.

Este artigo discute a concorrência entre parteiras e médicos na oferta dos serviços de partos na cidade do Rio de Janeiro entre 1835 e 1900. Foram analisadas as atas da congregação, os livros do curso de partos e de termos de exames de verificação de médicos, cirurgiões, boticários e parteiras da Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro, além de anúncios e propagandas de médicos e parteiras nas colunas "Anúncios" e "Indicações Úteis" do Jornal do Commercio . Observa-se como o aumento do número de médicos-parteiros e seus discursos científicos contribuíram para que as parteiras se vissem obrigadas a diversificar a clientela, instalando-se e atendendo em áreas populares e inóspitas.

The Social Media DNA of Mayo Clinic-and Health Care.

Hippocrates' admonition and the medical community's aversion to risk have caused many physicians and institutions to resist participation in modern social media sites such as Facebook (Facebook, Inc, Menlo Park, California, USA), Twitter (Twitter Inc, San Francisco, California, USA), and YouTube (San Mateo, California, USA). However, because Mayo Clinic's founders were champions of analog social networking, it was among the earliest hospitals worldwide to create official accounts on these digital platforms. A proper understanding of the traditional mechanisms of knowledge diffusion in medicine and of the nature of social media sites should help professionals see and embrace the opportunities for positive engagement in social media.

Homeopathy 'for Mexicans': Medical Popularisation, Commercial Endeavours, and Patients' Choice in the Mexican Medical Marketplace, 1853-1872.

This paper focuses on homeopaths' strategies to popularise homeopathy from 1850 to 1870. I argue that homeopaths created a space for homeopathy in Mexico City in the mid-nineteenth century by facilitating patients' access to medical knowledge, consultation and practice. In this period, when national and international armed conflicts limited the diffusion and regulation of academic medicine, homeopaths popularised homeopathy by framing it as a life-enhancing therapy with tools that responded to patients' needs. Patients' preference for homeopathy evolved into commercial endeavours that promoted the practice of homeopathy through the use of domestic manuals. Using rare publications and archival records, I analyse the popularisation of homeopathy in Ramón Comellas's homeopathic manual, the commercialisation of Julián González's family guides, and patients' and doctors' reception of homeopathy. I show that narratives of conversion to homeopathy relied on the different experiences of patients and trained doctors, and that patients' positive experience with homeopathy weighed more than the doctors' efforts to explain to the public how academic medicine worked. The fact that homeopaths and patients used a shared language to describe disease experiences framed the possibility of a horizontal transmission of medical knowledge, opening up the possibility for patients to become practitioners. By relying on the long tradition of domestic medicine in Mexico, the popularisation of homeopathy disrupted the professional boundaries that academic physicians had begun to build, making homeopaths the largest group that challenged the emergent medical academic culture and its diffusion in Mexico in the nineteenth century.

The Medical Battery in The United States (1870-1920): Electrotherapy at Home and in the Clinic.

This paper focuses on the history of a portable shock-producing electrotherapeutic device known as the medical battery (1870-1920), which provided both direct and alternating current and was thought to cure a wide variety of ailments. The product occupied a unique space at the nexus of medicine, consumerism and quackery: it was simultaneously considered a legitimate device by medical professionals who practiced electrotherapeutics, yet identical versions were sold directly to consumers, often via newspaper advertisements and with cure-all marketing language. Indeed, as I show in this paper, the line between what was considered a medical device and a consumer product was often blurred. Even though medical textbooks and journals never mentioned (much less promoted) the home use of electricity, every reputable electrotherapy instrument manufacturer sold a "family battery" for patients to use on themselves at home. While a handful of physicians spoke out against the use of electricity by the laity-as they felt it undermined the image of electrotherapy as a skilled medical procedure-existing evidence suggests that many physicians were likely recommending the home use of medical electricity to their patients. Taken together, this paper shows how the professional ideals of electrotherapeutics were not always aligned with physicians' actual practices.

Between the Bazaar and the Bench: Making of the Drugs Trade in Colonial India, ca. 1900-1930.

This article analyzes why adulteration became a key trope of the Indian drug market. Adulteration had a pervasive presence, being present in medical discourses, public opinion and debate, and the nationalist claim for government intervention. The article first situates the roots of adulteration in the composite nature of this market, which involved the availability of drugs of different potencies as well as the presence of multiple layers of manufacturers, agents, and distributors. It then shows that such a market witnessed the availability of drugs of diverse potency and strengths, which were understood as elements of adulteration in contemporary medical and official discourse. Although contemporary critics argued that the lack of government legislation and control allowed adulteration to sustain itself, this article establishes that the culture of the dispensation of drugs in India necessarily involved a multitude of manufacturer-retailers, bazaar traders, and medical professionals practicing a range of therapies.

The outlook of physician histories: J. Marion Sims and 'The Discovery of Anaesthesia'.

The fact that doctors have a long tradition of writing medical history to interpret and direct their profession is well established. But readers (particularly modern physician readers) can also understand physician-authored histories as offering commentary and analysis of the world beyond medicine. In this essay, we offer a reading (perhaps a modern one) of J. Marion Sims's 1877 article, 'The Discovery of Anaesthesia' which exemplifies the stance of looking both inward and outward from the medical field. We begin by discussing Sims, including the complicated legacy he left as a physician. Next, we review late 19th-century history with a focus on Reconstruction. Finally, we show how the modern reader can use Sims's article both to trace the first use of ether and nitrous oxide for surgical anaesthesia and to provide a window into the 19th-century medical profession and the post-Civil War period. Through this study, we hope to show how to read both medicine and the world around it in physician histories.

An empirical analysis of the public's attitudes toward advertising hospital services: a comparative cross-sectional study.

This study investigates current opinions about hospital advertising and compares them to the attitudes expressed 25 years ago. It replicates a survey done in 1985, using the same questionnaire and population to compare responses longitudinally. The study indicates some changes in the public's opinions of hospital advertising. Although the image of hospitals remains positive, most of the 2010 respondents' opinions were rather mixed regarding whether it is proper for hospitals to advertise. The study also confirmed that the quality of service and reputation of hospitals remain more important to the public than price.

Marketing and medicine: a questionable mix.

Historically, medicine has been an evolving art and science. It never remains the same. Only in the past few decades has it been acceptable for doctors to market and promote their practices. This article will review the history of medical marketing and provide ethical examples of marketing that might be available to any physician, in any practice, and in any geographic location.

Pink truck ads: second-wave feminism and gendered marketing.

Second-wave feminist media had a contentious relationship with corporate advertisers. This article uses automotive advertisements to explore the role of gender, class, and race in the construction of consumer markets from the 1970s through the 1980s. It analyzes the struggle of Gloria Steinem and other liberal feminists to navigate the terrain between the women's movement and corporate advertisers. The increased economic power of women, stemming from the Equal Credit Opportunity Act as well as broader social and political shifts, facilitated their efforts. In the 1980s, automobiles continued to be marketed to women, albeit through "feminine" imagery conforming to the era's dominant trends.

John Greenwood, dentist to President Washington.

In the practice of dentistry in colonial times, no name shines more brightly than that of John Greenwood, the favorite dentist of President George Washington. But it is more than this alone that brings luster to his name and renown. A study of the advertisements he placed in newspapers in Massachusetts and New York gives us an insight into his treatments and his mode of practice. A newly discovered advertisement adds to our knowledge of this remarkable practitioner.

Partial progress: governing the pharmaceutical industry and the NHS, 1948-2008.

Coinciding with sixty years of the U.K. National Health Service (NHS), this article reviews the neglected area of the governance of the pharmaceutical industry and the NHS. It traces the relationships between the pharmaceutical industry, the state, and the NHS from the creation of the health service to the present, as they have grappled with the overlapping challenges of pharmaceutical safety, efficacy, cost-effectiveness, pricing, promotion, and advertising. The article draws on the concepts of "corporate bias" and "regulatory capture" from political theory, and "counter-vailing powers" and "clinical autonomy" in medical sociology, while also introducing the new concepts of "assimilated allies" and "pharmaceuticalization" in order to synthesize a theoretical framework capable of longitudinal empirical analysis of pharmaceutical governance. The analysis identifies areas in which the governance of pharmaceuticals and the NHS has contributed to progress in health care since 1948. However, it is argued that that progress has been slow, restricted, and vulnerable to misdirection due to the enormous and unrivaled influence afforded to the pharmaceutical industry in policy developments. Countervailing influences against such corporate bias have often been limited and subject to destabilization by the industry's assimilated allies either within the state or in the embrace of pharmaceuticalization and consumerism.

['Young women and lady dentists': training, degrees, and the market in the first decades of the Republic]. / 'Moças e senhoras dentistas': formação, titulação e mercado de trabalho nas primeiras décadas da República.

Since the 1980s, more women than men have graduated from Brazil's dentistry schools, yet little has been written about women's access to the profession. This article provides background information useful in analyzing the training and professional roles of women dentists in Brazil during the first years of the Republic; discusses the relation between changes in the profession, health policies, and the gender system during that period; and contributes to the discussion on the feminization of the profession. The article is part of a broader project investigating training, professional roles, and the labor market in the health field in São Paulo. Sources include articles published in newspapers, magazines, and specialized journals devoted to dentistry, pharmacy, and medicine, along with government and university records covering the years 1892 through 1926.