Visiting the mentally ill: volunteer visitors at Saskatchewan hospital, Weyburn 1950-1965.

This article offers a glimpse into the lives and activities of some of the patients, volunteers and staff in the Saskatchewan mental health system during the period of deinstitutionalization. Drawing on her own experience as a patient in psychiatric wards as well as ongoing research in the history of mental health, it features the role of Regina Volunteer Visitors in Saskatchewan Hospital, Weyburn and examines the importance of occupational and recreational therapies and activities in improving the lives of the patients in that institution. It emphasizes the perspectives of patients and volunteers who actively worked to develop recreational activities, with the intention of helping individuals connect with the surrounding communities. The views and perspectives presented here are drawn from a variety of historical and oral interview sources, including views from visitors to the asylum and patients who lived within its walls. The author has also been a consumer of mental health services, and spent time in the Provincial Mental Hospital in North Battleford. The article therefore makes an important contribution to enhancing our understanding of the social history of deinstitutionalization, not only for its unique source base, but also because those sources have been examined and explained to readers through the perspectives of a former patient herself. This article draws significant attention to the changing opportunities for patients as they interacted with the women's volunteer groups, as well as to how the changes brought about by the encroaching deinstitutionalization, care in the community, and decisions from "above" affected the individuals on the ground.

[From the "oversupply of practical physicians" to the "mountain of hospital beds"--organised medical profession and junior staff having to face cost explosion]. / Von der "Arzteschwemme" zum "Bettenberg"--organisierte Arzteschaft und ärztlicher Nachwuchs unter dem Zeichen der Kostenexplosion.

The catchwords "oversupply of physicians" and "mountain of hospital beds" may be considered to mark two points of culmination in German health policy discussion between 1960 and 1990. The political background and the practical implications of this discussion will be illustrated and appreciated taking into account both the distinct positions of the organised medical profession and junior staff.

[The medical personnel of Byelorussia during the fascist aggression and occupation].

[The article deals with the characteristics of professional activities of medical personnel in Byelorussia during the fascist aggression and subsequent occupation]

Handmaidens and pioneers: Three female anaesthetists and their contribution to anaesthesia in South Africa.

The period during and after World War II saw enormous changes in the practice and status of anaesthesia, as well as in female participation. This article offers an account of three South African (SA) women who trained in anaesthetics before and during the War and participated in these changes. By the mid-1960s, they presided over the three independent anaesthetic departments at Johannesburg's three main teaching hospitals, teaching generations of junior doctors. The first woman to register as a specialist anaesthetist in SA, Miriam (Mollie) Barlow, broke the glass ceiling in her own career by lobbying for the professional rights of medical women, although working within the constraints of the medical and political establishment. She also contributed to important SA research on malignant hyperthermia. Hilde Ginsberg collaborated with Barlow in the 1950s, reducing intraoperative and perioperative mortality at Coronation Hospital, and fought for key interventions in anaesthetic practice and policy through the South African Society of Anaesthetists (SASA), becoming its most long-serving and honoured female member. Kathleen Barbara Vetten's exemplary career in academic medicine, including pioneering animal research (developing anaesthetic techniques for open-heart surgery in dogs and protocols for liver transplantation in primates) and a successful operation to separate craniopagus twins, shows both the achievement of and limits to female achievement at the end of this period. This article also offers a short account of factors that hindered black women from entering anaesthesia training, contributing to this history before the 1990s.

The Quigless Clinic: its impact on the lives of African Americans living in Tarboro, North Carolina, in the 1950s.

Dr Milton Douglas Quigless, a graduate of Meharry Medical College, arrived in Tarboro, North Carolina, in 1936 to practice medicine. For 10 years, he tried to obtain hospital privileges at the Edgecombe General Hospital, but segregation laws prevented him from performing surgery and admitting ill patients to this local facility. After years of frustration, Dr Quigless decided to establish his own hospital so that he could adequately care for his patients. In 1946, the doors of the Quigless Hospital-Clinic opened--the first hospital for blacks in Tarboro. As a noted family physician and distinguished community leader, Dr Quigless had an enormous impact on the lives of multiple generations of North Carolinians.

The residency mess at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh: history and traditions.

For almost 250 years the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary was staffed with resident physicians and surgeons.This paper traces the history and the traditions of the Residency Mess, its inhabitants' lives, duties and leisure activities and how these have changed over the years.

[First chemists in Lorraine]. / Les premiers chimistes lorrains. La chimie en Lorraine du XVIIe au XIXe siècles.

Some alchemists and chemists are known in Lorraine at the beginning of the 17th century. But "real" chemists appear only in the middle of the 18th century. In Nancy, the primary official chemists are the professors of the Royal Collège of medicine, then those of the Faculty of medicine in 1776 and after: Henry Michel du Tennetar and Pierre-François Nicolas. In Metz, the first successful attempt of a chemical course is obtained by the apothecary Jean-Baptiste Thyrion from 1765 to 1769. Michel is his successor in 1778. His teaching is immediately and widely successful. Around Michel, the members of the Royal Society of science and art and the practitioners of the military hospital are also very actice. After the Revolution, many years will be necessary to Nancy and Metz to obtain the creating of a new universitary chemical teaching.

[Jean-Baptist Tyrbas de Chamberet (1779-1870). Military doctor, actor and witness of his time]. / Jean-Baptiste Tyrbas de Chamberet (1779-1870). Médecin militaire, acteur et témoin de son temps.

As military physician Tyrbas de Chamberet was a witness of his time. In 1804 he arrived in Paris and became a medical student. Later he followed the army in Italy, Spain and took part to a mission in Poland where cholera epidemic had broken. As chief of the Hospital Val-de-Grâce he knew people around Larrey and Broussais. In his writings he gave some advices for the organisation of the Military Health Service according to the different governments as well as the characters of his contemporaries.

Women in-between' (Strathern, 1995): the ambiguous position of the sister tutor, 1918-1960.

The purpose of this article is to explore the ambiguous position of sister tutors, within the nursing and hospital hierarchy between 1918 and 1960. The function of the sister tutor was to train the probationers (student nurses). However, I will argue that the students' education was to come second to the service needs of the hospital, the authority of the matron and desire of the medical profession to maintain control over the nursing curriculum and nursing practice. Therefore sister tutors were caught 'in-between' several opposing forces which together militated against the individual sister tutor's work and the ability of the nursing profession to recruit adequate numbers of senior nurses into the classroom. The recruitment issue was further hampered by the widespread knowledge that much of the sister tutor's work was not student education at all, but organising lectures by medical staff and marking students' notes. In order to gauge the 'official' attitudes to the sister tutors and also the experiences of those who either worked as sister tutors or were taught by them, I used both archival and oral evidence in the research for this article. Pseudonyms have been used throughout for the oral history respondents.

[Historical and social perspective from the 64-65 Mexican medical movement]. / Perspectiva histórica y social del Movimiento Médico de 1964-1965 en México.

The Mexican Medical Movement from 1964-1965 constitutes an important event from the rising urban middle-class, besides it was the first time medical doctors claimed for fair working conditions. The background of this movement is the so-called Crisis of 1958, which included the Movements from the educators union, oil workers union, telegraph workers union and the railroad workers union. The conflict began because interns and residents from the "Hospital 20 de Noviembre" would not get a payment at the end of the year, so on November 26th, 1964, the movement started. The Asociación Mexicana de Médicos Residentes e Internos (AMMRI) was created and their demands were the following: 1) Full working site restitution without retaliations, 2) Legal examination of the scholarship-contract terms, in order to get annual, renewable and progressive contracts, and a fixed salary with the usual working-hours and characteristics of each institution, 3) To have preference to get an adscription at the hospital where the resident studied, 4) Active participation from the resident in the elaboration of the academic plans, and 5) Resolution of each hospital's problems. This movement had social impact for Mexico's contemporary life, nevertheless some of the demands are still unchanged among medical residents.

El movimiento médico mexicano de 1964-1965 constituyó parte del primer despertar de la clase media urbana, además de haber sido la primera vez que los médicos reclamaron condiciones de trabajo justas. Como antecedente se tiene la llamada crisis de 1958, la cual incluyó los movimientos: revolucionario del Magisterio, del Sindicato de Trabajadores Petroleros, de la Alianza de Telegrafistas, y del Sindicato de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros de la República Mexicana. El comienzo del conflicto médico se debió a que los residentes e internos del Hospital 20 de Noviembre del hoy Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) no recibieron su aguinaldo, por lo que el 26 de noviembre de 1964 inició el paro, a partir del cual se formó la Asociación Mexicana de Médicos Residentes e Internos (AMMRI), cuyas demandas fueron: 1) Restitución total en sus puestos, sin represalias, 2) Revisión legal y cambio de los términos del contrato-beca, en el sentido de lograr contratos de trabajo anuales, renovables y progresivos, con el horario y características acostumbrados en cada institución además de determinación de sueldos base, 3) Preferencia para ocupar plaza de médico adscrito a los residentes egresados de las propias instituciones, 4) Participación activa del residente en la elaboración de los planes de enseñanza, y 5) Resolución de los problemas de cada hospital. Este movimiento, aunque tuvo repercusiones sociales para la vida contemporánea en México, a 50 años de su inicio, algunas de las demandas siguen sin ser resueltas para los médicos residentes.

[Renowned chief physicians of the Kaiserin Elisabeth hospital of the city of Vienna, since its founding in 1890]. / "Namhafte Primarärzte" des Kaiserin Elisabeth-Spitals der Stadt Wien, seit der Gründung 1890.

In honour of the centenary of the foundation of the Kaiserin Elisabeth Hospital a brief historical survey is presented of the hospital from its beginnings to the present day, as well as biographical summaries of the career and scientific achievements of some prominent chiefs of various departments of the hospital.

[The development of dual specialization: the clinical geriatrician and the nursing home practitioner, 1945-1990]. / Beroepsvorming in tweevoud: de klinisch geriater en de verpleeghuisarts, 1945-1990.

Why are there in the Netherlands two geriatric disciplines and how have the professions of clinical geriatricians and nursing home practitioners been developed? Only written sources have been used for the research: articles, annual reports, archives of scientific associations and umbrella organisations. For the elderly chronic patients increasingly less space was available in hospitals after 1945. These patients obstructed circulation in this institution, which focused more on treatment rather than nursing. Although everyone acknowledged the need for more medical attention for this old age group, there was a lot of opposition against the development of special geriatric units in hospitals. Other specialists agreed that they could effectively treat the elderly patient and felt no need for a geriatrician. Contrary to the geriatric units in hospitals, the development of nursing homes flourished. In these facilities, the nursing home medicine evolved and, as opposed to geriatrics in hospitals, less resistance was encountered. The system of registration of medical specialists made it impossible to recognise only one geriatrician, since they worked in both hospitals as well as in nursing homes. The professional development of nursing home practitioners and clinical geriatricians was delayed partly as a result of the general hesitation of the KNMG in acknowledging new medical disciplines and as a result of internal domain discussions.

The evolution of the hospital medical director: a historical perspective.

Numerous articles have been written regarding the concept of the Medical Director, especially in the community hospital. Extensive research of the topic yielded little information in a readily available form as to the substantive, historical sequence that led us to the present concept. The material herein represents an overview of my perspective on how we got here and is presented as a based upon which further review may be undertaken by those interested in such endeavors.

The diet at Christ's Hospital School in the 1920s and the work of a pioneer school medical officer, Dr G E Friend.

The diet at Christ's Hospital in the 1920s is described by the author, who was a pupil at the school from 1922 to 1930. The description was checked and confirmed by 14 of his surviving contemporaries. The deficiencies of the diet at that time are compared with the even worse diets recorded earlier. Great improvements in the diet were initiated by a remarkable doctor, G E Friend, when he was the school medical officer from 1913 to 1947.

Constant Lambert: his illness at Christ's Hospital School and the role of Dr G E Friend.

The composer Constant Lambert suffered a near fatal attack of septicaemia while he was at school at Christ's Hospital in 1916. His survival owed no small part to the school medical officer, Gerald Friend, himself renowned for his work on nutrition and development.