[The review of the monograph "Ambroise Paré. The first surgeon of the Kingdom" by E. E. Berger].

The review considers the approach placing famous French surgeon A. Paré into more general European context of European Renaissance of XVI century and into local context of intellectual life of Paris of this period. The refutation of widespread in history of medicine opinion about strict separation of university medicine from artisan surgery in Medieval Europe is discussed.

Commercialising everyday distress: neurasthenia and traditional Chinese medicine in colonial Hong Kong, 1950s to 1980s.

The persistent use of neurasthenia in Asia, an out-dated diagnostic category in modern psychiatry, has confounded many psychiatrists from the 1960s. This paper attempts to understand the prevalence of neurasthenia among the lay public in post-World War II Hong Kong. It examines the social history of psychiatry and focuses on the roles of traditional Chinese medicine in shaping public perceptions and responses towards neurasthenia. This research reveals that, when psychiatrists discarded the term as an ineffective label in the 1950s, practitioners and pharmaceutical companies of Chinese medicine seized on the chance to reinvent themselves as experts in neurasthenia. By commericialising everyday distress, they provided affordable, accessible and culturally familiar healing options to the Chinese public. A case study of neurasthenia, therefore, is not simply about changing disease categories but an important example to illustrate the tensions between traditional medicine and Western psychiatry in Asia.

La herencia de Prometeo. Las enfermedades ocupacionales en el Corpus Hippocraticum / Prometheus’ legacy occupational diseases in the Hippocratic Corpus

RESUMEN: el presente trabajo analiza las enfermedades ocupacionales en el Corpus Hippocraticum. Principalmente nos centraremos en Epidemias, que recoge numerosas historias clínicas, con el objetivo de analizar la asistencia sanitaria de los trabajadores en la médi-ca griega. Finalmente, abordamos el debate historiográfico en torno al acceso a la sanidad en el mundo antiguo

ABSTRACT: the aim of this paper is to analyze the occupational diseases through the Hippocratic Corpus. Mainly, the analysis will be focus on Epidemics, that collect many medical histories, in order to analyze the workers’ medical care in Greek Medicine. Finally, we address the historiographical debate around the general access to medical Care in the ancient world

Trends and Prospects of Studies of Medical History in Japan: the Diversification of Study Areas and Methodologies.

This paper examines the trends and prospects of medical history in Japan. The study of medical history in Japan has developed in various periods and themes. In particular, many studies period have actively made full use of old documents and materials that have been well-preserved. This paper introduces the research trends of medical history in Japan, while discussing the issues surrounding the concept and designation of medical history in present day Japan. This can be seen as an inevitable phenomenon that emerged as methods of medical history research have become diversified, and there are many suggestions related to the future direction of this study. Based on this, this paper points out the characteristics of medical history research conducted in each period since the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, this investigation confirmed that the subjects and research methods of medical history became diversified under the influence of the nation state theory. Furthermore, this study also found that the major topics of medical history research are analysis of medical books, doctors and medical personnel, the starting point of modern medicine, the establishment and change of the medical system, the social impact of infectious diseases, and the discipline and management of the national body. In addition, studies are being conducted to compare how the regulations and operations of medicine and medical and hygiene systems are being developed in the context of "East Asia."

À la recherche de la vision « normale ¼ : mesurer l'acuité visuelle au XIXe siècle.

This article aims to reconstruct and analyze debates centring on normal eye and vision standards during the second half of the 19th century in Europe. It particularly addresses the creation of ophthalmology charts, one of the main tools for measuring visual acuity. Having briefly described the historical context in which modern eye charts were developed, we will present the better known examples of these and their characteristics. We will then analyze ophthalmologists' debates about what constitutes a normal eye and normal vision, and show the discrepancy between established definitions and clinical studies. Finally, we will consider the issue of measuring eyesight while focusing, on the one hand, on specialists' desire to create a standardized framework to measure visual acuity and, on the other hand, on the multiple hurdles that hindered achieving that goal.

Cet article a pour objectif d'analyser les débats sur les normes définissant l'œil et la vision « normaux ¼ pendant la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle en Europe. Il s'attache en particulier à la création des tableaux ophtalmologiques, l'un des principaux instruments utilisés pour mesurer l'acuité visuelle. Après avoir évoqué le cadre historique dans lequel les tableaux visuels modernes ont été développés, nous présenterons les plus célèbres d'entre eux ainsi que leurs caractéristiques. Nous analyserons ensuite les débats entre ophtalmologistes sur ce que sont une vision ou un œil dits normaux et nous montrerons le décalage entre les définitions théoriques avancées et les résultats des études cliniques. Enfin, nous considérerons la question de la mesure de l'acuité visuelle en dévoilant, d'une part, la volonté des spécialistes d'établir un cadre normatif et, d'autre part, les multiples obstacles qu'ils ont affrontés.

The Trend and Prospect of Medical Sociology: Its Concepts and the Interface with Medical History.

Medical sociology has a long history, and it has been institutionalized and developed since the 1940s. This paper is about the history, trends, and prospects of medical sociology from the perspective of concepts as well as its interface with medical humanities. Sociology is a discipline that conceptualizes and theorizes social phenomena on the basis of collected data to best understand them. For this reason, we think that one of the best ways to understand medical sociology is to track the changes and developments in the concept and theory of medical sociology over time. Moreover, the development of concepts and theories does not occur only within the discussion of experts but also actively in interactions with the institutional position of medical sociology, medical knowledge and institutions and society. By reflecting on the changes in the theory and concept of medical sociology over the past 70 years from the 1950s to the present, we were able to understand the changes in research interests and research subject of medical sociology. Medical sociology has developed in response to the needs of the medical community and society. On the one hand, it developed a diverse understanding of healthcare, one of the key elements of the structure and culture of modern society, and on the other hand, it developed an understanding of how each individual experiences medical care as a dominant power. Since the 1990s, these seemingly conflicting two areas integrated into one through research subjects such as the growth of the general population and the health and social movement. Furthermore, the emergence of biotechnology, which began to develop in earnest beginning in the 1980s, presented a challenge for medical sociology. If the role of Parsons in the 1950s was to reflect the American medical system based on bacteriology and therapeutic drugs, after the 1960s, chronic disease became an important health problem due to changes in American society, and the experiences of patients suffering from chronic diseases became an important research subject. However, the rapid development of biotechnology from the 1980s was powerful enough to change the way we perceive our bodies. Our society has regarded our body as a sum of cells and a combination of various organs and body parts since the birth of modern medicine, but with the development of biotechnology, including genetics, we began to recognize our body as an expression of information contained in genes. The capitalist force driving biotechnology has degraded our bodies to the extent of our resources for the accumulation of genomic information. Finally, the concepts and theories developed by medical sociology can also be applied to understand the trends of medical history in the Korean Journal of Medical History provided that medical sociology and the medical history were embedded in the particular Korean historical context. Therefore, we hope these two medical disciplines cooperate further on the medical issues in Korea.

A Historiographical Review of the History of Western Medicine, 2011-2020 The Diversification of Subject Matter and the Search for a New Methodology.

This article examines major issues in the historiography of Western medical history between 2011 and 2020 through an analysis of scholarly articles published in journals based in the United States, Britain, and South Korea. The subject matter and methodology of the history of medicine in the West have greatly transformed since the start of the second millennium, from biographical history to historicism to social history to intellectual and cultural history. Through this process, the definition of "medicine" has been continuously denaturalized and expanded, and so have the topics its scholars deal with. Having a variety of perspectives and keeping their disciplinary boundaries porous, historians of Western medical history have examined issues of health, disease, and medicine. They have also vigilantly pursued advancements in methodology for historical analysis, experimented with different writing styles, and expanded historical resources, including visual and audio records. In recent decades, the history of medicine has seen additional experimentation with the changing understanding of the relationship between medicine and society, especially with the emergence of a knowledge- and information-based society and globalization. Furthermore, historians have attempted to establish the value of the history of medicine in response to changing perceptions of medicine and history in the twenty-first century. Their efforts have vitalized the field of medical history by treating it as a useful lens for observing medicine's past as well as formulating critical questions about its present.

[Beyond moral education: the modern transformation of traditional medical charity].

In traditional society, medical charity had strong moral and educational purposes. But this pursuit of morality faded away in modern times. As to the charity purpose, unlike the medical charity organizations that were eager to rebuild the morality and public ethics, instead, more and more interests were paid to utilitarian consideration and secular benefits. As to the social function of charity, "diseases" were no longer regarded as the extension of "poverty" , but the most direct index of rehabilitation. Medical activities became increasingly simple and developed towards professionalization, leading to the advent, to certain extent, of modern medical system. Medical charity, as a strategic approach for saving the nation and social reform, went beyond moral education, embodying national responsibility and political intention.

Social and Gendered Readings of Illness Narratives.

This essay recognizes that the interactions that define medical care are problematic and that narrative is invoked to overcome these strains. Being grounded in science, medicine, too, might be influenced by a particular world-view that arose in the natural philosophy of the Scientific Revolution. If narrative responds to this sort of medicine, it may retain traces of this mindset. A feminist approach responds to this viewpoint and may used beneficially to analyze both the story of medicine and the stories within medicine. Tensions discussed from this perspective are those between sickness and health and those between patient and provider; also questioned are suitable form(s) of narrative and whose narratives are valued. Suggestions for broadening narrative to address these issues include letting the body speak for itself, overcoming the power differential in the patient/provider interaction and using standpoints to foster a more equal and just medical system.

History of Medicine: Health, Medicine and Disease in the Eighteenth Century.

This article surveys anglophone scholarship in the history of medicine over the past decade or so. It selectively identifies and critically evaluates key themes and trends in the field. It discusses the emergence of the discipline from a period of directional crisis to more recent emphasis on a pluralistic and 'bigger-picture' agenda, on comparative, cross-disciplinary and multicultural approaches, and on the reorientation and (putative) broadening out of medical history towards wider public engagement and closer interface with medical humanities.