Claimed by culture: circumcision, cochlear implants and the 'intact' body.

This review essay discusses the debates on infant male circumcision and on paediatric cochlear implants, two instances of surgical interventions done on small children without there being any pressing life-threatening indication. Reviewing these two issues together-something that has not previously been done, although there is a vast scholarly debate on both issues separately-helps frame the medical humanities and the current turn in the field towards abandoning the nature/culture and science/humanities divides. The debates on these procedures are fraught with a distinction between medicine and culture which constructs a certain kind of body as 'natural' and seeks to defend that body against 'cultural' interventions while welcoming supposedly acultural 'medical' interventions on other bodies. In the scholarship in medical humanities and medical ethics on these topics, this implicit nature/culture divide and view on medicine as separate from culture is also evident. My contention is that the medical humanities have important work to do here, in particular regarding a critique of the notion of the 'whole' or 'intact' body.

Seeing the value of experiential knowledge through COVID-19.

Seeing the entwinement of social and epistemic challenges through COVID, we discuss the perils of simplistic appeals to 'follow the science'. A hardened scientism risks excarbating social conflict and fueling conspiracy beliefs. Instead, we see an opportunity to devise more inclusive medical knowledge practices through endorsing experiential knowledge alongside traditional evidence types.

Distress, disease, desire: perspectives on the medicalisation of premature ejaculation.

The discovery that certain selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors delay ejaculation and the later development and approval of dapoxetine as an on-demand treatment option has led to a dramatic increase in medical interest in premature ejaculation. This paper analyses the diagnostic criteria and the discussion within the medical community about suitable treatments against the backdrop of theories of science, sex and gender. Our conclusion is that the diagnosis itself and the suggested treatments contribute to normative models of sexual conduct and therefore reinforce the norms that cause patients' distress over ejaculating 'too soon'.

[Deaf Jews in Germany, 1800-1933. A look at the history of a dual minority]. / Jüdische Gehörlose in Deutschland 1800-1933. Blicke in die Geschichte einer doppelten Minderheit.

This study examines the importance of religious denomination in the German community of deaf people in the 19th century and up until 1933, focusing on the dual minority status of deaf Jews. It shows that the educational system for the deaf and the deaf movement as such were, in structure and content, informed by the Christian, primarily the Protestant, faith. This meant that deaf Jewish people were in danger of facing a conflict between their identity as Jews and their identity as deaf people. In order to resolve this dilemma, Jewish philanthropists and deaf people created a range of complementary structures: schools where deaf Jewish children received tuition tailored to their needs, religious services in sign language and a Jewish deaf association for mutual support and companionship. But being members of two stigmatized and marginalized groups made the Jewish deaf vulnerable from several sides. The discursive association of deafness, Judaism and heredity played a particular part in this. This study comes to the conclusion that deaf Jews did not want to choose between their deaf and Jewish identities but they wanted to belong to both. As a result they suffered from the negative views that some deaf people had of Jews and some Jews of deaf people--as well as from the double discrimination by the mainstream society.

Information, consent and treatment of patients with Morgellons disease: an ethical perspective.

Morgellons is a medically contested diagnosis with foremost dermatological symptoms. Patients experience fibers emerging from the skin, together with a range of other somatic, psychiatric, and neurological complaints. Within the medical community, it is generally held to be a variation of delusional parasitosis/delusional infestation, which is usually treated with antipsychotics. Little attention has been paid in the literature to the ethical aspects of treating patients with Morgellons disease. The communicative strategies suggested in the literature display significant ethical issues, primarily the use of therapeutic privilege, i.e. withholding information from the patient. Since this limits patient autonomy, that approach is ethically problematic. Instead, the physician has an ethical obligation to respect the patient's autonomy, provide full information, and seek consent before initiating a psychiatric referral.

The galvanic treatment of deafness and the trials at the Berlin Royal Deaf-Mute Asylum in 1802.

In 1802, the director of the Berlin Royal Deaf-Mute Asylum, Ernst Adolph Eschke, performed an experiment to investigate the possibility of curing deafness by means of galvanism. This article explores the hope for a cure for deafness that was connected to the voltaic pile, and concludes that the treatment was based on insufficient knowledge of the aetiology of deafness. Furthermore, it uncovers the competition between the medical and the pedagogic approach to deafness that resulted from the purported cure. Comparing the approaches of different directors of galvanic experiments, divergences in attitudes between the medical and pedagogic realms are revealed. This is explained with reference to the contrasting motives and experiences of educational and medical professionals: the former had reasons to resist a cure to protect their profession, whereas the latter hoped for a medical breakthrough. Since the former had personal and long-lasting relationships to deaf people, while the latter only had brief encounters with deaf patients, the physicians were also more prone to objectify their trial subjects. The report from Eschke's trials is presented as an early document of deaf reactions to attempts to restore their hearing, showing that resistance to medical interventions were prevalent among the deaf already in the early nineteenth century.