Author Biography and Research Interests:
Tudor Georgescu completed his PhD at Oxford Brookes University in 2009 on the emergence of eugenic and fascist movements amongst the Transylvanian Saxons, a German ethnic minority, in interwar Romania.
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Podcasting, University Lectures and Science Education
Georgina Ferry
Submitted by Colin on Sun, 02/05/2010 - 11:56
Author Biography and Research Interests:
Georgina Ferry is a science writer, author and broadcaster based in Oxford. Beginning as a section editor on New Scientist magazine and a contributor to science programmes on BBC Radio, she has since been largely self-employed. Her book Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life (1998) was the first biography of Britain's only female Nobel-prizewinning scientist.
Secrecy and Privacy in the Biographies of two 20th-century Scientists
Georgina Ferry
23rd of March Oxford Brookes University, History of Medicine Seminar Series
Biographers naturally turn to their subjects for first-hand accounts of their life and work. The two biographical subjects I have addressed, Dorothy Hodgkin and Max Perutz, were almost exact contemporaries who worked in the same field, the X-ray crystallography of biological molecules. But their approaches to managing the narrative of their life and work were very different. Using these two examples, I reflect on the challenges facing the biographer as she attempts to produce a rounded picture of an individual scientist.
The NHS: The Secret History
Charles Webster
9th of February 2010 Oxford Brookes University, History of Medicine Seminar Series
This paper gives an insight into the inner or ‘secret’ history of the upper ranks of the British health administration, based on many interviews with senior officials. After World War I, the work of the new Ministry of Health was handicapped by the economic depression. In addition, the new department was handicapped by the premature death of Sir Robert Morant, its architect and first Permanent Secretary. The success of the department depended on the harmonious working relation between the Permanent Secretary and Chief Medical Officer. Under the first incumbents, who were in office until 1935, this harmony failed to materialize. In addition, the early talent recruited to the department was quickly dissipated. By the late 1930s the health department had sunk into the doldrums.
The ‘Euthanasia Programme’ and the ‘Final Solution’: The Limits of the ‘Continuity Thesis’
Dan Stone
8th of December 2009 Oxford Brookes University, History of Medicine Seminar Series
It has become common to argue that the Nazi Euthanasia programme was an important way-station on the ‘twisted road’ to Auschwitz, that the elimination of ‘undesirables’ that began with the murder of asylum inmate
Psychiatric Genetics in Germany, Britain, and the United States
Volker Roelcke
24 November 2009 Oxford Brookes University, History of Medicine Seminar Series
In this lecture, Volker Roelcke details the history of the relationships between eugenics and medical genetics between 1910-1060, demonstrating that the history of eugenics can yield broader analytical tools for investigating the international dimension connecting medicine, science, and politics. Volker reconstructs the emergence of institutionalized research agendas in the field of psychiatric genetics in three national contexts,
The Intersection of Anthropology and Medicine in Austria: From Weisbach to Pöch
Maria Teschler-Nicola
3rd Nov 2009, Oxford Brookes University, History of Medicine Seminar Series
In this fascinating lecture, the Natural History Museum in Vienna’s Maria Teschler-Nicola explores the points of convergence between Austrian anthropological and medical traditions between 1850 and 1920. Investigating a largely neglected period dominated by physicians, anatomists, pathologists, and geologists and their respective research interests, this lecture focusses on the lives and achievements of various key figures such as Ferdinand v. Hochstetter and the anatomist Carl Toldt who promoted the young physician Rudolf Poech. Poech, a member of the team the Academy of Sciences sent to study the 1897 plague outbreak in India, was also an early supporter of a ‘modern biology’ that increasingly centred on hereditary theories, an approach he explored through numerous research projects on both European as well as non-European populations.
Benedek Varga
Submitted by Colin on Sat, 24/10/2009 - 22:28
Author Biography and Research Interests:
Benedek Varga studied history, archivist studies and philosophy at the ELTE University, Budapest. He was an honorary visiting fellow at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, in 1991-92; and a visiting researcher at King’s College Cambridge in 1994 (2 months) as well as at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, in 2000.
The Myth and Cult of Ignaz Semmelweis: Constructing History of Science during the 20th Century
Benedek Varga
20 Oct 2009, Oxford Brookes University, History of Medicine Seminar Series
Ignaz Semmelweis (1818 – 1865) was a Hungarian physician who, in 1847, discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically cut by improving on hand washing standards. As head of Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, he reduced puerperal fever’s mortality rate to 1-3%. Although his achievements were welcomed by some, he also encountered serious criticism. Dismissed from his post in 1850, Semmelweis returned to Budapest where he worked as a university professor in obstetrics. But by the time of his death aged 47 in 1865, Semmelweis’ mental balance had collapsed, he had been deserted by his family and friends, and was soon forgotten.
Tim McHugh
Submitted by Colin on Sun, 17/05/2009 - 15:42
Author Biography and Research Interests:
Tim McHugh is a Wellcome Trust Researcher/Lecturer in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University. His research has centred on the social history of medicine in France, examining the relationship between the nature of a hierarchical society and the charitable assistance of the poor in the early modern period. His research interests include the history of hospitals, the earl
Rural Medicine in 18th Century France
Tim McHugh
28th April 2009; Oxford Brookes University
This lecture seeks to contest Jean-Pierre Goubert’s picture of eighteenth-century Brittany as a medical desert by examining the roles played by parish priests in shaping the medical experience of the peasantry. The parish priest in Brittany was largely responsible for implementing much of the charitable action unlocked by the Catholic Reformation. One part of this was the ‘rescuing’ of the peasantry from medical ignorance. The paper also argues that parish priests deserve to be seen as amateur practitioners in their own right.
Healthcare in South Africa 1940-1990
Anne Digby
17th March 2009; Oxford Brookes University
Race has been called the South African disease, and in this lecture I shall be discussing two aspects of it as it relates to my recent and forthcoming research on the history of medicine in South Africa. After outlining some general points about the distinctive features of the country, I outline my current project on changing access to public and private healthcare in a segregationist and then apartheid society from the 1940s to 1990s.
Anne Digby
Submitted by Colin on Wed, 29/04/2009 - 18:53
Author Biography and Research Interests:
Prof. Anne Digby’s research ranges widely over the landscape of British social history from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries: from schooling and society to the New Poor Law, agrarian society in the nineteenth century to welfare policy in the twentieth. However, her primary current interest is in the social history of medicine.
Areas of research include:
Clothing as Medicine
Steve King
17 March 2009; Oxford Brookes
This lecture looks at the inter-relationships between clothing and medicine. It explores some established fields (clothing as protection from disease and clothing and medicine in advice literature for instance), but also a wide range of under-explored topics such as clothing as a vector of disease and clothing as therapy and cure for disease.
Steve King
Submitted by Colin on Sun, 29/03/2009 - 15:45
Author Biography and Research Interests:
Steve King is a Professor of History at Oxford Brookes University, Assistant Dean for Resources in the School of Arts and Humanities, as well as Chair of the Wellcome Trust History of Medicine Grant Panel.
Steve King was awarded his PhD in 1994. His research interests are varied, spanning a range of periods, themes and countries, but may be grouped under four broad headings:
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