Health

Deadly Dust by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz

History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning by Nancy G. Siraisi

Illness and the Limits of Expression by Kathlyn Conway

White Coat Clenched Fist by Fitzhugh Mullan

Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the On-Going Struggle to Protect Workers' Health

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz

Rights: World
For more info, contact Mary Bisbee-Beek at bisbeeb@umich.edu

During the Depression, silicosis, an industrial lung disease, emerged as a national social crisis. Experts estimated that hundreds of thousands of workers were at risk of disease, disability, and death by inhaling silica in mines, foundries, and quarries. By the 1950s, however, silicosis was nearly forgotten by the media and health professionals. Asking what makes a health threat a public issue, David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz examine how a culture defines disease and how disease itself is understood at different moments in history. They also explore the interlocking relationships of public health, labor, business, and government to discuss who should assume responsibility for occupational disease.

David Rosner is Professor of History and Public Health, and Director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at the School of Public Health, Columbia University.

Gerald Markowitz is Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City, University of New York.

Fall 2005
272 pages

History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning

Nancy G. Siraisi

Rights: World
For more info, contact Mary Bisbee-Beek at bisbeeb@umich.edu

History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning, the first volume proposed for our new series in early modern history, is a major work by distinguished author Nancy G. Siraisi, examining the intersections of medically trained authors and history, in the period 1450 to 1650. Far from their contributions being a mere footnote in the historical record, medical writers had extensive involvement in the reading, production, and shaping of historical knowledge during this important period. In chapters covering a wide variety of examples, Siraisi investigates doctors' efforts to explore the legacies handed down to them from ancient medical and anatomical writings, and the difficult reconciliations this required between the authority of the ancient world and the discoveries of the modern world. She also studies the ways in which sixteenth century medical authors wrote history, both in their own medical texts and in more general historical works. In the course of her study, Siraisi finds that what allowed medical writers to become so fully engaged in the writing of history was their general humanistic background, their experience of history through the field of medicine's past, and the tools that the writing of history offered to the development of a rapidly evolving profession.

Nancy Siraisi is one of the preeminent scholars of medieval and Renaissance intellectual history, specializing in medicine and science. Now Distinguished Professor Emeritus in History at Hunter College, she has written numerous books, including Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils, which won the American Association for the History of Medicine Welch Award, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy, The Clock and the Mirror, and the widely-used textbook, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine, which won The Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize from the History of Science Society. In 2004 she received the Paul Oskar Kristeller Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Renaissance Society of America, and last year she was awarded the American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction.

November 2007
472 pages

Illness and the Limits of Expression

Kathlyn Conway

Rights: World
For more info, contact Mary Bisbee-Beek at bisbeeb@umich.edu

Illness and the Limits of Expression is a sophisticated literary, psychoanalytic, and philosophical exploration of illness and narrative form. The book reflects on the range of narrative companionship offered to the seriously ill. Conway speculates about the survivor and professional communities' preoccupation with "success" narratives of disability—narratives that emphasize success born of hope and positive thinking—and explores the far less popular non-triumphalist genres of illness-literature, arguing that this second category asks more of both its readers and writers.

Kathlyn Conway is a psychotherapist and author of Ordinary Life: A Memoir of Illness. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

November 2007
168 pages

White Coat Clenched Fist: The Political Education of an American Physician

Fitzhugh Mullan

Rights: World
For more info, contact Mary Bisbee-Beek at bisbeeb@umich.edu

In the sixties, Fitzhugh Mullan was an activist in the civil rights struggle. While in medical school, Mullan was shocked by gaps in what the students learned and the lack of humanity in the classroom. Later, Dr. Mullan was outraged at the conditions he discovered when he began to practice. He helped found the Student Health Organization, organized the Controversial Medical Collective at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, and struggled to offer improved medical care to those who needed it most and could afford it least.

This landmark book charts the state of medical school and practices in the 1960s and 70s. This new edition is updated with a preface in which Dr. Mullan reflects on the changes in the medical field over the last thirty-plus years.

Fitzhugh Mullan is Murdock Head Professor of Medicine and Health Policy at George Washington University. He worked at the U.S. Public Health Service where he attained the rank of Assistant Surgeon General (1991-1996). Dr. Mullan is the co-founder of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship and the author of numerous books, including Plagues and Politics: The Story of the United States Public Health Service, and his most recent book, Narrative Matters: The Power of the Personal Essay in Health Policy.

September 2006
248 pages