Main description:

This book explores medical and health periodicals of the nineteenth century: their contemporary significance, their readership, and how historians have approached them as objects of study.

From debates about women doctors in lesser-known titles such as the Medical Mirror, to the formation of professional medical communities within French and Portuguese periodicals, the contributors to this volume highlight the multi-faceted nature of these publications as well as their uses to the historian. Medical periodicals - far from being the preserve of doctors and nurses - were also read by the general public. Thus, the contributions collected here will be of interest not only to the historian of medicine, but also to those interested in nineteenth-century periodical culture more broadly.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Media History.

Contents:

Introduction: Reading Medicine and Health in Periodicals

Sally Frampton and Jennifer Wallis

1. The 'Medical-Women Question' and the Multivocality of the Victorian Medical Press, 1869-1900

Alison Moulds

2. Shaping Doctors and Society: The Portuguese Medical Press (1880-1926)

Ana Carneiro, Teresa Salome Mota and Isabel Amaral

3. Reading Photography in French Nineteenth-Century Journals

Beatriz Pichel

4. 'Bicycle-Face' and 'Lawn Tennis' Girls: Debating girls' health in late nineteenthand early twentieth-century British periodicals

Hilary Marland

5. Using Digitised Medical Journals in a Cross European Project on Addiction History

Alex Mold and Virginia Berridge