Nineteenth century medicine

The Transformative Power of Diagnosis

Staff From our researchers , , ,

– by Wood Institute travel grantee Annemarie Jutel*

 

The moment a serious diagnosis is named marks a boundary. As Suzanne Fleischmann wrote: “It serves to divide a life into “before” and “after,” and this division is henceforth superimposed onto every rewrite of the individual’s life story” (p. 10).   The power to cleave one’s sense of self in two is what Fleischmann referred to the “transformative power of the diagnosis.”  The illustration accompanying this post paints a picture most of us can immediately recognise, so often the power of diagnosis is referred to in popular culture, in medical and patient accounts of illness.

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Between the Pages: Victorian Women’s Letters to H. Lenox Hodge

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– by Wood Institute travel grantee Annelle Brunson*

 

Cracking open the accordion-notebook of Dr. Hugh Lenox Hodge (1836-1881), I read from the top, thumb and index finger poised delicately at the faded yellow corners. Each turn of the page wafts the familiar musty odor of the archives. Each page brings another woman in distress. Hodge was one of the leading doctors of female diseases in nineteenth-century Philadelphia. His entries can seem vaguely impersonal, a simple version of the forms we fill out today: name, age, address, family members, symptoms, and physical notations. Unlike today, his diagnoses carry a heavy weight of non-scientific judgment.

Nineteenth-century doctors, almost exclusively male, entertained peculiar ideas about the female body. Hysteria was at its diagnostic climax, reproduction was at the root of all women’s ills, and terminality was still a gift and a punishment from God. But what intrigued me most were the documents inter-leaving the accordion; the correspondence from female patients, who offer a very different view of the patient experience. Their letters appear carefully composed but the ink blots at the ends of sentences and words suggest an occasional hesitation, a desire to get this right—and they tell a deeper story of the women’s lives read in-between the lines.

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What Can (and Can’t) We Learn From 19th Century Physicians’ Account Books?

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– by Wood Institute travel grantee, Jonathan Jones*

 

What sources can tell us the most about the health of nineteenth-century Americans, their aches and ailments, malaise and medicines? Diaries might come to mind, or letters between family members. These narrative sources are familiar to historians, and are more-than-commonplace in archives. On the one hand, narrative sources can be windows into the health of nineteenth-century Americans, revealing how they coped with the horrifying sicknesses and symptoms that plagued them. On the other hand, letters and diaries are impressionistic, better for figuring out how people felt about their health than the fine details of healthcare.

But what about the other stuff, the nitty-gritty details of medical history? Where can historians turn if, for instance, we want to find out how often the average nineteenth-century American saw a doctor? Or how much he charged them for lancing a boil or delivering a baby? What if we needed to know the most commonly prescribed medicines in nineteenth century America, like mercury, calomel, or opium? How can we investigate these questions with numbers and not just with quotes? Historians using only narrative sources would likely be unable to. Luckily for us, most nineteenth century American physicians kept account books, which contain invaluable quantitative data that historians can use to illuminate historical health patterns, supplementing impressionistic sources with hard data.
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