Over the last 30 years, colleges of education across the nation have examined and deliberated how best to educate pre-service history teachers for the challenges of the modern classroom. Specifically, they sought to create and refine teacher preparation programs that foster within the pre-service history teacher the propensity to use authentic teaching practices once they are licensed and instructing independently in the classroom. Using a situated learning theoretical framework, this research study adds to the literature on this topic by examining (...) how a semester-long pre-service residency at a historic site, archive, library, or museum influences in-service history teacher pedagogy. Utilizing an ex post facto qualitative research methodology with a questionnaire, interviews, and analysis of lesson plans, this study pursued the objective of evaluating the nuances of a residency and how those experiences influence in-service pedagogical dispositions. The findings of the study conclude pre-service history teacher residencies offer valuable and unique learning spaces for the pedagogical development of pre-service history teachers by promoting authentic-based teaching models that participants carry into their in-service teaching. (shrink)

While civic education may not always be explicitly included in school curriculums, it can still be imparted through various non-teaching practices and in different places. In this article, we will delve into three potential educational spaces -memorials, museums, and libraries- that are commonly found in Western democracies. We will explore the significance and scope of each of these spaces and discuss their respective ethical, political, and aesthetic responsibilities. Additionally, we will examine how they possess agency and can influence the educational (...) process, recognizing that even non-human entities, such as nature itself, can play an important role in shaping our understanding of civic education. (shrink)

An archive is a repository - that is, a place or space in which materials of historic interest or social significance are stored and ordered. A national archive is the storing and ordering place of the collective memory of that nation or people(s). This article provides a brief his torical/theoretical introduction to the politics of the archive in late capi talist societies and discusses this politics of memory via the performance of ordinary daily activities of librarians and archivists. Some relevant (...) political/discursive questions include: who controls, establishes and maintains the archive, and how do they do so? Which materials are preserved in the archive and which are excluded? As the documents and artifacts selected for the archive are ordered and classi fied, how do the schemas and structures applied include, exclude, fore ground or marginalize those materials? Finally, to what extent do the logical hierarchies for classification and arrangement reflect social or political hierarchies? Librarians and archivists face these concerns in HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 11 No. 4 © 1998 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi) [0952-6951(199811)11:4;17-32; 006604]their professional practice as they make decisions influenced by budgets, finite amounts of both physical and computer storage space and limited staff resources. The authors give real-life examples of choices made as archivists struggle to balance ideological goals made contradictory by practical constraints. For example, is it more appro priate to acquire as many materials as possible but be unable to describe, preserve and present them adequately, or is it preferable to describe, preserve and make fully available a more limited range of records and documents? Because of such practical concerns in modern technicist cultures, the explicitly political who often is reduced to the technically instrumental how - that is, political-moral questions are displaced to nonmoral and nonpolitical technical discourse, thereby establishing a 'meta-politics' that is understood only by the initiated. Conversely, archival activities such as acquisition, classification and preservation are 'technical' activi ties that may become explicitly 'political'. The article concludes that technical activities always are political, at least latently or potentially, even when they are not contested and made explicitly political. (shrink)

Introduction -- Historical perspectives of medical ethics -- The medical ethics Renaissance: a brief assessment -- Risk disclosure/'informed consent' -- Consent, control and minors: Gillick and beyond -- Sterilisation/best interests: legislation intervenes -- The end of life: total abrogation -- Medical ethics in government-commissioned reports -- Conclusion.

Since the establishment of the modern prison system in the early nineteenth century, prisons and prisoners have been construed as sites of moral, social, and biological contagion. Historic and contemporary studies show that most prisoners experience severe health inequalities, higher rates of addiction and mental health issues, and lower life expectancy than the rest of the population. They also come from deprived social strata. Yet, these aspects of Irish penal history have been largely neglected in academia and popular histories. Our (...) article discusses two public history projects—an art installation, _The Trial_, and a museum exhibition, _Living Inside_—that engaged different publics with the long history of health and welfare in Irish prisons. Developed by the research team on the Wellcome Trust Investigator Award “Prisoners, Medical Care and Entitlement to Health in England and Ireland, 1850-2000,” based at University College Dublin, the projects adopted different methodologies to engage their audiences and explore the experience and management of health and welfare in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish prisons. We further examine the different methodological approaches of each project, their varied aims and audiences, and the impacts reported by audiences and participants. The article also considers some of the challenges of doing this kind of public history, both in terms of working with marginalized communities and presenting research about difficult subjects to various audiences. (shrink)

Although the University of Leeds has attained something of a reputation for the quality of its scholarship in the history of science, few historians are aware of the impressive collection of early scientific and medical books and manuscripts to be found in the University libraries. In order to make the library resources more widely known, we embarked on a systematic survey of the contents of the main historical collections. We wanted not only to give a general impression (...) of the particular strengths and distinctive features of each collection, but also to mention the interesting or rare copies of individual works to be found in them. We have, therefore, examined every book related to the history of science and medicine in the relevant collections, and in doing so we have uncovered a number of important items. For example, we have identified a book which was once in Newton's library, and a previously unrecorded copy of Joseph Black's chemical lectures. More generally, we had not suspected the true size and range of the Chaston Chapman Collection, which makes it a valuable resource for the history of alchemy and early chemistry; nor were we initially aware of the strength of the Historical Collection of the Medical and Dental Library. The wealth of the legacies to the Brotherton and Special Collections also impressed us. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 107-119 [Access article in PDF] Museum as Process Carol S. Jeffers Introduction Today's art museums are committed to completing major expansion and renovation projects, and vigorously carrying out their stated missions. 1 These missions typically are concerned with processes of acquisition, preservation, exhibition, and education. The National Gallery of Art, for example, is dedicated to "preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering the (...) understanding of works of art." 2 Similarly, the Getty Museum at the J. Paul Getty Center seeks to "delight, inspire, and educate the public by acquiring, conserving, studying, exhibiting, and interpreting works of art." 3 Such processes are strategic, of course, and give direction and purpose to the range of programs and services offered by these institutions. Ensuring that visitors are surrounded by works of art, "at the highest quality," these processes also give rise to a particular view of the museum as an "object of reflection, contemplation, and discussion." 4Although unstated, I shall argue that art museums typically have other missions that are actively, if insidiously implemented through processes of representation (re-presentation), socialization, institutionalization, and commodification.The museum functions as a "socializing institution," that both represents and presents cultural assumptions, as well as social and aesthetic values to young and old alike. 5 These processes succeed in establishing an "ideology of aesthetic autonomy — the compartmental conception of fine art that segregates it to the separate realm of the museum." 6 Simultaneously, they present "ideology in material form." 7 The museum itself is a representation that tends to take on an independent and ultimately self-reflecting existence. In a Debordian view, "it is a spectacle, which, in its generality, is a concrete inversion of life, and as such, the autonomous movement of 8 [End Page 107] non-life." Through processes of representation and commodification, the spectacular museum is constructed as a frame that influences the public perception of art and society. Moreover, this ideological frame influences how the public experiences constructs of time and place, and how it comes to know about art in relation to the real world.Today's thriving art museums — and the various processes that deliver both their overt and covert missions — are likely to have a greater impact on society than ever before. With such potential, it seems especially important at this juncture to examine critically the art museum as process; to deconstruct that which has been "constructed as a symbol in Western society since the Renaissance." 9 In undertaking such an examination, then, the first task is to describe current museum impact on the public. Of special concern are questions about what the museum represents to its visitors, particularly to young students and teachers, and how these representations shape constructions of knowledge, conceptions of art, and roles for visitors and artists. Contemporary representations themselves raise questions about the historical context in which they originated, developed, and were carried forward. As a second task, then, this essay will present a historical-critical analysis that integrates several theoretical perspectives on the origins, development, and implications of the Western museum and its various processes. Next, I will consider the possibility and implications of visitor impact on museum processes. This last section includes examples of alternative museum approaches whose mission is implemented through active visitor participation in processes of conversation and community. Collecting and Exhibiting: The Museum as Sacred Grove The museum as a symbol in Western society is apparently recognized and understood as such, even by its youngest members. Children in the United States, Canada, and France, for example, can offer definitions of an art or other museum, and know how to "act and react" within one, even though they may have had extremely limited ornoprior museum experiences. 10 To these children, a museum is a venerable, quiet place, "like the library." 11 When asked, "what is a museum?" children typically respond with: "a place to collect things," or "a big place where lots of people go" to see "old stuff" and "lots of pictures." 12 In general, children seem to view museums as sites for exposition, and as repositories for... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 107-119 [Access article in PDF] Museum as Process Carol S. Jeffers Introduction Today's art museums are committed to completing major expansion and renovation projects, and vigorously carrying out their stated missions. 1 These missions typically are concerned with processes of acquisition, preservation, exhibition, and education. The National Gallery of Art, for example, is dedicated to "preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering the (...) understanding of works of art." 2 Similarly, the Getty Museum at the J. Paul Getty Center seeks to "delight, inspire, and educate the public by acquiring, conserving, studying, exhibiting, and interpreting works of art." 3 Such processes are strategic, of course, and give direction and purpose to the range of programs and services offered by these institutions. Ensuring that visitors are surrounded by works of art, "at the highest quality," these processes also give rise to a particular view of the museum as an "object of reflection, contemplation, and discussion." 4Although unstated, I shall argue that art museums typically have other missions that are actively, if insidiously implemented through processes of representation (re-presentation), socialization, institutionalization, and commodification.The museum functions as a "socializing institution," that both represents and presents cultural assumptions, as well as social and aesthetic values to young and old alike. 5 These processes succeed in establishing an "ideology of aesthetic autonomy — the compartmental conception of fine art that segregates it to the separate realm of the museum." 6 Simultaneously, they present "ideology in material form." 7 The museum itself is a representation that tends to take on an independent and ultimately self-reflecting existence. In a Debordian view, "it is a spectacle, which, in its generality, is a concrete inversion of life, and as such, the autonomous movement of 8 [End Page 107] non-life." Through processes of representation and commodification, the spectacular museum is constructed as a frame that influences the public perception of art and society. Moreover, this ideological frame influences how the public experiences constructs of time and place, and how it comes to know about art in relation to the real world.Today's thriving art museums — and the various processes that deliver both their overt and covert missions — are likely to have a greater impact on society than ever before. With such potential, it seems especially important at this juncture to examine critically the art museum as process; to deconstruct that which has been "constructed as a symbol in Western society since the Renaissance." 9 In undertaking such an examination, then, the first task is to describe current museum impact on the public. Of special concern are questions about what the museum represents to its visitors, particularly to young students and teachers, and how these representations shape constructions of knowledge, conceptions of art, and roles for visitors and artists. Contemporary representations themselves raise questions about the historical context in which they originated, developed, and were carried forward. As a second task, then, this essay will present a historical-critical analysis that integrates several theoretical perspectives on the origins, development, and implications of the Western museum and its various processes. Next, I will consider the possibility and implications of visitor impact on museum processes. This last section includes examples of alternative museum approaches whose mission is implemented through active visitor participation in processes of conversation and community. Collecting and Exhibiting: The Museum as Sacred Grove The museum as a symbol in Western society is apparently recognized and understood as such, even by its youngest members. Children in the United States, Canada, and France, for example, can offer definitions of an art or other museum, and know how to "act and react" within one, even though they may have had extremely limited ornoprior museum experiences. 10 To these children, a museum is a venerable, quiet place, "like the library." 11 When asked, "what is a museum?" children typically respond with: "a place to collect things," or "a big place where lots of people go" to see "old stuff" and "lots of pictures." 12 In general, children seem to view museums as sites for exposition, and as repositories for... (shrink)

This research explores temporal concept drift and temporal alignment in knowledge organization systems. A comparative analysis is pursued using the 1910 Library of Congress Subject Headings, 2020 FAST Topical, and automatic indexing. The use case involves a sample of 90 nineteenth-century Encyclopedia Britannica entries. The entries were indexed using two approaches: 1) full-text indexing; 2) Named Entity Recognition was performed upon the entries with Stanza, Stanford’s NLP toolkit, and entities were automatically indexed with the Helping Interdisciplinary Vocabulary application, using (...) both 1910 LCSH and FAST Topical. The analysis focused on three goals: 1) identifying results that were exclusive to the 1910 LCSH output; 2) identifying terms in the exclusive set that have been deprecated from the contemporary LCSH, demonstrating temporal concept drift; and 3) exploring the historical significance of these deprecated terms. Results confirm that historical vocabularies can be used to generate anachronistic subject headings representing conceptual drift across time in KOS and historical resources. A methodological contribution is made demonstrating how to study changes in KOS over time and improve the contextualization historical humanities resources. (shrink)

This article is about the relationship between reading, trauma and responsive literary caregiving in Britain during the First World War. Its analysis of two little-known documents describing the history of the War Library, begun by Helen Mary Gaskell in 1914, exposes a gap in the scholarship of war-time reading; generates a new narrative of "how," "when," and "why" books went to war; and foregrounds gender in its analysis of the historiography. The Library of Congress's T. W. Koch discovered (...) Gaskell's ground-breaking work in 1917 and reported its successes to the American Library Association. The British Times also covered Gaskell's library, yet researchers working on reading during the war have routinely neglected her distinct model and method, skewing the research base on war-time reading and its association with trauma and caregiving. In the article's second half, a literary case study of a popular war novel demonstrates the extent of the "bitter cry for books." The success of Gaskell's intervention is examined alongside H. G. Wells's representation of textual healing. Reading is shown to offer sick, traumatized and recovering combatants emotional and psychological caregiving in ways that she could not always have predicted and that are not visible in the literary/historical record. (shrink)

Through the 1960s, many people claimed that drug advertising was educational and physicians often relied on it. Continuing Medical Education (CME) was developed to provide an alternative. However, because CME relied on grants, industry funders chose the subjects offered. Now policymakers worry that drug firms support CME to promote sales and that commercial support biases prescribing and fosters inappropriate drug use. A historical review reveals parallel problems between advertising and industry-funded CME. To preclude industry influence and improve CME, (...) we should ensure independent funding by taxing medical industries, facilities and physicians. Independent public and professional authorities should create CME curricula. An independent agency should allocate all funds to educational institutions for approved curricula. (shrink)

Public policy tries to promote appropriate drug use by allowing firms to market drugs in interstate commerce only for uses that the Food and Drug Administration has found to be safe and effective. Because of their medical knowledge, physicians are authorized to prescribe drugs even for uses unapproved by the FDA. Nevertheless, physicians have relied on drug firms for information on appropriate prescribing despite the inherent tension between drug firm dissemination of information to promote sales and rational prescribing. In (...) the past, physicians often relied particularly on drug firm advertising for information on drug use. Today, physicians rely on drug firms to finance continuing medical education. A historical review reveals connections between these two different ways commercial interests have influenced the information that physicians receive and points the way to needed reforms. (shrink)

Society has historically not taken a benign view of genetic disease. The laws permitting sterilization of the mentally re tarded~ and those proscribing consanguineous marriages are but two examples. Indeed as far back as the 5th-10th centuries, B.C.E., consanguineous unions were outlawed (Leviticus XVIII, 6). Case law has traditionally tended toward the conservative. It is reactive rather than directive, exerting its influence only after an individual or group has sustained injury and brought suit. In contrast, state legislatures have not been (...) inhibited in enacting statutes. Many of their products can be characterized as hasty, unnecessary, ill-conceived, and based on the heart rather than the head. Moreover the lack of expert consultation sought has also been remarkable. One state legislature, for example, has advocated immunization for sickle cell anemia! Many others have enacted laws for the screening of inborn errors of metabolism, e.g., phenylketon uria, but have poorly defined the lines of responsibility to secure compliance. A spate of specific disease-related bills has emerged in the u.S. Congress, each seeking recognition and appropriations. Sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, Cooley's anemia and Tay-Sachs disease have been among the front-runners for support. Finally, in 1975, Congress has begun to examine an omnibus bill concerning all forms of genetic disease. The bill, termed the National Genetic Diseases Act is, however, still far from being enacted. (shrink)

A mass casualty (MASCAL) event is different to a major incident. The crux of this difference is that in a major incident, by the adoption of special measures, normal or near-normal standards of care can be maintained. In a MASCAL, irrespective of what special measures are instituted, standards of care inevitably drop. This is a, currently unmet, challenge for medical planning and planning policy. Twenty-First century weaponry is capable of producing thousands of causalities a day over a period of (...) several days in peer-on-peer conflict. In this chapter, we propose that medical planning for military events on this scale should include the following: explicit acceptance that ‘gold standard’ care cannot be given to patients who are triaged for treatment, a better understanding how to identify those patients who will not be triaged for treatment, a focus on ensuring patient flow (which includes diversion, self-care and remote monitoring), and implementation of the principle that care should be given by the lowest capable provider. We attempt to begin to develop some principles for planners to consider drawing on historical precedents and explore some of the ethical implications of our proposals. (shrink)

Inspired by a passage from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, this article considers the possibility of a “medical sublime.” It works through a history of the sublime in theory and in the arts, from ancient times to the present. It articulates therapeutic dimensions of the sublime and gives contemporary examples of its medical relevance. In addition, it develops the concept of sublime-based stress-reduction workshops and programs. These workshops bring the sublime out of the library and the museum (...) into the lives of the healthcare community—patients, families, clinicians, staff, concerned others—in the service of better navigating human vulnerability and finitude. Opening the cannon of aesthetic theory and the arts as resources for the human condition is at the heart of health humanities. The sublime can be an invaluable tool in this task. (shrink)

On 30 December 1634 the Bodleian Library in Oxford received an important gift. Fourteen trunks bearing a mass of manuscripts bound in no fewer than 237 “handsome calf” volumes arrived from London. They bore the coat of arms of Sir Kenelm Digby , courtier and philosopher, who was to be prominent three decades later in the early Royal Society. At least half of the volumes contain material of scientific and philosophical interest and have been extensively quarried by twentieth‐century scholars (...) of “medieval” science. Many of them are from Merton College and have cast light on “Merton science.” Most of the manuscripts, as has only recently been fully appreciated, were bequeathed to Digby by Thomas Allen of Gloucester Hall. Allen was reputedly one of the “magi” who had served Henry Percy, ninth earl of Northumberland , during his long imprisonment in the Tower after the Gunpowder Plot. Digby's father had been executed for alleged complicity in that plot when Kenelm was only an infant. Allegiance to the old religion, while conforming outwardly to the English church, constituted a strong bond between Allen and Kenelm. It may also explain the untiring zeal with which Allen sought out manuscripts from the purged libraries of Oxford colleges and from dissolved religious houses throughout the land. He thereby rescued them from being totally destroyed or surviving only as binding material for the flood of volumes from the printed press for which librarians now had to find shelf space.Digby's decision to present the Allen manuscripts to the Bodleian was rather sudden. It came very soon after he came into their possession and just after he had them sorted and bound. Those of scientific and philosophical interest had, for example, been classified as astronomical, astrological, alchemical, mathematical, or medical. The decision to part from “the library which with so much cost and labour I haue raked together” followed his resolve, after the death of his wife in 1633, to devote the rest of his life to penitence, prayer, and meditation.William Dunn Macray, the compiler of the original 1883 catalogue of the Bodleian Digby manuscripts, succeeded in tracing only a few of them to the Allen bequest. With A. G. Watson's researches, spanning a quarter of a century, Allen's status as one of the most important contemporary English collectors of medieval manuscripts has secured full recognition. The “Notes” in the present volume supplement Macray's own descriptions of individual manuscripts and help to indicate the importance of the collection as a resource for historical research. There is an index of incipits, as well as an index of the manuscripts cited in the original catalogue and its notes. Watson has appended a catalogue of Allen's own manuscript collection that was compiled during Allen's lifetime and consulted by Macray but has never before been published.The revised edition of the catalogue will greatly assist the study of the Digby manuscripts. It also adds much to our knowledge of the English collectors who saved manuscripts from wanton destruction after the dissolution of religious foundations and the purging of university libraries that followed the Henrician Reformation. (shrink)

Beginning in 1868, the United States Army Medical Museum issued a request to Army medical personnel situated in ‘Indian country’ for specimens of skulls from Native Americans. The purpose of this collection was to promote the study of craniometry, a branch of racial science commonly used to delineate the different varieties of mankind and to rank them according to their perceived intellectual attributes. Yet, as this paper argues, the efforts of Army surgeons in amassing hundreds of crania (...) for the Army Medical Museum were not matched by a similar level of commitment on the part of racial researchers. In examining why this seemingly impressive collection fell rapidly into disuse, this paper explores the creation and abandonment of one of the largest craniological collections formed in the United States in relation to the trajectory of craniometrical studies during this period. It also questions the link between the interests of racial researchers in the late nineteenth century and those of government policy makers, arguing that the two might not have been particularly closely aligned in the case of craniological research in Washington. (shrink)

RESUMEN El Servicio de Extensión Bibliotecaria es el medio adecuado que tiene la biblioteca para expandirse hacia la comunidad, de esa forma permite que aquellos usuarios que no la visitan hagan uso de sus servicios y documentos. Sin embargo, pocos conocen su historia y evolución a través del tiempo. Se muestra una revisión bibliográfica y el estado actual de este servicio. Los elementos incluidos en esta recolección abarcan publicaciones periódicas, sitios web, revistas electrónicas, publicados entre el siglo XVIII y el (...) presente. El documento pretende brindar una aproximación histórica al servicio de extensión bibliotecaria en las bibliotecas. ABSTRACT The Library Extension Service is the appropriate method a library has to expand into the community in a way that users who don’t visit it use its services and documents. However, just a few people know its history and development through time. A bibliographic review is shown along with the current state of this service. The elements included in it cover regular publications, web sites and electronic journals published from the XVIII century to the present time. The paper expects to provide a historical approach to the library extension service in libraries. (shrink)

Since its foundation in the mid-nineteenth century, the University of Toronto has accumulated a substantial number of historically-significant scientific objects. As Canada’s largest research university, much of this material is of national significance. Despite numerous attempts since the late 1970s to establish a universal policy for the preservation and safeguarding of scientific apparatus, the survival of Toronto’s scientific material heritage has depended partly on the initiatives of dedicated individuals, partly on luck.The following examination seeks a comprehensive history of the material (...) culture of science at the University, focussing on scientific instrumentation and natural history collections. It examines the circumstances under which some material survives and traces efforts to develop a curated collection, concluding with some recent progress in acquiring storage and developing an online catalogue. It argues that early university science museums formed an important venue through which the University fulfilled its public function of studying the frontier and assisting the expansion of the colonies. The display and interpretation of scientific material culture had an important impact on the University’s early history. (shrink)

Museums and collecting is now a major area of cultural studies. This selected group of key texts opens the investigation and appreciation of museum history. Edward Edwards, chief pioneer of municipal public libraries, chronicles the founders and early donors to the British Museum. Greenwood and Murray provide informative pictures of the early history of the museum movement. Sir William Flower, Director of the British Museum (Natural History), takes a pioneering philosophical approach to the sphere of natural (...) history in relation to museums. Similarly, Acland and Ruskin discuss and explore the relationships of art and architecture to museums. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article uses four historical case studies to address epistemological issues related to the animal model of human diseases and its use in medical research on human diseases. The knowledge derived from animal models is widely assumed to be highly valid and predictive of reactions by human organisms. In this contribution, I use three significant historical cases of failure (ca. 1890, 1960, 2006), and a closer look at the emergence of the concept around 1860/70, to elucidate core (...) assumptions related to the specific practices of animal-human knowledge transfer, and to analyze the explanations provided by historical actors after each of the failures. Based on these examples, I argue that the epistemological status of the animal model changed from that of a helpful methodological tool for addressing specific questions, but with precarious validity, to an obligatory method for the production of strong knowledge on human diseases. As a result, there now exists a culture of biomedical research in human disease that, for more than a century, has taken the value of this methodological tool as self-evident, and more or less beyond question. (shrink)

Suppose there arose a racist group which began terrorizing Arab-Americans. They always scrawled a Star of David wherever they committed their crimes, and they conducted parades in which they carried the Israeli flag. Suppose further that most Americans, but not a small group of American Jews, developed a strong, widespread, and long-standing association between the Star of David and racism. Finally, suppose someone suggested that those Jews who persisted in displaying the Israeli flag in their synagogues refrain from doing so, (...) on the grounds that, “[i]f it must be displayed, then why not display it instead in museums or library kiosks, accompanied by explanations of its historical significance and its connection to racism?”. (shrink)

Providing health care in the most cost-effective way has become a priority in recent years. This book tackles the important issue of the potential conflict between economic expediency and the welfare of individual patients. Contributors examine different attitudes to this complex problem, along with a variety of legal and historical perspectives. The book addresses particular aspects of health care, such as medical expert systems, general practice, medical education, and clinical decision-making where the direct involvement of doctors in (...) allocating scarce and expensive resources is perhaps most obvious. (shrink)

Borrowing from the title and some of the content of Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, it is argued that museums have great value as sites for what may be called a philosophical culture. A philosophical culture is one in which members or citizens engage in fair-minded debate and shared reflection, presenting and evaluating reasons for different positions particularly as these have relevance for matters of governance. In a philosophical culture, persuasion is almost always a matter of seeking (...) to provide reasonable grounds for adopting some position without resorting to violence or physical force.A philosophical culture is, in turn, an important foundation for a democratic culture and republic. A philosophy of museums emerges, a model we shall call the Philosophical Culture Museum Model. This concept is stipulative and ideal in the sense that it presents a paradigm of a museum with great virtue and promise. It must be confessed, however, that, historically, this is an emerging concept of the role of museums and one not evident in many of the museums in the early modern era or today. Reasons are offered as to why the time may be right to recognize the philosophy of museums as a particular sub-field in the overall practice of philosophy. (shrink)

In the course of the long 18th century, medical theory and theories underwent profound changes. These in turn reflected discontinuities and often conflicting assumptions and premises, engendering divergent concepts of physiology and pathology. However, most theoretical considerations were only very inconsistently and partially reflected in therapeutic practice, which continued to be governed by experience with traditional and known medicinals and by patient expectations regarding provider practices. Additional factors in therapeutic decision making were economic considerations and preferences for particular therapies (...) in certain social and religious networks. The present volume deals with some aspects of this complex relationship between medical theory and therapeutic practice, using a transatlantic perspective. Individual essays reflect the current state of historical research in Germany, the US and Great Britain. (shrink)

Is it time to leave the non-professional aspects of personal life at the door and face patients as medical professionals and no more?Ever wondered about the appropriateness of Christian doctors displaying pictures of Pope Benedict, Muslim doctors displaying pictures of Osama son of Laden or former PLO leader Yassir Arafat, or gay doctors proudly flying the rainbow flag in their rooms? I suggest that we should be concerned about such display of religious, political, or other allegiance to non-professional causes (...) in loci of health care delivery.Let us take a step back, however, and ask why we seek health care professionals’ help or assistance. Our reasons have, of course, primarily to do with doing our fair share by way of enabling health care delivery services to achieve their primary objectives for being in existence, namely to ensure that we live as long as is feasible at as high a quality of life as is possible. While legitimate questions may be asked about acceptable trade-offs between length and quality of life, broadly speaking, that is what we expect health care providers to do for us. Importantly, we expect them to do so in a professional manner. This is very much in line with the historical roots of the idea of professionalism, meaning essentially to profess publicly to serve the public good.1 The public …. (shrink)