A new book on the social history of healthcare in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: revisiting the body, diseases, vaccines and drugs

Since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, words such as infectious diseases, vaccines, and public health have frequently appeared in the public eye, domestic and international epidemics have become a daily topic of the public, and medical social history has also become a research field that has been hotly discussed in the academic community. Under the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been frequent achievements in the field of medical social history research, involving many topics such as medicine, medical treatment, and international health cooperation. The International Anti-Drug Policy Research Center of Shanghai University summarizes its key points and briefly describes the content.

Stuart Blume, Immunization: How Vaccines Became Controversial,

Reaktion Books, 2021. (Immunization: How Vaccines Are Controversial, recommended by Arnab Chakraborty)

The successful development of vaccines and mass vaccination are important measures to deal with the epidemic. Concerns about current problems have led scholars to revisit the issue of vaccines in history. Stuart Blume's book Immunization: How Vaccines Cause Controversy starts with the vaccine problem, dissects the ills of real society, and narrates around the two centers of "vaccine" and "controversy". Bloom argues that the two realities of globalization and people's unmet medical needs have eroded confidence in vaccine production and supply institutions. Bloom also recounts the history of immunization practices, from the work of early pioneers such as Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch to the establishment of the World Health Organization and the introduction of genetic engineering. Immunizations exposed the limitations of public health authorities' policies, and Bloom made recommendations on how they should restore people's confidence in vaccines.

Jean-Paul Gaudillière, Claire Beaudevin, Christoph Gradmann, Ann M. Lovell and Laurent Pordié (eds), Global Health and the New World Order: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to a Changing Regime of Governance,

Manchester University Press, 2020. (Global Health and the New World Order: Changing Governance Systems through a Historical and Anthropological Approach, Recommended by Huang Yun)

Responding to COVID-19 requires the cooperation of countries around the world. According to the Joint Statement of the International Forum on COVID-19 Vaccine Cooperation on 5 August 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic is a common challenge facing the world, and we should uphold the concept of a community of human health, adhere to the supremacy of people and life, and work together to cope with the challenges of the epidemic. Jean-Paul Godilier et al., Global Health and the New World Order: Changing Governance through a Historical and Anthropological Approach, examines the transition from international health to global health from a variety of perspectives. The book was written by both historians and anthropologists. They analyze why a new model of interpretation of "interference in the lives of others" has emerged in recent years, and why the emergence of this model has obscured the old distinction between "south" and "north" countries. According to the authors, the global health plan not only shows the retreat of the "international health" model of operation after the Second World War, but also that the new model makes the so-called "global health" no longer limited to infectious diseases and nation-state-based health programs.

Bharat Jayram Venkat, At the Limits of Cure, Duke University Press, 2021.

The epidemics of delta and Omicron, a variant of the new coronavirus, have led some people to wonder whether the vaccine they were given was futile and reflected the difficulty of controlling infectious diseases. In his book The Limits of Healing, Bharat Venkart, an assistant professor of history at the University of California, argues that the "history of cures" of diseases does not necessarily mean the history of the end of diseases. In the 1950s, an international team of researchers demonstrated in Madras, India, that antibiotics were effective in treating tuberculosis. But just half a century later, people are starting to worry about the impact of resistant strains, does this mean that diseases that have been proven to be curable have become incurable again? Through the use of medical anthropology research methods, explore the deep meaning behind "cured" and "incurable". Spanning colonial to post-colonial times, The Limits of Healing paints the story of the miracles and failures of nursing homes, travel therapies, and antibiotics in the context of rural, prison, and research trials and clinical encounters. If cures are seen as the end (disease, treatment, and more general suffering), the "imaginary cure" proposed by the book's author, Venkart, undoubtedly provides a basis for understanding the reality of diminished antibiotic efficacy.

Elizabeth T. Hurren, Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research, Cambridge University Press, 2021.

The pandemic has also made scholars think again about the meaning of health and health. In her book The Hidden History of the Dead: Controversial Corpses in Modern British Medical Research, Elizabeth T. Hurren describes the journey of the body, body parts, and organs after death in the hidden culture of british medical research after the Second World War. After a person dies, his/her body is harvested as a "bio-commons." Hulen reveals the "body disputes" of global medical science in the genomic age, which are often less obvious and less prominent than the issue of the international commodification economy of human tissue, and thus have not attracted the attention of previous research.

Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

Inflammation: Deep Medicine and an Analysis of Injustice by Rupa Marie and Raj Patel demonstrates the ability of colonial capitalism to shape contemporary medical practices and understand the human body. The authors study in detail and use the body structure as a metaphor for the book, showing the destruction of our inner ecology through numerous examples of injustice and inequality. These examples show remnants of racism, sexism, ageism, and the destruction of local knowledge. Thus, the book is a poignant critique of the connections between industrial processes and autoimmune chaos, global debt flows and chronic diseases, the expansion of "Oriental" customs and obesity, air pollution and death from COVID-19, patriarchy and depression, racism and hospital output. This highly original study demonstrates the implicit link between our biological systems and our unjust political and economic systems. The authors argue that this injustice can be solved through the decolonization of medicine and medical science.

Olivia Campbell, Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine, Park Row, 2021

Academic research on medical practice was once less involved with marginalized groups such as women, and in recent years there has been an increasing number of studies, such as Olivia Campbell's book Women in White Coats: How the First Female Doctors Changed the Medical Community. The book is rich and fascinating. The authors tell the brave history of some women who have become doctors, detailing how they have pushed the boundaries of gender and science, and how their efforts have reshaped the way we are now treated. The book focuses on three British and American women who dare to break the mold. They were Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in The UK to receive a MD, Isabella Garrett Anderson, the first female doctor in the UK, and Sophia Jexleek, a British female doctor who fought for women's education and built many medical schools for women. The book recounts the mental and physical challenges faced by these female medical pioneers from misogynists and masculine supremacists, including Joseph Liszt and Queen Victoria. These dedicated and intelligent women have overcome the difficulties that prevent them from becoming doctors, and thus helped to make women provide medical services to women.

Wayne Soon, Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History, Standford University Press, 2020.

Wayne Sueen's book, Global Medicine in China: A History of the Diaspora, shows the central role that overseas Chinese play in integrating biomedicine into Chinese military medicine. From the Plague of Northeast China in 1911 to medicine during World War II, this illuminating study of transnational history integrates major biomedical revolutions, showing how both local and global dimensions have always been intertwined in the history of public health and modern medicine. The book's greatest contribution is to use a series of historical and archival materials to show how the Chinese diaspora injected their vision into policy discussions, mobilized international networks, and played an authoritative role based on their experience and expertise. The transnational nature of trailblazers like Robert Lin allowed them to act as contacts of knowledge and education between the West and China. Through his pioneering research, Suene has shown how discrete can be an important medium for analyzing knowledge and institutional production.

Yan Liu, Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China, University of Washington Press, 2021.（《以毒为药》，推荐人：俞冰）

In general, medicine and poison seem to be opposites. However, during the formative years of Chinese pharmacy (200-800 AD), poisons were also strategically used as medicines to treat a variety of diseases, including cold, pain and epidemics. The book Poison as Medicine explores how doctors, religious believers, court officials, and ordinary people used various "substances" to treat persistent diseases and improve the quality of life. It illustrates how the concept of "degree" in Chinese — a word with the core meaning of "potency" — leads doctors to devise techniques to turn dangerous poisons into effective ones. The book's author, Liu Yan, recounts the scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Western Han Dynasty to the early Tang Dynasty, and how "degree" became a central concept for people to see their bodies and politics in the "Middle Ages." Liu Yan also studied a variety of mineral, plant and animal products with "degrees" in classical Chinese pharmacy, including aconitum and five-stone powder. By illustrating alternative patterns of health, physical, and drug interactions, the study raises a warning against arbitrary taxonomy and demonstrates the importance of focusing on technical, political, and cultural conditions under which "substances" become truly meaningful.

David Schneider,The Invention of Surgery: A History of Modern Medicine: From the Renaissance to the Implant Revolution, Pegasus Books, 2021.（《手术的发明》，推荐人：Ved Baruah）

David Schneider's Book The Invention of Surgery delves into everything from the natural philosophy of ancient Greek physicians to surgery and medicine in the current technological age. The book begins with the author quoting that "before 1865, if a person was sick and suffered alone without the care of a doctor, it might have been better." This introduction also shows that surgery has made significant developments over the past 150 years. The book is rich in content, and David Schneider analyzes the principles of sterile surgery, important medical inventions, the significance of surgery for the entire field of medicine, and the different understandings of the body at different times, which are quite enlightening to the reader. The book also provides a short biography for doctors and patients who have had a significant impact on surgical practice and related knowledge. The author also discusses the development of surgery based on his own experience as an orthopedic surgeon. Taken together, the book provides a detailed and easy-to-understand introduction to the history of modern surgery.

Mark A. Waddell, Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe – New approaches to the History of Science and Medicine, Cambridge University Press, 2021. (Magic, Science and Religion in Early Modern Europe, by Arnab Chakraborty)

From the restoration of ancient magic at the height of the Renaissance to the demise of alchemy in the early Enlightenment, Mark Wadell's book Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe explores the rich and complex way in which pre-modern humans understood the world, introducing readers to the vibrant history behind the formation of the modern world.

Jim Downs, Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine, Harvard University Press, 2021. (Ills of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Changed Medicine, recommended by Arnab Chakraborty)

In His book The Ills of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Changed Medicine, Jim Downs revisits the foundations of modern medicine, pointing out that the study of infectious diseases relies heavily on the contributions of involuntaries, including conscripted soldiers, enslaved men, and imperial subjects. Plantations, slave ships, and battlefields were laboratories for doctors to understand the spread of disease.

(Note: The recommenders in this article and the organizers of this article are all international drug control policy research centers of Shanghai University, and all Chinese books are tentatively translated.) ）