Patient voices in Britain, 1840-1948 / / [edited by] Anne Hanley and Jessica Meyer.

• Superior document: Social Histories of Medicine
• HerausgeberIn: Meyer, Jessica
• Sonstige: Hanley, Anne; Meyer, Jessica
• Place / Publishing House: Manchester, UK : : Manchester University Press,, 2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Social histories of medicine.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; illustrations; digital file(s).

Historians have long engaged with Roy Porter's call for histories that incorporate patients' voices and experiences. But despite concerted methodological efforts, there has simply not been the degree and breadth of innovation that Porter envisaged. Patients' voices still often remain obscured. This has resulted in part from assumptions about the limitations of archives, many of which are formed of institutional records written from the perspective of health professionals. Patient voices in Britain repositions patient experiences at the centre of healthcare history, using new types of sources and reading familiar sources in new ways. Focusing on military medicine, Poor Law medicine, disability, psychiatry and sexual health, this collection encourages historians to tackle the ethical challenges of using archival material and to think more carefully about how their work might speak to persistent health inequalities and challenges in health-service delivery.

"Understanding patient experiences is vital for nuanced histories of medicine and effective health policy. In 1985 Roy Porter called for patients to be retrieved from the margins of history because, without them, our understanding of illness and healthcare would remain distorted. But despite concerted efforts, the innovation that Porter envisaged has not come to pass. Patient voices in Britain repositions the patient at the centre of healthcare histories. By prioritising the patient's perspective in the century before the National Health Service, this edited collection enriches our understanding of healthcare in the context of Britain's emerging welfare state. Encompassing topics like ethical archival practice, life within institutions, user-driven medicine and the impact of shame and stigma on health outcomes, its essays encourage historians to reimagine patient hood. It provides a model for using new sources and reading familiar sources in new ways. And, exploring traditional clinical spaces and beyond, it interrogates what it meant to be a patient and how this has changed over time. Crucially, the collection also aims to help historians locate and develop policy relevance within their work, reflecting on how these historical tensions continue to shape attitudes towards health, illness and the clinical encounter. Each essay presents a framework for using history to speak to pressing policy issues. Patient voices are there, in the archive. We just need to listen." -- Back cover.

Table of Contents

Introduction: searching for the patient - Anne Hanley and Jessica Meyer -- Part I: Locating the patient: new approaches -- 1. The non-patient's view - Michael Worboys -- 2. Family not to be informed? The ethical use of historical medical documentation - Jessica Meyer and Alexia Moncrieff -- Part II: Voices from the institution -- 3. Lunatics' rights activism in Britain and the German Empire, 1870-1920: a European perspective - Burkhart Brückner -- 4. Narrating and navigating patient experiences of farm work in English psychiatric institutions, 1845-1914 - Sarah Holland -- 5. The patient's view as history from below: evidence from the Victorian poor, 1834-71 - Paul Carter and Steve King -- Part III: User-driven medicine -- 6. Respiratory technologies and the co-production of breathing in the twentieth century - Coreen McGuire, Jaipreet Virdi and Jenny Hutton -- 7. The patient's new clothes: British soldiers as complementary practitioners in the First World War - Georgia McWhinney -- Part IV: Negotiating stigma and shame -- 8. 'Dear Dr Kirkpatrick': recovering Irish experiences of VD, 1924-47 - Lloyd (Meadhbh) Houston -- 9. 'I caught it and yours truly was very sorry for himself': mapping the emotional worlds of British VD patients - Anne Hanley -- Index.