modern bodies, modern minds

History of Science, Medicine, and TechnologyPostgraduate Conference 2016

Modern Bodies,Modern Minds

This event is organised and supported by

Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine,University of Oxford

Cover Image:

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), ‘Girl before a Mirror’ (1932),Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA.

For full information, seehttp://www.moma.org/collection/works/78311

http://www.moma.org/collection/works/78311

Modern Bodies, Modern Minds

You will hear presentations today from six MSc students and two DPhilstudents in Oxford’s programme in history of science, medicine, andtechnology. We entered Oxford from a range of disciplinary and professionalbyways. Some of us completed undergraduate training in literature,philosophy, history, or anthropology; others studied biochemistry, medicine, orother subjects in the natural and physical sciences. One of us elected topursue the MSc after an accomplished career as a cardiologist; another cameto Oxford after a career in scholarly editing. What led us all to the delightfullystrange sub discipline of history of science, medicine, and technology?

The capaciousness of this sub discipline should be evident from thethematic and methodological range of the eight projects we wish to share withyou today. One striking feature that unifies this year’s array of postgraduateresearch, however, is a pronounced tilt towards the contemporary period.Collectively, our research extends no further back than the late-nineteenthcentury. A few of our projects have contemporary medical education andpractice squarely in view – evidence of the fluidity between medical practiceand medical history that leaves both fields enriched as a result. Our researchalso has a geographical bias towards Britain and territories once under Britishcontrol, including Hong Kong and Palestine.

This temporal and geographical spread is, by and large, an accident ofour cohort’s composition: we would have loved to have some footing in otherperiods and arenas of study. The history of science, medicine, andtechnology, as we have learned this year, is not just a story of Paris hospitalsand modern epidemics; it’s also a story of Avicenna, of ancient Chinesepalpation, of Mesopotamian cuneiform.

What we hope to show in ‘Modern Bodies, Modern Minds’ is the value ofhistoricizing not just what is distant and remote but also what is proximate andfamiliar. In our talks, we are asking large – but at times peculiarly modern –questions. How do states and social movements use the body as a symbolicexpression of national identity? How did certain child-developmentresearchers come to believe we could learn more about human nature fromprimates than from human beings? How can we reform medical educationand diagnosis to better meet the needs of patients – and what are theconsequences of such reform to a profession that remains tethered to certaintraditions that give it meaning? We thank you for joining us as we probe thesequestions together.

Modern Bodies, Modern MindsPostgraduate Conference 2016

Friday 10 JuneHistory Faculty Lecture Theatre

10:00-10:15 Registration

10:15-10:30 Opening Remarks: Rob Iliffe, Professor of the History of Science, Oxford

10:30-11:20 Session One: Towards an Evidence-Backed Medical PracticeAndrew Lea, ‘Computerising clinical cognition: expert systems, literarytechnologies, and the reconfiguration of medical reasoning’Roger Blackwood, ‘An assessment of cardiac physical signs’Chaired by: Sophie Waring, Modern Collections Curator, Museum of theHistory of Science, Oxford

11:20-11:40 Tea/Coffee

11:40-12:30 Session Two: Uncovering the MindCharlie Tyson, ‘The warped mirror: primate infants and human children indevelopmental research, 1931-1969’Leo Carrington, ‘The financial history of the MRI’s development’Chaired by: John Lidwell-Durnin, Doctoral Candidate, Wellcome Unit forthe History of Medicine, Oxford

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-14:20 Session Three: Ancient Infections, Modern ResponsesIvana Lam, ‘The transformative plague: changing reactions towards Britishanti-plague measures in Hong Kong, 1894-1924’Laura Lamont, ‘Outbreak and response: the reaction to MRSA in the UnitedKingdom, 1961-1986’Chaired by: Mark Harrison, Director of the Wellcome Unit for the History ofMedicine and Professor of the History of Medicine, Oxford

14:20-14:40 Tea/Coffee

14:40-15:30 Session Four: National Identity and the BodyNetta Cohen, ‘Air, Body, and Identity: Jewish and Zionist Utilization of“Climate Theory” in Fin-de-Siècle Europe’Laura Tradii, ‘“Their dear remains belong to us alone”: soldiers’ bodies,commemoration, and cultural responses to exhumation in the Great War’Chaired by: Oliver Zimmer, Professor of Modern European History, Facultyof History, Oxford

15:30 Closing Remarks: Erica Charters, Associate Professor of the History ofMedicine, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford

HSMT Postgraduate Conference 2016


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Andrew Lea Towards an Evidence-backedDPhil Candidate Medical PracticeBalliol [email protected]

Computerising clinical cognition: expert systems, literary technologies,and the reconfiguration of medical reasoning

This talk concerns the epistemological dimensions of the computer’s introduction inmedical decision making. The development of computer-mediated diagnosis spurredanimated conversations concerning the epistemological foundations of medicine.How do physicians know what they claim to know? What is the nature of causality inmedical reasoning? What counts as medical “evidence”, and how should differentkinds of evidence be weighed? How did computers generate new ways of workingthrough medical questions? I argue that the first generation of computerised decisionsupport systems in medicine not only forced physicians and computer scientists toreckon, in unprecedented ways, with questions of medical epistemology, but alsogave rise to new styles of medical reasoning. These new styles of reasoningemerged from fundamentally divergent diagnostic strategies: some expert systemsaimed to approximate medical reasoning as exhibited by human physicians; otherswere built around more fundamental, mechanistic, and causal understandings ofpathophysiology; and others still adopted an ends-oriented approach, privileging theaccuracy of the computer system’s decisions over the means by which thesedecisions were reached. This talk also unpacks and theorises the techniques bywhich expert systems made these unfamiliar styles both discernible and convincingto physicians. I suggest that the technologies developed to explain the reasoningprocesses of machines to human physicians can be productively conceptualisedthrough the prism of Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s notion of “literarytechnologies”.



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Roger Blackwood Towards an Evidence-backedMSc Candidate Medical PracticeWolfson [email protected]

An assessment of cardiac physical signs

The study of pathological conditions of the heart began after Laennec’s introductionof the stethoscope in 1819. Only by the end of the nineteenth century was there anyproper understanding of the nature of different cardiac murmurs caused by variousheart valve lesions. These signs of heart disease did not filter down to medicalstudents until well into the twentieth century. After 1950 when echocardiography andcardiac catheterization clearly demonstrated the haemodynamic changes of variousvalve problems, other signs of these conditions began to be recorded in textbooks ofexamination. These signs proliferated at the time when the commonest underlyingcause, rheumatic fever, was fast disappearing. By the 1970s, therefore, at leastsome of these signs became redundant and yet they are still taught in medicalschools. Medical students, today, are said to be learning too many facts at theexpense of learning how to deal with patients. Several of these signs, usually witheponyms, should be excluded from textbooks while the haemodynamicconsequences of heart problems should be emphasised. The whole problem ofeliciting physical signs requires good teaching, a factor accepted only in the last 10-15 years by the medical schools and this has been very slow to filter into thecurriculum. A rational change of what we teach students about cardiac signs with thediscarding of “old” physical signs and the introduction of a few new physical signs isrequired. This dissertation will attempt to demonstrate these physical signs in detail.



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Charlie Tyson Uncovering the MindMSc CandidateBalliol [email protected]

The warped mirror: primate infants and human childrenin developmental research, 1931-1969

The association between monkeys and children in popular culture dates back atleast to the Elizabethan period. Elizabethan writers who drew comparisons betweenmonkey and child typically highlighted shared qualities of mischievousness andunruly energy.

It was not until the post-Origin period of the nineteenth century, when abroadening consensus about human descent from other primates began to takehold, that anatomical, developmental, and psychological parallels between primatesand children became an explicit focus of scientific attention in Britain. This primate-child parallelism found many advocates in the late Victorian age – among themCharles Darwin, who extended the comparison between child and chimpanzee inThe Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), and George JohnRomanes, who mined infant-development research, as well as observations of hisown children, for his writings on animal intelligence published throughout the 1880s.

In early twentieth-century studies of child development and psychoanalysis,the link between primate infant and human child became subject to more rigoroustesting, and researchers began to examine these two populations in tandem. In theearly 1930s, the Russian primatologist N. N. Ladygina-Kohts and the Americanresearcher Winthrop Niles Kellogg – in separate households on different continents– raised a chimpanzee alongside a child and chronicled the development of each.

The joining together of chimpanzee and child would have implications both forour knowledge of child development and of animal psychology. The psychologistJohn Bowlby, for instance, drew extensively on ethological ideas, and his work inturn provided theoretical grist for the maternal-deprivation studies that the Americanresearcher Harry Harlow conducted on rhesus macaques in the 1950s.

My paper scrutinizes the analytic conceit of primate infant and human child andassesses primate-child parallelism as an energizing force in early twentieth-centurychildhood development research.



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Leo Carrington Uncovering the MindMSc CandidateKellogg [email protected]

The financial history of the MRI’s development

The nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner is a modern medicalimaging tool which is now in widespread use for a variety of purposes. MRI uses theproperties of atoms to emit radio signals when aligned in a magnetic field andsubjected to a certain frequency. These radio signals can be analysed by software tobuild an image which is then used to assess the subject. As a non-invasive andradiation-free medical imaging technique, the MRI was initially used to create low-resolution images of the body aiding the detection of cancer, but techniques havenow advanced to enable real-time, high-resolution imaging of the brain to identify thelocation of processing functions. At the same time, the cost of each scan hasdecreased by an order of magnitude, allowing MRI to become routine.

In looking at the development of the MRI scanner, this study takes a financialand economic history approach to understand how a technique previously restrictedto assessing the chemical composition of mixtures, to what is arguably the mostimportant diagnostic tool available to modern science. The challenges in physics andsoftware were significant, and in order to develop the MRI as a practical tool in thelate 1970s, a significant amount of expertise and financial support was required.The question is therefore, what was unique about the laboratories that were core tothe development of the MRI, and to what extent the role of private enterprise wasimportant in making the technology practical and commercial? In examining theseissues, this paper will draw conclusions over the hypothetical query: could this typeof development occur today?



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Ivana Lam Ancient Infections, Modern ResponsesMSc CandidateExeter [email protected]

The transformative plague: changing reactions towardsBritish anti-plague measures in Hong Kong, 1894-1924

This study will take a look at Chinese population and their reactions towards Britishmeasures concerning the Third Pandemic plague that first hit Hong Kong in 1894and lasted until approximately around 1924. In the 1894 plague, the Chinese peoplegreatly disliked the British policies about the measures and, therefore, the Chinesepopulation vehemently rebelled and protested against the British colonialgovernment. However, in later years such as 1896, the Chinese people quieteddown and no longer voiced dissent – a point that is not widely discussed in theexisting secondary literature. Thus, the question I propose to examine is: Why didthe Chinese people’s reaction towards British policies and actions concerning theremoval of the plague change? To answer this question, the thesis will intend to testthe hypothesis that, unlike during the epidemic of 1894, Chinese civilians hesitantlyadopted and acquiesced in the colonial government’s policies and actions in lateryears, largely because the British government was able to negotiate andcompromise with the Chinese population. In doing so, the paper will demonstratehow Chinese people coped with unfamiliar Western ideas on medicine and publichealth and began to see the world from a different perspective that ended upblending ideas from Chinese cultural traditions and modernity together. The paperaims to show how the Third Pandemic plague became a vital turning point in modernAsian history and shaped the history of modern China.



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Laura Lamont Ancient Infections, Modern ResponsesMSc CandidateGreen Templeton [email protected]

Outbreak and response: the reaction to MRSA in the UK, 1961-1986

An infection transmitted mostly within hospitals, methicillin-resistant staphylococcusaureus (MRSA) is presently a serious concern for hospital staff, patients, and publichealth authorities. Since 2001, hospital trusts in the UK have been required to reportall cases where staph aureus has been detected in the bloodstream of a patient soas to restrict the spread of infection within institutions.

This came as a response to a problem warned of by Alexander Fleminghimself: bacteria tend to adapt their biological mechanisms to block antibiotic action.Shortly after his invention of penicillin began to be used widely in the 1940s, staphaureus acquired resistance to it. When, in 1959, a synthetic antibiotic calledmethicillin was introduced in the UK as a treatment option, a similar adaptionfollowed two years later and the first hospital cases of methicillin-resistant bacteriawere recorded in Carshalton, Surrey, at the Queen Mary’s Hospital for Children.However, hospital guidelines on preventing cross-infection in MRSA cases were notreleased until 1986.

The Carshalton outbreak was epidemic in nature in being a singular event ofcontagious illness. Since then, clusters of MRSA infection in UK hospitals and thedifficulty of eradicating the bacteria from the hospital environment may indicate that,as suggested by the pathologist Gordon Stewart who identified the Carshaltoninfection, MRSA is now endemic in UK hospitals. I will examine how this situationdeveloped during the twenty-five years between the Carshalton outbreak and the1986 guidelines, and where it has led since then.



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Netta Cohen National Identity and the BodyDPhil CandidateSt Antony’s [email protected]

Air, body, and identity: Jewish and Zionist utilizationof “Climate Theory” in Fin-de-Siècle Europe

This paper will examine the ways in which climate was imagined, understood, andutilized by Jewish scientists, thinkers, and leaders at the turn of the twentieth centuryin Europe. Through the prism of climate, I intend to demonstrate the ways in whichmodern Jewish racial and national identity was formed and transformed in relation toEuropean social, cultural, and political developments in the age of secularism,nationalism, imperialism, and science.

During the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries climate wasperceived in Western medicine as both the cause for diseases as well as for humanphysical and moral variations. The meaning of these perceptions in relation to theJewish people received various interpretations in different contexts, and were oftenutilized by Jews themselves to discuss their own identity, while advocating diverseand sometimes even contradictory ideas concerning the desired future of EuropeanJewry. One of the reasons which made climate an attractive concept for Jewishintelligentsia, as I would like to argue, was related to its attributes as an abstract,amorphous, and fluid notion, on the one hand, which was on the other hand aconcrete, physically sensed and empirically proven condition.

The liminality of climate perfectly suited the tantalizing position of Jews as both“similar” and “different” to Europeans, both active and passive, both masculine andfeminine. Thus, while some utilized climate theories to prove Jewish proximity toEuropeans in an attempt to emphasize the potential feasibility of Jewish assimilation,others viewed climate as the cause for Jewish dissimilarity to Europeans andtherefore employed it to justify Jewish colonization in Palestine.



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Laura Tradii National Identity and the BodyMSc CandidateGreen Templeton [email protected]

Soldiers’ bodies, commemoration, and cultural responsesto exhumations in the Great War

Shortly after the First World War, the British Government prohibited the repatriationof the cadavers of fallen soldiers. The Imperial War Graves Commission was thencharged with concentrating in appositely designed memorial cemeteries thehundreds of thousands of bodies scattered across battlefield burials. Although suchtask has often been presented as a monumental yet smooth-running effort toorganize, make sense of and memorialize the horrors of the battlefield into well-defined spaces, I will illustrate how my research, based on the archival material ofthe Commonwealth War Graves Commission, challenges such understanding. Infact, by exploring the vehement opposition of bereaved relatives as well as thereports of the Commission, I will show how the trajectory of the corpse from thebattlefield or isolated grave to the “dignified” and undisturbed resting place of theCommonwealth cemetery was much less linear, for cadavers were repeatedlyexhumed, moved, transported, appropriated, smuggled and even sold as relics.

Drawing insights from such cases, I will argue that the prohibition ofrepatriation and the reaction of the bereaved families to such policy reveal not only amarked clash between a traditional understanding of burial rituals and agovernmental appropriation of mourning, but also an underlying political dispute. Theuniformity of burial advocated for by the proponents of military cemeteries came infact to be seen as a measure of socialist inspiration by the upper classes. This paperis located at the intersection between history and the anthropology of body-politics,which explore the political symbolism of the dead body in situations of conflict.



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Participant List

Name (Institution) Email Address

BLACKWOOD, Libby [email protected]

BLACKWOOD, Roger (Wolfson College) [email protected]

CARRINGTON, Leo (Kellogg College) [email protected]

CHARTERS, Erica (WUHMO) [email protected]

COHEN, Netta (St Antony’s College) [email protected]

CORSI, Pietro (Faculty of History) [email protected]

DUTTA, Manikarnika (St Edmund Hall) [email protected]

GAW, Allan (University of Leeds) [email protected]

HANLEY, Anne (New College) [email protected]

HARRISON, Mark (WUHMO) [email protected]

ILIFFE, Rob (Faculty of History) [email protected]

JACKSON, Jane (Independent Researcher) [email protected]

KIM, Hyunkoo (Green Templeton College) [email protected]

KIM, Jeong-Ran (WUHMO) [email protected]

KIM, Moon-Ja (WUHMO) [email protected]

KIRCHHELLE, Claas (WUHMO) [email protected]

LAM, Ivana (Exeter College) [email protected]

LAMONT, Laura (Green Templeton College) [email protected]

LEA, Andrew (Balliol College) [email protected]

LI, Yanchang (WUHMO) [email protected]

LIDWELL-DURNIN, John (University College) [email protected]

MAKELA, Petra (King’s College Hospital NHSFoundation Trust)

[email protected]

NAONO, Atsuko (WUHMO) [email protected]

OH, Hana (Green Templeton College) [email protected]

PELLING, Margaret (WUHMO) [email protected]

RIEMER, Deborah (University of Manchester) [email protected]

SENIOR, John (Linacre College) [email protected]

SOOKDEOSINGH, Rhea (St Cross College) [email protected]

STIEVA, Rebecca (St Antony’s College) [email protected]

THOMAS, Duncan [email protected]

TRADII, Laura (Green Templeton College) [email protected]

TRAN, Jenny (The George Institute for Global Health) [email protected]

TYSON, Charlie (Balliol College) [email protected]

WARING, Sophie (Museum of the History of Science) [email protected]

WILMOT, John (University of Warwick) [email protected]

ZIMMER, Oliver (Faculty of History) [email protected]

WUHMO = Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford

modern bodies, modern minds

Documents