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The shell-shock epidemic of 1915 challenged the capacity and expertise of the British Army's medical services. What appeared to be a novel and complex disorder raised questions of causation and treatment. To address these pressing issues, Moss Side Military Hospital at Maghull became a focus for experiment in the developing field of psychological medicine as clinicians from diverse backgrounds and disciplines were recruited and trained at this specialist treatment unit. By contrast, the Maudsley wing of 4th London General Hospital expanded from the neurology department of King's College Medical School and drew upon the neuropathology research of Frederick Mott at Claybury Asylum. By focusing on the psychodynamics of environmental factors, doctors at Maghull offered an alternative to the physicalist hypotheses (heredity and neuropathy acquired as a result of disease or aberrant behavior) explored at the Maudsley. To understand the cause and pathology of shell shock, both institutions admitted a diverse range of patients and experimented with treatments. The individual attention offered to service patients who were not psychotic allowed psychiatry to develop in a way that had not been possible in the county asylum system. The design and operation of Maghull and the Maudsley provided models for departments of psychological medicine in the post-war period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From 1917 to 1918, Major Arthur Hurst filmed shell-shocked patients home from the war in France. Funded by the Medical Research Committee, and using Pathé cameramen, he recorded soldiers who suffered from intractable movement disorders as they underwent treatment at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley and undertook programs of occupational therapy at Seale Hayne in Devon. As one of the earliest UK medical films, Hurst's efforts may have drawn inspiration from the official documentary of the Battle of the Somme and films made in 1916 by French Army neurologists. Although initially motivated to make use of a novel medium to illustrate lectures, Hurst was alert to the wider appeal of the motion picture and saw an opportunity to position himself in the postwar medical hierarchy. Some “before treatment” shots were reenacted for the camera. Hurst, like some other shell shock doctors, openly used deception as a therapeutic measure. On the basis that the ends justified the means, they defended this procedure as ethical. Clinicians also took advantage of changes in military regulations to address functional symptoms. Claims made of “cures” in the film and associated publications by Hurst were challenged by other doctors treating shell shock. The absence of follow-up data and evidence from war pension files suggested that Hurst may have overstated the effectiveness of his methods. Nevertheless, the message conveyed in the film that chronic cases could be treated in a single session had a powerful resonance for ambitious or charismatic doctors and was revived in World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To what extent was a nascent international humanitarian sphere challenged by the rise of nationalist aid efforts during the First World War? How did wartime nationalisms influence humanitarian mobilisation? Taking the aid effort to prisoners of war as its central case study, this article contends that the similar evolution of national wartime charities in the different belligerent states was due to a transnational learning process, based on nationalism and reciprocity dynamics, rather than simply a manifestation of a shared culture of international humanitarianism. Comparing similar national aid actors in different countries highlights the fact that the national aid response did not develop solely as a result of 'international' norms, but often on the basis of other motivations, predominantly the desire to help the war effort. This transnational learning process has been identified in some historiographical analysis as evidence for the existence of shared international humanitarian norms within belligerent countries; in fact it is also evidence that certain welfare sectors - for example, registration of the missing and dead, military aid bureaucracies or local scouting or Red Cross associations - evolved similarly in response to the logistical challenges created by total war. This paper contends that the nationalist-orientated evolution of charity at the local level during the war created increasing tensions between the national and international humanitarian spheres and it argues that it is necessary to explore this contested evolution of wartime charity in order to understand the complex nature of wartime mobilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Medical discharges due to mental health conditions have steadily increased within the British Armed Forces since 2007, with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cited for 41% of these. Mental health conditions can adversely impact engagement in activities of daily living. Research has shown that meaningful activity has benefits for mental well-being and engagement in this population. Aims: This small-scale study aimed to determine whether scale modelling had a measurable impact on veteran well-being and to describe how the results of this study may inform future occupational therapy research with veterans. Method: This was a retrospective quantitative design using the Short Warwick and Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale to gather pre- and post-engagement data from veterans attending scale-modelling groups. Results: N = 12. There was a positive difference between pre- and post-engagement in scale modelling, p < 0.05, and effect size 0.61 within a limited participant pool. The Model-of-Human-Occupation and the Occupational Perspective of Health framework demonstrated that participants who found meaning and value in an activity were most likely to benefit from it. Conclusion: This study suggests that scale modelling enables health, well-being and independence for veterans if found meaningful by them. This is a limited-size study contributing to an under-researched area, opening pathways for further research with this participant group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the early years of the First World War, wounded Indian soldiers were treated at hospitals in southern England. Focussing especially on the hospital created within the Royal Pavilion complex in Brighton, this article examines the implications of an episode in which thousands of colonised subjects were located and managed within a metropolitan province. We show how the Indian hospitals became sites of concentrated imperial anxiety, with the potential to destabilise British rule in India itself as well as the English localities in which they were created. In particular, we argue that the agency expressed in Indian soldiers' letters home generated an acute consciousness among British officials of the need to bear in mind subaltern subjects' own networks when managing those hegemonic imperial networks that come more readily to historians' attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From their beginning in the seventeenth century, the migrations across the Strait of Taiwan took place between societies of the same ethnicity. This did not change by the cession of Taiwan to the Japanese Empire in 1895, but despite this, distinct migrant identities then emerged on both sides of the Strait. The new migrant regime in mainland China by Japan's domineering position purposely privileged the Taiwanese who went there, and facilitated the activity of Taiwanese criminal gangs; this got them a bad name at the time, which persists in the existing, nationalist historiography. In Taiwan the new regime was exploitative and set the migrant workers from mainland China apart as foreigners; in doing so it created another migrant identity that is problematic for historians. This article contests this nationalist historiography, and shows, that for migrants to achieve a distinct identity, they need not be ethnically different from their host society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been increasing interest in the organization and accreditation of Postdoctoral General Dentistry Programs (PGD). In addition, numerous national organizations have called for increases in the number of first postdoctoral year (PGY-1) positions and programs. At the same time there has been a movement to incorporate concepts of competency-based education into dental education programs in order to stress the outcomes of education rather then the process. These movements have coincided with an increased recognition that dental education will be affected by the changing demographics for our population, the emerging trends in health care delivery and financing, and the need for an increase in the number of primary care provides in dentistry, trained at an advanced level, who are capable of caring for an increasingly socially diverse and medically complex population in our country in the next century. This paper reviews the history of postdoctoral education programs in dentistry and medicine with a focus on PGD education, describes the changing health care environment in which future dental professionals will practice, and relates the dental postdoctoral experience to that in medicine. A strategy is presented for the dental profession to prepare dental pratitioners with the competencies needed for the future and to create enough training opportunities to prepare these practitioners to care for the oral health needs of the nation. This proposal calls for a "National Consensus Development Conference on the Future of Postdoctoral Primary Care Education in Dentistry." This conference would define the strategies necessary to prepare dental practitioners with the competencies needed for the future and develop approaches to create enough training opportunities to prepare these practitioners to care for the oral health needs of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the history and development of hospitals in the U.S. The first professional nursing schools were established in 1873 at Bellevue Hospital in New York, the New Haven Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital. Total national expenditures on hospital operations for tax-supported and voluntary hospitals in 1903 were estimated to be at least $28.2 million; of this, 43 percent came from charges made to paying patients, 8 percent from tax funds, and the remainder from charitable donations and endowments. The success and visibility of the hospital in providing acute, specialized care obscured its relatively limited role in the overall picture of health and disease. Departments of social work were started in leading hospitals with the belief that such facilities would help eradicate the notion that the hospital was an impersonal institution and would help to elucidate the social causes of disease.

The article explores the evolution of hospital architecture in Canada. Topics discussed include the relationship between the histories of hospital architecture and medical practice and the association of the efficiency of hospitalization with tonsillectomies, appendectomies, cesarean deliveries and routine cardiac surgery. The state of innovation in hospital architecture is mentioned.

by Sioban Nelson (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 2001; pp. 240. 38.50 £). Sioban Nelson's study of `vowed women' carrying out institutional nursing work in the nineteenth and early twentieth [...]

COOL IMAGES Old Medicine Ever since William Harvey demonstrated in 1628 how blood circulates in the body, his landmark treatise De Motu Cordis has been a model of observation and [...]