The Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870–1914

Jones, Claire L.

doi:10.4324/9781315654331

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…By the 1900s, catalogues contained 'text relating products to medical practice and outlining their relation to medical theory'. 96 Medical practitioners both ordered products and contributed their own designs for medical devices to trade catalogues, while the items and texts in these publications helped to foster the image of medicine as scientific and progressive. 97 Queen & Co.'s bulletin sought to bridge the gap between microscopy products and their application in a similar way.…”

Section: The American Postal Microscopical Club In the Periodical Pressmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘A method for safe transmission’: the microscope slides of the American Postal Microscopical Club

Beiermann

2021

Br J Hist Sci

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In the 1870s, microscopy societies began to proliferate in the United States. Most of these societies attracted microscopists from surrounding cities, but the American Postal Microscopical Club, modelled on the British Postal Microscopical Society, used the postal system to connect microscopists scattered across the country. Club members exchanged microscope slides and notes following a chain-letter system. The main objective of the club was to teach its members how to make permanent slides. Preparation and mounting methods required technical skill, which was, as even club members had to admit, difficult to learn without personal instruction. Yet members developed ways to share craft knowledge through the post. Drawing on the private notes of a member and published reports on the slides circulated, this paper challenges the widespread assumption that the generation of craft knowledge depended on the co-location of artisans. It argues that microscopists’ knowledge of preparation methods was intertwined with their skill in building and navigating information infrastructures, and that by tracing these infrastructures we gain a better understanding of how craft knowledge travelled in the late nineteenth century.

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Section: The American Postal Microscopical Club In the Periodical Pressmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘A method for safe transmission’: the microscope slides of the American Postal Microscopical Club

Beiermann

2021

Br J Hist Sci

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“…Having introduced readers to the theories and spaces of anti-aging treatment, the next "rhetorical enterprise" (Jones 2016, p 59) was to extensively detail the products and services on offer. Couched in the language of "preservation of beauty," self-produced texts and newspaper coverage explained specialists' strategies, ranging from traditional approaches like tonics and unguents to more dramatic interventions engendered by turn-of-the century advances in technological and, more specifically, electrical innovation.…”

Section: Registers Of Regenerationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Clever ministrations”: regenerative beauty at the fin de siècle

Clark

2017

Palgrave Commun

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This paper is the first to consider the role of late-nineteenth century British beauty culturists in establishing the respectability of anti-aging goods and services. It surveys self-published beauty texts, periodical press coverage, and advertisements to ask how female beauty providers positioned their businesses so as to enhance the reputation of their wares. These texts reveal that, by foregrounding the respectability, modernity, and novelty of regenerative techniques, British beauty culturists challenged existing narratives of commercial beautification, shifting feminine regeneration from the realm of vanity to necessity, from a question of moral character to commercial endeavor. However, these discursive strategies, not to mention the use of technology for the purpose of female bodily enhancement, were not welcomed by all. The paper subsequently turns to police court coverage and medical journals that criticized beauty "quacks" for reportedly duping unsuspecting female customers. The pursuit of duplicitous "beauty doctors" by unsatisfied customers and medical publications comes to the fore in a concluding profile of Anna Ruppert, a popular London-based beauty culturist who found herself charged under Ireland's Pharmaceutical Act in 1893 for selling arsenical compounds. And yet, despite public scrutiny, the British press, consumers, and commercial providers increasingly embraced a more overt beauty culture that would prevail through the interwar period. This paper argues that this was due, in part, to discursive shifts advanced by fin de siècle beauty culturists, who paid the price for these interventions, existing as a liminal group straddling respectability and quackery.

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“…Second, the article collection draws on the historical relationship between medicine and commerce, such as the work of Takahiro Ueyama and Claire L. Jones, showing how medical practitioners, entrepreneurs and corporate interests attempted to promote products which promised to regenerate body and mind (Jones, 2013; Ueyama, 2010). These included specific foodstuffs and diets, as well as supplements and medical devices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perspectives on human regeneration

Stark

2018

Palgrave Commun

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Regeneration is a concept that has fascinated humans for centuries. Whether we have been trying to bring things back to life, extract additional resources from the world, or remodel our living spaces—domestic and urban—it is often presented as an unproblematic force for good. But what exactly does it mean to regenerate a body, mind or space? This paper, which introduces a collection of contributions on the theme of human regeneration, explores the limits and possibilities of regeneration as a conceptual tool for understanding the biological realm. What does it mean to be regenerated? How can a scholarly focus on this concept enrich our histories of bodies, ageing, disability and science, technology and medicine? As a secondary goal, I identify two distinct aspects of regeneration—'hard' and 'soft' regeneration—which concern the medical and social elements of regeneration respectively. By recognising that everything from cosmetics and fictions to prosthetics and organs grown in vitro display a combination of 'hard' and 'soft' elements, we are better placed to understand that the biological and social must be considered in consort for us to fully appreciate the meanings and practices that underpin multiple forms of human regeneration.

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The Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870–1914

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

‘A method for safe transmission’: the microscope slides of the American Postal Microscopical Club

‘A method for safe transmission’: the microscope slides of the American Postal Microscopical Club

“Clever ministrations”: regenerative beauty at the fin de siècle

Perspectives on human regeneration

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