From public spectacle to medical practice via “scientific spiritualism”: Zoologist Nikolai Vagner and the early studies of hypnotism in Imperial Russia, 1880-1909

Nikolai’s project seeks to examine the early history of hypnosis in one of the least studied settings in its global history, Imperial Russia. It focuses on the role of Nikolai Vagner (1829-1909), an eminent zoology professor at St. Petersburg University, prolific litterateur, and ardent spiritualist, in the popularization, legitimization, and institutionalization of research and theorizing…

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Toxic work: Workplace safety and industrial hygiene in Canada’s munitions industry during the Second World War

Alex’s project explores how industrial hygiene was mobilized during the Second World War to support Canada’s munitions industry, which manufactured roughly 4.6 billion rounds of ammunition and artillery shells by 1945. His project focuses on the small army of doctors, nurses, and industrial hygienists who monitored working conditions, safety, and worker health. Their medical expertise…

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Colonial landscapes: Public health programming, health districts, and nutrition education in Alberta, 1920s – 1960s

Emily’s dissertation studies the creation and expansion of public health programming with a focus on nutrition in Alberta from the 1920s to the 1960s, primarily in rural and northern areas. In the Prairies, where concerns of land dominated provincial concerns, public health, food, and nutrition were inextricably connected with the land. The discovery of macro-…

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Hyperemesis histories: Patient and policy perspectives in twentieth and twenty-first century Canada

Hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) is a pregnancy complication characterized by severe nausea and vomiting that has wide-ranging effects on pregnant people. While historians of women’s health have written at length on pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, the history of HG and broader nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (NVP) remains underexplored, especially in the Canadian context. With AMS…

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#TeamVaccine: Exploring the History of Toronto’s COVID-19 Vaccination Initiative through Social Media

In 2021, Toronto’s healthcare institutions – its academic hospitals, community health centres and faculties of health sciences – came together to plan, coordinate, staff and promote large-scale COVID-19 vaccination clinics in Toronto and in its surrounding areas. The size, the scale and the collaboration of this vaccine campaign were unprecedented in Toronto history. Through interviews…

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Quarantine Stations and Lazarettos: Histories of Architecture and Public Health

Quarantine – or spatial segregation – was one of the first and only solutions for public health prior to the late 19th century. The quarantine of groups suspected of carrying diseases began to be formalized in the late medieval Mediterranean. These early public health policies and practices immediately led to the requirement for quarantine spaces:…

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Medical Instruments as Authority and Knowledge: A Research and Documentary Project

The Medical Artifact Collection at Western University stores approximately 1300 objects with an adjacent teaching space and curates six exhibit cases. ‘Medical Instruments as Authority and Knowledge’ will combine published and archival sources, our artifacts, and past and new oral history interviews of physicians to betterunderstand the role of instruments in medical practice. Did medical…

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History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction

History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction (3rd ed. 2021) is the product of a long career of research and teaching, supported by AMS. But it is not accessible to francophones in Canada or elsewhere. Jacalyn’s project will provide a French-language edition of this popular introductory textbook, which is aimed at students in the health-care…

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Archiving Patient-Led Mad Activism in Canada, 1970s-2020

Efrat’s project is designed in two segments. The first segment involves the curation of mad-centered archival material not yet available in the public domain. The second is an original research segment, using critical discourse analysis of the archival material, that seeks to enhance understandings of the crucial and active role of mental patients in shaping…

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