Charles E. Rosenberg – författare

Cholera was the classic epidemic disease of the nineteenth century, as the plague had been for the fourteenth. Its defeat was a reflection not only of progress in medical knowledge but of enduring changes in American social thought. Rosenberg has focused his study on New York City, the most highly developed center of this new society. Carefully documented, full of descriptive detail, yet written with an urgent sense of the drama of the epidemic years, this narrative is as absorbing for general audiences as it is for the medical historian. In a new Afterword, Rosenberg discusses changes in historical method and concerns since the original publication of The Cholera Years."A major work of interpretation of medical and social thought . . . this volume is also to be commended for its skillful, absorbing presentation of the background and the effects of this dread disease."—I.B. Cohen, New York Times"The Cholera Years is a masterful analysis of the moral and social interest attached to epidemic disease, providing generally applicable insights into how the connections between social change, changes in knowledge and changes in technical practice may be conceived."—Steven Shapin, Times Literary Supplement"In a way that is all too rarely done, Rosenberg has skillfully interwoven medical, social, and intellectual history to show how medicine and society interacted and changed during the 19th century. The history of medicine here takes its rightful place in the tapestry of human history."—John B. Blake, Science

This study uses the celebrated American trial of Charles Guiteau, who assassinated President James A. Garfield in 1881, to explore attitudes towards insanity and criminal responsibility in the the late-19th century. The author reconstructs the courtroom battle waged by 24 expert witnesses who represented the two major schools of psychiatric thought of the generation immediately preceding Freud. Although the role of genetics in behaviour was widely accepted, these psychiatrists debated whether heredity had predisposed Guiteau to assassinate Garfield. Rosenberg's account allows the reader to consider one of the earliest cases in the controversy over the criminal responsibility of the insane, a debate that has continued through to modern times.

Medicine has always had its historians; but until recently it was a history written by and for practitioners. Charles Rosenberg has been one of the key figures in recent decades in opening up the history of medicine beyond parochial concerns and instead viewing medicine in the rich currents of intellectual and social change of the past two centuries. This book brings together for the first time in one place many of Professor Rosenberg's most important essays. The first two sections of essays, focusing on ideas and institutions, are meant at the same time to underline interactions between these realms. The essays treat such topics as therapeutics and its relationship to social change in the nineteenth century; the practice of medicine in New York a century ago; and the rise and fall of the dispensary. The third section of the book focuses on the attempt to use history as a resource for discussion of a medical world that often seems out of control and in a semi-permanent crisis, economic, organizational, and humane. The essays discuss themes that have become visible to the public - deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and the status of psychiatry; the hospital as a social and economic problem; and the social negotiations surrounding AIDS.

Medicine has always had its historians; but until recently it was a history written by and for practitioners. Charles Rosenberg has been one of the key figures in recent decades in opening up the history of medicine beyond parochial concerns and instead viewing medicine in the rich currents of intellectual and social change of the past two centuries. This book brings together for the first time in one place many of Professor Rosenberg's most important essays. The first two sections of essays, focusing on ideas and institutions, are meant at the same time to underline interactions between these realms. The essays treat such topics as therapeutics and its relationship to social change in the nineteenth century; the practice of medicine in New York a century ago; and the rise and fall of the dispensary. The third section of the book focuses on the attempt to use history as a resource for discussion of a medical world that often seems out of control and in a semi-permanent crisis, economic, organizational, and humane. The essays discuss themes that have become visible to the public - deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and the status of psychiatry; the hospital as a social and economic problem; and the social negotiations surrounding AIDS.

This widely acclaimed history traces every facet of the hospital's social and professional transformations. Many of today's obsessions with technology, rigid bureaucracy, and uncontrolled cost can be found in hospitals more than half a century ago. Illustrated.

In its original edition, No Other Gods offered a pioneering and influential examination of the ways in which social institutions and values shaped American scientific practice and thought. In this revised and expanded edition, Rosenberg directs our attention to the dilemma posed by the social study of science: How can we reconcile the scientist's understanding of science as a quest for truth and knowledge with the historian's conviction that all knowledge bears the marks of the culture which gave it birth?

During the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth century, most Americans healed themselves at home, as their ancestors had done for centuries. They relied upon books and pamphlets addressing health and diseases, diet, exercise, sex, mental health-everything one needed to know about how to avoid illness and what to do if illness or injury should strike. In Right Living: An Anglo-American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene, Charles E. Rosenberg and his co-authors analyze these early health-oriented books, pamphlets, and broadsides-their origins, content, role, and authorship-and contribute to our understanding of their role in everyday life. Right Living also offers insight into the world views and bedside practices of another time by examining the shaping and transmission of the English and continental tradition, the persistent interest in sexual relations and their consequences, and the changing uses of print as a commodity and as a product of specific, time-bound technologies. Contributors: Kathleen Brown, Mary E. Fissell, William H. Helfand, Thomas A. Horrocks, Ronald L. Numbers, Charles E. Rosenberg, Steven Shapin, Jean Silver-Isenstadt, Steven Stowe.

Charles E. Rosenberg, one of the world's most influential historians of medicine, presents a fascinating analysis of the current tensions in American medicine. Situating these tensions within their historical and social contexts, Rosenberg investigates the fundamental characteristics of medicine: how we think about disease, how the medical profession thinks about itself and its moral and intellectual responsibilities, and what prospective patients-all of us-expect from medicine and the medical profession. He explores the nature and definition of disease and how ideas of disease causation reflect social values and cultural negotiations. His analyses of alternative medicine and bioethics consider the historically specific ways in which we define and seek to control what is appropriately medical. At a time when clinical care and biomedical research generate as much angst as they offer cures, this volume provides valuable insight into how the practice of medicine has evolved, where it is going, and how lessons from history can improve its prognosis.

Charles E. Rosenberg, one of the world's most influential historians of medicine, presents a fascinating analysis of the current tensions in American medicine. Situating these tensions within their historical and social contexts, Rosenberg investigates the fundamental characteristics of medicine: how we think about disease, how the medical profession thinks about itself and its moral and intellectual responsibilities, and what prospective patients-all of us-expect from medicine and the medical profession. He explores the nature and definition of disease and how ideas of disease causation reflect social values and cultural negotiations. His analyses of alternative medicine and bioethics consider the historically specific ways in which we define and seek to control what is appropriately medical. At a time when clinical care and biomedical research generate as much angst as they offer cures, this volume provides valuable insight into how the practice of medicine has evolved, where it is going, and how lessons from history can improve its prognosis.

This is a book that goes beyond a mere examination of the role of the family in structuring sexual relationships, kinship relations, and child rearing practices. Here are historical examples of the family as a source of labor and capital accumulation, as a mechanism for the transmission of property, and as a means for the imposition of social control.

This book is not about one glorious triumph after another, nor is it a series of complaints about doctors and hospitals. Rather, these essays examine American medicine within its context, sensitive to the role of medical knowledge, practitioners, and institutions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The selections not only cover general considerations of the social and cultural context in which American medicine developed but also analyze the relationship between science and medicine, the development of mental hospitals, nursing, and health insurance.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

From the days of its colonial glory, Philadelphia has had an important place in the history of American health care. In Pictures of Health, Janet Golden and Charles E. Rosenberg have assembled a series of photographs illuminating that history.

"In some ways disease does not exist until we have agreed that it does, by perceiving, naming, and responding to it, " writes Charles E. Rosenberg in his introduction to this stimulating set of essays. Disease is both a biological event and a social phenomenon. Patient, doctor, family, and social institutions-including employers, government, and insurance companies-all find ways to frame the biological event in terms that make sense to them and serve their own ends. Many diseases discussed here-endstage renal disease, rheumatic fever, parasitic infectious diseases, coronary thrombosis-came to be defined, redefined, and renamed over the course of several centuries. As these essays show, the concept of disease has also been used to frame culturally resonant behaviors: suicide, homosexuality, anorexia nervosa, chronic fatigue syndrome. Disease is also framed by public policy, as the cases of industrial disability and of forensic psychiatry demonstrate. Medical institutions, as managers of people with disease, come to have vested interests in diagnoses, as the histories of facilities to treat tuberculosis or epilepsy reveal. Ultimately, the existence and conquest of disease serves to frame a society's sense of its own "healthiness" and to give direction to social reforms.   The contributors include Steven J. Peitzman, Peter C. English, John Farley, Christopher Lawrence, Michael MacDonald, Bert Hansen, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Robert A. Aronowitz, Gerald Markowitz, David Rosner, Janet A. Tighe, Barbara Bates, Ellen Dwyer, John M. Eyler, and Elizabeth Fee. For any student of disease and society, this book is essential, compelling reading.