Preliminary Programme

Although about one in every four Britons experience mental health problems at some stage of their lives, mental disorders are amongst the least understood conditions in society. Substantial progress has been recorded in treatments over time, but psychotropic drugs may not produce permanent recovery, and there remains particular controversy as to the causes of mental disorders. During most of the 20th century the focus shifted frequently between genetic predisposition and environmental factors, until the failure of the human genome project to provide adequate solutions dashed great hopes.

To date, there remains a need for a better understanding of the major risk contributors, and during the past decade, more attention has been given to the environment as a catalyst in developing a mental disorder. As people are inextricably linked with their surroundings and their personalities are shaped by ‘life events’ and experiences, ‘environment’ has to include the physical surroundings as well as the individual’s perception of their social environment. Either can directly cause or increase mental stress, indirectly they may change social processes and relationships. Greatly neglected due to the dominance of psychotropic medicine in the care for the mentally ill has been the supportive and curative influence of the environment on mental disorders, although there is some recognition that nonmedical interventions may offer more lasting health results than drug treatment alone.

This paper considers the question of environmental influences on mental illness and its treatment in the particular context of four mental hospitals in southwest England and their admissions during the middle decades of the twentieth century. It draws on material collected for a Wellcome-funded project, of over 15,000 individual patient files. Findings offer new insight into the role of the physical and social micro-environment such as immediate surroundings, family relationships, personal control, and employment situation as well as macro-environment, including larger geographical area, urbanicity and the built environment, climate and climate change, and social networks. Our paper also outlines how changes to the environment might be beneficial or detrimental to people suffering from mental disorders. (Show less)

One of the classic alternatives followed by the population in therapeutic itineraries (Csordas and Kleinman, 1996) has been consultation with the curandero, or healer. But this type of treatment has undergone profound changes in recent decades, linked to the processes of urbanization and rural exodus. Today we can distinguish between traditional healers and urban neocuranderos, whose respective modes of action are based on different cultural paradigms. Thus the structural function of the social group, characteristic of traditional forms of healing, appears to be diachronically displaced by a ritual performance with clear commercial nuances in the forms of urban neocuranderismo, a fact that recalls the transition from the solidarity of mechanical to organic forms (Durkheim, 1893) in relation to social change.



This paper analyzes the relationship between the two types of curanderismo in a town in Albacete (Spain) over the last forty years, using the methodology of ethnographic research. It notes how, linked to a profound process of transformation of the social group, the myths and beliefs about health in the folk sector have changed, as have the healer's image and his relationship to the community. In this regard we examine approaches ranging from that of Irwin Press (1971) to the most recent assumptions about curanderismo put forward by Eduardo Menéndez and Roberto Campos (1998) in Mexico, Juan Antonio Flores and Gerardo Fernández Juárez in Bolivia, and Francisco Ferrándiz in Venezuela.



Bibliography:

CAMPOS, Roberto Nosotros los curanderos Ed Nueva Imagen, Mexico, 1998.

DURKHEIM, Émile La división del trabajo social [1893], Akal, 1995.

KLEINMAN A, CSORDAS T. The therapeutic process. En: Sargent C, Johnson T, comp. Medical anthropology: contemporary theory and method. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1996:3-21.

PRESS, Irwin The Urban Curandero American Anthropologist Volume 73, Issue 3, June 1971 pp 741–756. (Show less)

The Scientific attitude of Vatsayana’s “Kamasutra” towards Sexology, obliterated in India during Middle Ages, was partly resuscitated by the Indian social reform movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement, owing to its preference to emancipation of women, highlighted the need for birth control.

The son of 19th century social reformer Dhondo Keshav Karve, [The Pioneer of Women’s University in India] Raghunath Dhondo Karve, learnt to speak out candidly impalatable ideas to the public, consequent upon upon social ostracism suffered by his father for marrying a widow, against traditional Hindu notion.

After teaching mathematics in several Governmental Institutions from 1906 to 1921, Karve obtained a “Diploma de Etude Superior” in mathematics from the French Academy in Paris, where he also read profoundly on Modern Birth Control methods.

In 1921, Prof. Karve wrote books on Birth Control and prevention of venereal diseases and opened at Mumbai, “The Right Agency”, a consultancy, on sex medicine and the sale of contraceptives. Trained by him, his wife Malati counseled women on the same.

Although Neo-Malthusian, Karve discarded Malthus’s thesis on birth control through check in the form of moral restraint, for which Karve had to confront Indian National Leaders including Mahatma Gandhi.

When the authorities in Wilson College (Karve’s employer) objected to Karve’s article on Birth Control in Kirloskar Khabar he resigned his position and himself underwent vasectomy during his employment in Africa. His Marathi journal Samaj Swasthya (social health), launched in July 1927 to prapogate Birth Control and sex medicine, successfully confronted two legal suits filed by the orthodox. From 1921 till his death on 14 October 1953 Karve wrote Marathi books on sexology, sexual freedom, nudity, prostitution, veneral diseases and dietetics.

As secretary of Rationalist Association of India, Karve edited its mouthpiece “Reason” from 1937 to 1940. A birth control legislation was introduced unsuccessfully, in 1938 in Bombay Legislative Assembly on Karve’s initiative. Karve severely criticised those who wanted social reform to wait till India’s political independence. He championed individual freedom against social and government control. A supporter of sexual freedom outside wedlock, Karve discarded the concept of “Woman’s Chastity” as a part of man’s desire for woman’s physical control. He advocated legalisation of prostitution as an exigency for social health.

For the success of ”Grow More Food” campaign, Karve proposed to set up birth control clinics in villages. Karve’s Birth Control Movement in India, although opposed tooth and nail, during his lifetime, even by allopathic practitioners, became a key point on the agenda of Indian government within three decades after his death and continues to be so even today.

This paper has been based on the primary sources like Karve’s books, all issues of his periodical Samaj Swasthya, his writings in contemporary Marathi and English periodicals, the writings of his contemporaries on Karve and the documents from Maharashtra State Archives. (Show less)

The kinesiology concept is used worldwide and by many different professional groups with scientific aspirations. A simple google-search on "kinesiology" gives millions of "hits". Yet nobody seems to know much about where it comes from and why it came into existence. The project "The historical roots and branches of Kinesiology" follows the concept from its coinage in mid 19th century Europe (Paris and London) to its introduction in the USA (Boston) in the early 1890s, where it later gained momentum as a genric term used by many academic disciplines. This paper follows the origins of the concept back to one of Sweden’s greatest cultural exports of the 19th century – Swedish Gymnastics – and the efforts of especially Swedish Physical Therapists and Physical Educators to spread its scientific doctrines throughout the world. Primarily their strived for goal were to convert the representatives of conventional medicine (Pharmacology) into a more mechanical mode of understanding and curing illness (Physical Therapy). While following in the footsteps of one Physical Therapists/Physical Educator – “the father of kinesiology” – and examining the ideological and historical conditions his so-called “mission” was ruled by, the social construction of knowledge and science is made visible in a way seldom possible to highlight in the history of medicine and physical education. (Show less)

The aim of this work is to study news items and advertisements concerning vitamins published in two of the most important newspapers, ABC (Madrid, 1905-) and La Vanguardia (Barcelona, 1881-) as well as in hundreds of other series available at the National Digital Newspaper and Periodicals Library of Spain (Madrid) in order to assess the level of influence of vitamins on ‘popular culture’.
The scientific discourse on vitamins began with the twentieth century. As a result the advice on proper eating habits underwent a significant shift. Carbohydrates, proteins and fat now had a new and very important companion: vitamins. During the 1920s and 1930s vitamins increased their presence in the public arena. Books on cooking and domestic economy made space for vitamins. However, probably, the most significant process was the appearance of a wide range of products promising to counteract low levels of vitamins, especially in the case of children. Rima Apple and other authors have studied this process in the case of Anglo-Saxon countries.
In Spain we can consider the Doctoral Thesis “Los factores indispensables de la dieta y el crecimiento” (1919) of Carlos Jiménez-Díaz (1898-1967), a key figure in the development of Spanish clinical medicine, as the first milestone of scientific discourse on vitamins. As far as we know, advice on vitamins, at a very simple level, first appeared in Spanish domestic economy handbooks in 1931. However newspapers collected news on vitamins earlier. We have found the first piece of news on 14th April 1918. It was notice of a conference entitled ‘Vitamins and the problem of food’ to be given that day at the Madrid Ateneo. The speaker was Gustavo Pittaluga Fattorini (1876-1956), an Italian M.D. who developed his scientific career in Spain with important contributions in the fields of hematology and parasitology. The next year ABC began to publish an advertisement for ‘Ruamba’ a tonic rich in vitamins aimed at women, during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and children. The same year, La Vanguardia began to publish adds for ‘Virocao’ ‘with a great quantity of vitamins’. From this onset, newspapers, weekly magazines and other periodicals frequently published news and advertisements on vitamins.
The time span we consider finishes in 1950 with the end of the economic autarchy imposed by the Dictatorship of General Franco.
The presence of vitamins in newspaper and periodicals is not enough to assert their influence at a ‘popular’ level. As always the problem is the way we consider ‘popular’. If we are thinking of the whole population, we have to take into account levels of literacy and the ratio of readership. However, we can state that the upper and middle classes had early access to news on vitamins and a wide supply of products that, supported by the scientific rhetoric, opened a new market of food-related products. (Show less)