Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine Newsletter (Toronto

Though many feel a golly-gee-whiz response when medical science leaps another hurdle towards genetic manipulation, research by two recent Royal Society Hannah Medal winners into the history of eugenics sends a chill up the spine.

Both University of Toronto’s professor Pauline Mazumdar, author of Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society, its Sources and its Critics in Britain (Routledge, 1992), and Angus McLaren, University of Victoria professor of history and author of Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945 (McClelland and Stewart, 1990), disclose how mainstream genetic selection once was – and possibly still remains.

“Ever since the test tube baby breakthrough a decade ago, there’s been a new concern for the spin-offs of this research,” says McLaren. “In Canada there’s a woman who was sterilized in Alberta who is now suing the Alberta government, so that is bringing it back into the consciousness that these things actually did happen.”

“Many quite respectable individuals took it as given that there must be something in eugenics. That was the difficulty in writing the book, determining who was a eugenist and who wasn’t. It was so widely believed that it was very hard to make a serious demarcation.”

Professor McLaren found winning the medal helped raise his profile. And the resulting media interest allowed him to put the issue in historical perspective.

“The problem as ever is people looking for some sort of a quick fix to social problems – hoping that some sort of genetic tampering will allow very complex problems to be surgically dealt with.”

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/06/24/can-we-talk-hannah-promotes-communication-between-medical-schools/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/06/02/case-study-5-gosh-ich-child-health-portal-2001-2003/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/08/the-dawn-of-the-genetics-revolution-2001-2003/

Hannah Institute For The History Of Medicine | 1992 – 1994

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2017/10/18/hannah-institute-for-the-history-of-medicine-1992-1994/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/09/19/medical-museum-makes-plans-for-future/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/06/24/professor-puts-chronic-fatigue-into-historical-perspective/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/10/20/research-reviews-2001-2002/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/04/20/take-two-big-doses-of-humanity-and-call-me-in-the-morning/

https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2020/04/17/taking-medicine-to-the-people-four-innovators-in-community-health/

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© David South Consulting 2023

Professor puts chronic fatigue into historical perspective

By David South

Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine Newsletter (Toronto, Canada), Number 18, Summer, 1993

Drawing on his thought-provoking book From Paralysis to Fatigue, the University of Toronto’s Hannah Professor Edward Shorter took the subject of psychogenic disorders to family doctors last May.

Delivering the Hannah Lecture in the History of Medicine at the Annual Scientific Assembly of the College of Family Physicians of Canada, Professor Shorter found an audience with special needs.

“They haven’t been exposed to the work of historians,” says Professor Shorter. “It was a real personal challenge to say something meaningful to an audience of clinicians.

“It was quite illuminating for them to see how patterns of psychogenic illness change historically – to see something like paralysis be replaced by chronic fatigue syndrome.”

Publisher: Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine

Location: Toronto, Canada

Editor and Writer: David South

I worked as Editor and Writer for the newsletter of the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine (under the direction of the Editor-in-Chief and Hannah Executive Director Dr. J.T. H. Connor) in the early 1990s. Located close to the University of Toronto and within a neighbourhood claiming a long association with medical and scientific discovery (Sir Frederick Banting, co-developer of insulin for the treatment of diabetes, lived at 46 Bedford Road,), the goal was to better connect Canada’s medical history community of scholars and raise the profile of the funding resources available to further the study of medical history in Canada.