Medicine and Technology in Canada, 1900-1950

Medicine and Technology in Canada, 1900-1950
Author: Allison Kirk-Montgomery
Publisher:
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2008
Genre: Medical
ISBN:

"Over the past two centuries, technology has played a significant role in the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of disease in Canada. Technology -- in the form of instruments, devices, machines, drugs, and systems -- has aided medical science, altered medical practice, and changed the illness experience of patients. Nineteenth-century medical technology consisted of predominantly surgical and diagnostic instruments used by individual practitioners. By the twentieth century, large, hospital–based technologies operated by teams emerged as powerful tools in the identification and management of disease [...] Our selection of diseases, research initiatives, and medical treatments highlights larger patterns in medicine, identifies Canadian contributions, and considers the impact of these innovations on Canadian society. In this fifty–year period, public health initiatives limited the spread of contagious diseases and addressed the problem of impure water and milk. Medical practitioners used X–rays to diagnose tuberculosis and to treat cancer. The discovery of insulin in Toronto in 1921–22 offered a management therapy for diabetes patients, who were otherwise facing certain death.

The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment

The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2012-12-20
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309262011

In 1996, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its report Telemedicine: A Guide to Assessing Telecommunications for Health Care. In that report, the IOM Committee on Evaluating Clinical Applications of Telemedicine found telemedicine is similar in most respects to other technologies for which better evidence of effectiveness is also being demanded. Telemedicine, however, has some special characteristics-shared with information technologies generally-that warrant particular notice from evaluators and decision makers. Since that time, attention to telehealth has continued to grow in both the public and private sectors. Peer-reviewed journals and professional societies are devoted to telehealth, the federal government provides grant funding to promote the use of telehealth, and the private technology industry continues to develop new applications for telehealth. However, barriers remain to the use of telehealth modalities, including issues related to reimbursement, licensure, workforce, and costs. Also, some areas of telehealth have developed a stronger evidence base than others. The Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) sponsored the IOM in holding a workshop in Washington, DC, on August 8-9 2012, to examine how the use of telehealth technology can fit into the U.S. health care system. HRSA asked the IOM to focus on the potential for telehealth to serve geographically isolated individuals and extend the reach of scarce resources while also emphasizing the quality and value in the delivery of health care services. This workshop summary discusses the evolution of telehealth since 1996, including the increasing role of the private sector, policies that have promoted or delayed the use of telehealth, and consumer acceptance of telehealth. The Role of Telehealth in an Evolving Health Care Environment: Workshop Summary discusses the current evidence base for telehealth, including available data and gaps in data; discuss how technological developments, including mobile telehealth, electronic intensive care units, remote monitoring, social networking, and wearable devices, in conjunction with the push for electronic health records, is changing the delivery of health care in rural and urban environments. This report also summarizes actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can undertake to further the use of telehealth to improve health care outcomes while controlling costs in the current health care environment.

Giving Birth in Canada, 1900-1950

Giving Birth in Canada, 1900-1950
Author: Wendy Mitchinson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2002-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780802084712

A fascinating account of childbirth rituals in the first half of the twentieth century from the initial diagnosis of pregnancy, though childbirth - who was present, and where it took place - to the definition of what constituted a normal birth.

An Accidental History of Canada

An Accidental History of Canada
Author: Megan J. Davies
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2024-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0228023475

Although Canadian history has no shortage of stories about disasters and accidents, the phenomena of risk, upset, and misfortune have been largely overlooked by historians. Disasters get their due, but not so the smaller-scale accident where fate is more intimate. Yet such events often have a vivid afterlife in the communities where they happen, and the way in which they are explained and remembered has significant social, cultural, and political meaning. An Accidental History of Canada brings together original studies of an intriguing range of accidents stretching from the 1630s to the 1970s. These include workplace, domestic, childhood, and leisure accidents in colonial, Indigenous, rural, and urban settings. Whether arising from colonial power relations, urban dangers, perils in resource extraction, or hazardous recreations, most accidents occur within circumstances of vulnerability, and reveal precarity and inequities not otherwise apparent. Contributors to this volume are alert to the intersections of the settler agenda and the elevation of risk that it brings. Indigenous and settler ways of understanding accidents are juxtaposed, with chapters exploring the links between accidents and the rise of the modern state. An Accidental History of Canada makes plain that whether they are interpreted as an intervention by providence, a miscalculation, an inevitability, or the result of observable risk, accidents – and our responses to them – reveal shared values.

Weariness, the Fever, and the Fret

Weariness, the Fever, and the Fret
Author: Katherine McCuaig
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 405
Release: 1999-09-17
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0773567712

In The Weariness, the Fever, and the Fret Katherine McCuaig takes an in-depth look at the campaign against TB, from its beginnings as part of the turn-of-the-century urban social reform movement to the 1950s and the discovery of antibiotics that could cure it. Although the bacillus that causes it had been discovered in 1882, at the turn of the century TB was, as Osler observed, "a social disease with a medical aspect." With "fresh air, good food, good houses, and hope" as the only available treatment, fighting the disease meant not only eliminating the germ but attacking the underlying social problems that predisposed an individual to disease - alcoholism and poor living and working conditions. By the end of World War I the bacteriological approach had become dominant, with federally expanded sanatoria, increasing provincial involvement and responsibility, and more sophisticated technology to diagnose and treat the disease. The campaign against TB not only influenced the way in which health services were established and the division of responsibility among various levels of government and volunteers but profoundly affected attitudes toward the political and economic development of Canadian health care and the ultimate demand for medicare. Drawing on sources ranging from government reports and archival material to more general North American social and political historical research, McCuaig demonstrates how TB was viewed and how it was controlled, which owed as much to changing attitudes in society as to bacteriological discoveries.

Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Westen Cultures

Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Westen Cultures
Author: Helaine Selin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 1140
Release: 2013-11-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 9401714169

The Encyclopaedia fills a gap in both the history of science and in cultural stud ies. Reference works on other cultures tend either to omit science completely or pay little attention to it, and those on the history of science almost always start with the Greeks, with perhaps a mention of the Islamic world as a trans lator of Greek scientific works. The purpose of the Encyclopaedia is to bring together knowledge of many disparate fields in one place and to legitimize the study of other cultures' science. Our aim is not to claim the superiority of other cultures, but to engage in a mutual exchange of ideas. The Western aca demic divisions of science, technology, and medicine have been united in the Encyclopaedia because in ancient cultures these disciplines were connected. This work contributes to redressing the balance in the number of reference works devoted to the study of Western science, and encourages awareness of cultural diversity. The Encyclopaedia is the first compilation of this sort, and it is testimony both to the earlier Eurocentric view of academia as well as to the widened vision of today. There is nothing that crosses disciplinary and geographic boundaries, dealing with both scientific and philosophical issues, to the extent that this work does. xi PERSONAL NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Many years ago I taught African history at a secondary school in Central Africa.

Artificial Hearts

Artificial Hearts
Author: Shelley McKellar
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2018
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1421423553

Fighting heart disease with machines and devices-- Multiple approaches to building artificial hearts : technological optimism and political support in the early years -- Dispute and disappointment : heart transplantation and total artificial heart implant cases in the 1960s -- Technology and risk : nuclear-powered artificial hearts and medical device regulation -- Media spotlight : the Utah total artificial heart -- Clinical and commercial rewards : ventricular assist devices -- Securing a place : therapeutic clout and second-generation VADs -- Artificial hearts in the 21st century

Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine

Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine
Author: W. F. Bynum
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1833
Release: 2013-06-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136110364

This is a comprehensive work of reference which covers all aspects of medical history and reflects the complementary approaches to the discipline. 72 essays are written by internationally respected scholars from many different areas of expertise.

Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures

Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures
Author: Helaine Selin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 2428
Release: 2008-03-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 140204559X

Here, at last, is the massively updated and augmented second edition of this landmark encyclopedia. It contains approximately 1000 entries dealing in depth with the history of the scientific, technological and medical accomplishments of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. The entries consist of fully updated articles together with hundreds of entirely new topics. This unique reference work includes intercultural articles on broad topics such as mathematics and astronomy as well as thoughtful philosophical articles on concepts and ideas related to the study of non-Western Science, such as rationality, objectivity, and method. You’ll also find material on religion and science, East and West, and magic and science.