Logo DicoPolHiS
DicoPolHiS

Political Dictionary of the History of Health

Practices

    • Aerobics

      The Gym Tonic aerobics programme heralded the advent of a new politics of the female body

      Read more

    • Body snatching

      Human dissections have been an essential part of medicine since the fourth century B.C. Contrary to widely held belief, the Church did not prohibit them in the Middle Ages.

      Read more

    • Breast feeding

      The naturalness of breast feeding has been subordinated to a political idea of the Nation asserted in an explicit hierarchisation of class and race.

      Read more

    • Caesarian section

      In 19th century Belgium, post-mortem caesarean section turned into a politicized debate.

      Read more

    • Child psychoanalysis

      Ever since Freud, psychoanalysis has taken an interest in the psychic life of Children. First considered a minor practice, psychoanalysis with children reached its full dimension in the 1970s.

      Read more

    • Criminal abortion

      In 1852 the criminalisation of abortion is reaffirmed after the Academy of Medicine arrived at a resolution regarding therapeutic abortion.

      Read more

    • Intelligence test

      From the outset, the measurement of intelligence was as much a scientific as an eminently political endeavour.

      Read more

    • Phage therapy

      Eclipsed by the rise of antibiotics after the Second World War, can bacteria-eating viruses discovered at the beginning of the 20th century be therapeutic tools while resistance to antibiotic therapy emerges?  

      Read more

    • Political excitement

      The American psychiatric classification was once a tool at the service of white political power to the detriment of the emancipation of African-Americans.

      Read more

    • Psychedelic

      The term psychedelic was coined to refer to psychotic substances explored for use in psychiatry, but which remain under strict control

      Read more

    • Tattoos

      A body enhancing aesthetic practice, tattooing pertained, in the 19th century, to the world of crime and social deviance.

      Read more

    • Teleconsultations in mental health

      The health crisis linked to the Covid-19 epidemic has given a new impetus to the development of mental health care provision via teleconsultations.

      Read more

    • Telemedicine

      The Covid-19 pandemic finds us revisiting an ancient practice: telemedicine.

      Read more

    • Telemedicine and Covid-19

      Does the Covid-19 health crisis mark the advent of telemedicine in our societies?

      Read more

    • Truth serum



      The truth serum is not just a fantasy, the stuff of science-fiction, it is also a political and medical instrument.Screenshot from Franju, La Tête contre les murs. The truth serum is not just a fantasy...

      Read more

    • Vegetarianism

      Around 1900, a vegetarian movement was organized in France to resolve the social question.

      Read more

    • Yoga

      Can an Eastern spiritual practice become a Western health practice without betraying itself?

      Read more

Partagez :