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Medicine in colonial days
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From the 17th through 20th centuries Western Empires experienced increased ascendency, a result of industrial, technological, and medical advancements. The aggregation of these innovations fostered territorial domination in areas previously inaccessible. The expropriation and commodification of health care and biomedicine occurred under the imperial regime. Once global conflict brought the colonial era to an end, a human rights regime was introduced. Postcolonial health’s bureaucracies were ideologically distinct from previous hegemons, yet their approaches were comparable. Both colonial and postcolonial medical institutions preferred vertical approaches, heavily reliant on biomedicine, while binding commercial economic interest to their criteria for care.
Colonial health institutions were developed to serve specific functions deemed necessary by the Empire. Medical facilities were thinly distributed and offered limited services that were focused mostly on adult men. These men made up expeditionary, military, and labor forces that made resource exploitation possible. The African miner, Indian military personnel, Congolese sap collector were the recipients of limited, often vertical medical resources. Vertical fixes were seen as cost effective therefor ideal. When horizontal approaches were implemented, the reasons were not magnanimous. They were necessary for stabilizing or regularizing institutions that supported the economic interest of the Empire. Concerns over the wellbeing of colonial subjects were in association with the financial interest of the empire. Furthermore, as doctors were also responsible for determining who was healthy and fit for work, health services became a means of population control via biopower. La...
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...stributions of new medical knowledge and technical accomplishments were disseminated at the discretion of the Empire, and in terms favorable to the Empire. This practice is currently employed by the policies of international health organizations. Scientific advances, and knowledge have been re-socialized into a force for production. Colonial medicine was used, and practiced at the discretion of the powerful élite, and today the powerful corporate élite determines what drugs are essential and should be readily available to everyone. Postcolonial bureaucracies have encouraged the pecuniary reconstitution of global health templates. In response the proletariat often forgoes comprehensive health for medicines. As a result, new improvements in biomedicine have unintentionally aided the commodification of the body, while further compelling the capitalization of Health.
The concepts discussed within the article regarding medicalization and changes within the field of medicine served to be new knowledge for me as the article addressed multiple different aspects regarding the growth of medicalization from a sociological standpoint. Furthermore, the article “The Shifting Engines of Medicalization” discussed the significant changes regarding medicalization that have evolved and are evidently practiced within the contemporary society today. For instance, changes have occurred within health policies, corporatized medicine, clinical freedom, authority and sovereignty exercised by physicians has reduced as other factors began to grow that gained importance within medical care (Conrad 4). Moreover, the article emphasized
pp. 41-84. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, Calif. Pigg, Stacy Leigh. (1997) "Found in Most Traditional Societies: Traditional Medical Practitioners between Culture and Development.”
The purpose of this essay is to introduce the history of the National Health Service (NHS) and how its formation derived from the early 1600s. It will analyse two current political issues that occur within the NHS, the postcode lottery and the reformation of the NHS, examining the positive and negative effects they have had. It will also discuss implications of regulations within professional practice and how they account for quality of care.
Reich, Warren T. “The Care-Based Ethic of Nazi Medicine and the Moral Importance of What We Care About”. American Journal of Bioethics 1.1 (2001): 64-74. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.
While the moral backing for public health in its current state may be sound, what many researchers fail to understand is that the many moral failings of its predecessors that color the legacy of public health internationally and at home. As discussed in the chapter “Colonial Medicine and its Legacies” within the textbook Reimagining Global Health arranged by Paul Farmer, before the conception of global health there was international health which sought to distribute health as a good horizontally across international, political lines. Under the framework of international health, public health workers became agents of a cold war enmeshed in the fiscal, geopolitical, and territorial struggles between two hegemons rather than the holistic value of community health. While international health as a framework has largely been abandoned, much of its rhetoric can be found within our current framework of public health such as the enumeration of certain parts of the world as "1st world", "2nd world",
Kleinman, Arthur M. “What Kind of Model for the Anthropology of Medical Systems?” American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 80, No. 3 (Sep, 1978), pp. 661-665.
"Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 10 June 2013. Web. 27 May 2014.
Healthcare is like other avenues of business and life, it is constantly changing. At the turn of the 19th century, food and occupations were different than they are today. Like the changes in food and other occupations, healthcare is no different. We also would not want it to be. If the country remained struggling with the same challenges of 1899, then we would not have progressed as a medical society. As healthcare changes we all have to change. Change in our ways, tactics, thinking, and structure of the healthcare market. According to Merriam-Webster (2014) the maintaining and restoration of health by the prevention and treatment of diseases, mainly by trained professionals is healthcare (Merriam-Webster, 2014).
It is the profits rather than the need of the world that drives the market, as Cahill points out. She laments that while in the 1960-1970 's theologic bioethicists influenced the field of bioethics, nowadays the ethical discourse involving Christian narrative gets" thinner and thinner," shifting away toward more secular and liberal views. As theologians are welcomed to partake in the ethical debates, their voices and opinions are rarely considered in policy making. Such situation causes the current trend amongst health care institutions,medical-surgical companies, and research labs, to focus on financial gain rather than ways to deliver health care to those who needed it the most. It is the consumers with the most "buying power" that have at their disposal the latest medical treatment, equipment, technologies, and medications while millions around the world lack the most basics of needs, such as clean water, food, shelter, education as well as the basic health care. Cahill fears that medical companies seeking profits will neglect or stop altogether to produce medications that are bringing low profits. Medications that are necessary to treat prevalent in the third- world countries or if you prefer the developing countries diseases, such as Dysentery, Cholera, Malaria, Rabies, Typhoid Fever, Yellow Fever, even warms, to name a
Marxist theory argued that the problem is not just about access to medical care. It is the capitalist economy that defines health and medicine. Under the umbrella of this system, “the main goal of medicine is not health but profit. The profit turns doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical industry into multibillion do...
Medicine as a Form of Social Control This critique will examine the view that medicine is a form of social control. There are many theorists that have different opinions on this view. This critique will discuss each one and their different views. We live in a society where there is a complex division of labour and where enormous varieties of specialist healing roles are recognised.
It is easy to fall for the propaganda styled argument that patrons of colonialism constructed to support their actions, but looking at actual evidence sheds light ...
Freeman, David H. "The Triumph of New-Age Medicine." The Atlantic. 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. .
London, England. The.. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine n.d., Session 5: The role of the state. in global health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, England. Ricci J.
From the beginning of time, human life has faced problems with diseases and health care. Ancient ailments have been with mankind as far as man can remember, such as arthritis and, infectious bone disease found in fossilized bones and Egyptian mummies, indicating its existence. Then a human life span was only 20-30years, chronic illnesses were rare and preventative medicine primarily consisted of warding off evil spirits by painting the body or sometimes even mutilating it (Mitchell, Heroun 37). As time went on and new “tools” better described as “technology” is created and applied the everyday use in many ways. For example; in the 1600’s the invention of the printing press quickly allowed for new books and information to be widely distributed. By the 18th century progress increased due to the rapid sharing of knowledge from one to the next. With the knowledge of many experiments and studies came the philosophy of “enlightenment” witch took on a more rational approach to problems and knowledge that can be read (Mitchell, Heroun 39). the In the early 19th century preventive medicine made great strides as the average human lifespan increased from 40 years in 1850 to 70 years in1950. As advances were m...