Destaques da Biblioteca de História das Ciências e da Saúde
Pox: genius, madness and the mysteries of syphilis.
HAYDEN, Deborah. Pox: genius, madness and the mysteries of syphilis. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
The medical investigation in Pox spans the period from 1493, the beginning of the syphilis epidemic in Europe, when millions died of disease on both sides of the ocean, to 1943, when the first case of syphilis was successfully treated with penicillin. The first section gives historical, cultural, and medical information about the disease and about Treponema pallidum, the microscopic parasite that causes it. The next sections investigate the theme of hidden syphilis through medical and literary biographies of a number of people known - or suspected - to have had it. The reader looking for proof in the contentious cases will find none. The old syphilologists knew that the Pox was identified by the cumulative weight of many "suspicion arousers" - that is, by a preponderance of circumstantial evidence. Take, for example, the case of Guy de Maupassant. When his doctor diagnosed syphilis, he trumpeted: “I’ve got the Pox!” During the progressing years, he had a long list of the complaints listed in the Centers for Disease Control's summary. He died in a mental hospital with a diagnosis of general paralysis of the insane. And yet, no single indicator constitutes proof short of post mortem, and even then not all cases are definitive. Maybe his doctor misdiagnosed gonorrhea. Each complaint of the middle period by itself could have been something else. Perhaps at the end, he was schizophrenic. And yet we don’t question that he had syphilis. (Au.)
Apenas un delincuente: crimen, castigo y cultura en la Argentina, 1880-1955
CAIMARI, Lila. Apenas un delincuente: crimen, castigo y cultura en la Argentina, 1880-1955. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2004.
Apenas un delincuente estudia la historia del castigo administrado por el estado moderno sobre el criminal entre fines del siglo XIX y las primeras décadas del XX. Su análisis se desarrolla en dos perspectivas: la de los saberes e instituciones y la de la sociedad que mira o imagina el padecimiento del criminal castigado. La figura de la prisión está en el centro de esta pesquisa. Escenario de interacción entre teorías, tecnologías, burocracias, actores dominantes y subordinados, es también un lugar oculto, invisible a los ojos sociales, y por eso sujeto a las representaciones producidas por terceros. Lila Caimari indaga en el ámbito de quienes definieron y procuraron materializar modernos instrumentos de disciplina y control social: juristas, médicos, criminólogos y demás figuras asociadas al proceso de modernización punitiva del cambio de siglo. Parte de suponer que la teoría científica del delincuente es maleable, reconstruye las diversas refracciones de las ideas en las instituciones. Enfoca luego al ciudadano que, desprovisto de un interés personal en el tema, se interroga sobre el criminal y el sufrimiento de su pena. La prensa sensacionalista le permite a la autora identificar rasgos de la sociedad con el "otro" que circula por sus márgenes, y con el estado que toma a su cargo las medidas para disciplinarlo, castigarlo, eliminarlo. Este libro revela la complejidad que encubre la cuestión criminal, a la vez que revisa categorías, discursos y herramientas sociales que entre 1880 y 1955, en la sociedad argentina, han pretendido discernir entre delincuentes y gente honrada. (Au.)
Body and soul: the black panther party and the fight against medical discrimination.
NELSON, Alondra. Body and soul: the black panther party and the fight against medical discrimination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2011.
This book began more than a decade ago as a reflection on the intersections of science and race via the works of Lee D. Baker, Troy Duster, Stephen Jay Gould, Evelynn Hammonds, Sandra Harding, Dorothy Roberts, Audrey Smedley, William Stanton, Keith Wailoo, and others." In response to this eclectic body of writing that, very generally speaking, considered the stakes of racial formation and racial subjugation in and through science, I became interested in exploring whether and how African Americans responded to these processes. Given that scientific practices have played (and continue to play) a key role in constructing ideas of race, were challenges to biomedical racialization an element of the African American protest tradition? If so, at what moments and through which tactics did black communities strive to tilt the balance of authority from researchers and physicians to subjects and patients? It was with these questions in mind that I began to explore African American health advocacy in the twentieth century and, eventually, to carry out research into the Black Panther Party's health politics of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although I had passing knowledge of the Party's health-related activities, delving deeper, I also discovered that the organization's endeavors were both more extensive and more multi-faceted than I had imagined. (Au.)
Rosalind Franklin: the dark lady of DNA.
MADDOX, Brenda. Rosalind Franklin: the dark lady of DNA. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Rosalind Franklin apart, the principals in the drama of the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 survived into the twenty-first century. I have been fortunate to have had many discussions with Dr Francis Crick, Dr James Watson, and Professor Maurice Wilkins. All three have been generous with their time, their recollections, opinions and permissions to quote unpublished letters. Among Rosalind's close associates, those who have shown great interest and offers of assistance include Professor D.L.D. Caspar, Dr K.C. Holmes, Professor Raymond Gosling, Sir Aaron Klug and Dr Vittorio Luzzati. As I went along, I was surprised (and relieved) by the willingness of scientists to discuss their work with someone with a rudimentary scientific vocabulary. Their patience is explained, I think, by the inherent openness of science as well as by a sincere wish to help set a tangled record straight: Dr John Finch, Professor Bruce Fraser, Dr Durward W.J. Cruickshank, Dr William Ginoza, Professor Alan Mackay, Dr Peter Pauling, Dr Margaret Nance Pierce and Professor H.R. Wilson are among those who sent material from their personal archives, as did the historian who did the research for the BBC's 1987 film, Life Story, Jane Callander. Dr June Goodfield and Horace Freeland Judson. That so many volunteered to help is owing to the kindness of the editor of Nature, Dr Philip Campbell, who published my letter announcing the planned biography. The scope of the response was a small reminder of Nature’s global reach and influence. (Au.)
Social memory: new perspectives on the past.
FENTRESS, James J.; WICKHAM, Chris. Social memory: new perspectives on the past. Midletown: American Council of Learned Societies, 2015.
We have called this book Social Memory to counterpose its subject to that of the memory of individuals. Yet it is individuals who actually do the remembering; what is social about it? The essential answer is that much memory is attached to membership of social groups of one kind or another. Indeed, Maurice Halbwachs, the first theorist of what he called 'collective' memory, argued that all memory is structured by group identities: that one remembers one's childhood as part of a family, one's neighbourhood as part of a local community, one's working life as part of a factory or office community and/or a political party or trade union, and so on - that these memories are essentially group memories, and that the memory of the individual exists only in so far as she or he is the probably unique product of a particular intersection of groups (Halbwachs 1925; 1950 [trans. 1980]). Halbwachs was part of Emile Durkheim's school, and, like many of Durkheim's followers, put what might seem excessive emphasis on the collective nature of social consciousness, relatively neglecting the question of how individual consciousnesses might relate to those of the collectivities those individuals actually made up. The result was a concept of collective consciousness curiously disconnected from the actual thought processes of any particular person. (Au.)
Against their will: the secret history of medical experimentation on children in cold war America.
HORNBLUM, Allen M.; NEWMAN, Judith L.; DOBER, Gregory J. Against their will: the secret history of medical experimentation on children in cold war America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
This groundbreaking book chronicles a time, not long ago, when society did not value the lives of the developmentally impaired and used such individuals as subjects for medical research. Influenced by the eugenics movement and under the allure of grand scientific breakthroughs, scientists were eager to make advances and test out new medicines. Medical researchers increasingly made an unthinkable choice: they would use one of the country's most vulnerable populations, institutionalized children, as grist for the research mill. Against Their Will documents how thousands of children in hospitals, orphanages, and mental asylums became the unwilling subjects of experimental studies. This important book lays bare a dark chapter of America's medical history. (Au.)
Mari yé bo’eshé: textos seleccionados, ação educativa, séculos indígenas no Brasil.
COE, Frank Azevedo et al. Mari yé bo’eshé: textos seleccionados, ação educativa, séculos indígenas no Brasil. Porto Alegre: Karioka, 2014.
Mari yé bo ' eshé é uma expressão da língua tukana oriental que significa "nossas lições". Como é próprio a essa cultura, deve-se entender essa expressão em um sentido holístico, envolvendo o conjunto de saberes comunitários construídos através do estudo e da aprendizagem cotidiana, sejam novas descobertas ou a sabedoria herdada das tradições. Quer dizer, para se ter uma boa ideia acerca desse significado, é preciso imaginar que toda forma de saber, explícita ou implicitamente, retrata relações estabelecidas entre gerações e com o meio ambiente, das quais fazem parte o respeito, o carinho e a reverência. Cada texto remete a um momento particular desse processo, seja aqueles que nos serviram de aporte, cuja publicação original é mencionada em cada um, ou aqueles produzidos especialmente para alguma das atividades promovidas pela Ação Educativa Séculos Indígenas no Brasil com professores e mediadores culturais. (Au.).
Science: the endless frontier.
On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Foundation's establishment, it seems appropriate to turn again to science, The Endless Frontier and to attempt some assessment of the extent to which the objectives it set forth have been met. A re-reading impresses one with the perspicacity with which this remarkable document anticipated the major needs and problems relating to research and development in the postwar period. Although there have been shifts in emphasis since the report was written 15 years ago, its principles and its clear enunciation of the fundamental responsibility of the Federal Government in the area of research and development are as fresh and sound today as when they were written. The original edition of Science, the Endless Frontier has long been out of print and the National Science Foundation is happy to make it available once more-not as an historical document, but as a classic expression of desirable relationships between government and science in the United States. Its usefulness and validity today are all the more remarkable when it is remembered that Dr. Bush and his advisers were of course quite unable to anticipate the specific developments that have most profoundly influenced our time, namely, the Korean war and the cold war, the missile and satellite race, the Soviet technological challenge, and the rapid acceleration of space research. (Au.)
The enculturated gene: sickle cell health politics and biological difference in West Africa.
FULLWILEY, Duana. The enculturated gene: sickle cell health politics and biological difference in West Africa. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University, 2011.
In the 1980s, a research team led by Parisian scientists identified several unique DNA sequences, or haplotypes, linked to sickle cell anemia in African populations. After casual observations of how patients managed this painful blood disorder, the researchers in question postulated that the Senegalese type was less severe. The Enculturated Gene traces how this genetic discourse has blotted from view the roles that Senegalese patients and doctors have played in making sickle cell "mild" in a social setting where public health priorities and economic austerity programs have forced people to improvise informal strategies of care. Duana Fullwiley shows how geneticists, who were fixated on population differences, never investigated the various modalities of self-care that people developed in this context of biomedical scarcity, and how local doctors, confronted with dire cuts in Senegal's health sector, wittingly accepted the genetic prognosis of better-than-expected health outcomes. Unlike most genetic determinisms that highlight the absoluteness of disease, DNA haplotypes for sickle cell in Senegal did the opposite. As Fullwiley demonstrates, they allowed the condition to remain officially invisible, never to materialize as a health priority. [...] The Enculturated Gene reveals how the notion of an advantageous form of sickle cell in this part of West Africa has defined-and obscured-the nature of this illness in Senegal today. (Au.)
Memórias de nós: o Brasil no redemoinho do capital.
MENDONÇA, Wilma. Memórias de nós: o Brasil no redemoinho do capital. 3. ed. Porto Alegre: Karioka, 2014.
Com o livro Memórias de nós, Wilma Martins de Mendonça busca a identidade dos tupinambás, a sua própria identidade, a do brasileiro, sem que, para tanto - e não poderia ser de outro modo -, omita a obra dos viajantes europeus sobre esses nativos. Pois esses cronistas, não obstante representem o olhar do outro, fornecem vestígios, pistas, sem as quais seria impossível rastrear, passo a passo, as trilhas desses primeiros habitantes da terra Brasilis. E é o que Wilma faz, munida do conhecimento, da lucidez e de um profundo sentimento. Mas embora se utilize de extensa bibliografia para a elaboração dessa obra - originalmente tese de doutorado defendida na Universidade Federal de Pernambuco -, Wilma, na esteira do poeta José Régio, parece dizer: "Não, não vou por aí! Só vou por onde/ Me levam meus próprios passos!" Ou seja, ela não se deixa quedar - cega, atônita, estática - não só ante a visão dos viajantes estrangeiros a propósito dos tupinambás, como também diante de muitas outras opiniões coligidas a respeito de outros temas. Com efeito, nas veredas, nos interstícios das opiniões consultadas, ela abre espaço e cumpre o seu próprio caminho, o seu próprio trajeto, o seu próprio destino, logrando, na maioria das vezes, afrouxar e até mesmo desfazer alguns dos nós cegos, ou míopes, decorrentes dos diversos olhares etnocêntricos lançados sobre os tupinambás. (Au.)
