Abstract Menstrual impurity is among the most important religious practices in Jewish lore. Examining two case studies of Judeo–Spanish Ottoman Jewry: discussions temperature ritual bath water; and purity, hygiene collective body, this article demonstrates that menstrual Judaism underwent an intensive medicalisation process. This process reframed menstruation from a concern to one involving med...

Shyness has become an 'unhealthy' state of mind for individuals living in contemporary Western societies. Insofar as its behavioural 'symptoms' imply a failure to achieve certain cultural values, such as assertiveness, self-expression and loquacious vocality, shyness is increasingly defined as a problem for which people can, and should, be treated. This paper first critically discusses the idea...

Van Dijk and colleagues present three cases to illustrate and discuss the relationship between medicalisation and overdiagnosis. In this commentary, I consider each of the case studies in turn, and in doing so emphasise two main points. The first is that it is not possible to assess whether overdiagnosis is occurring based solely on incidence rates: it is necessary also to have data about the b...

Medicalisation, healthicisation and 'personal' strategies have been identified as the main factors contributing to the socially mediated experience of sleep and sleep disorders in modern societies. Medicalisation and healthicisation are publicly available discourses. But the degree to which apparently 'personal' strategies for managing sleep are presented in popular media has been underestimate...

The topic of male menopause occupied space on the medical radar screen from the late 1930s through the mid-1950s, then virtually disappeared for the next four decades, until the late 1990s. By contrast, articles on this subject appeared in American popular magazines and newspapers at a consistent, if low-level, rate throughout the same period. This essay describes how the male menopause became ...

Increased medical involvement in maternal welfare has been linked with the introduction of local authority administered schemes associated with government concern for women’s health that reached a peak during the First WorldWar. Although local studies have noted the work of philanthropic groups, the implication has been that their contribution to the medicalisation of childbirth was small. This...