The infectious disease typhus is unusual in its interaction with humans. In Nazi Germany typhus was characterised as the Jewish plague and was pivotal in the medicalisation of anti-Semitism. This came to reflect a society, and its values, through the influence of state ideology and legislature. Medical thinking about a human illness was altered, as was traditional Hippocratic based medical prac...

In 2007 the UK Government announced a substantial expansion of funding for psychological therapies in England to provide better support for people with conditions such as anxiety and depression. Will these services result in the medicalisation of normal distress? Or are they simply an evidenced-based solution for a previously unmet need? In this debate Derek Summerfield and David Veale discuss ...

The “home versus hospital” as places of birth debate has had a long and at times vicious history. From academic literature to media coverage, the two have often been pitted against each other not only as opposing physical spaces, but also as opposing ideologies of birth. The hospital has been heavily critiqued as a site of childbirth since the 1960s, with particular focus on childbirth and medi...