Medical Technology in Use: A History of Clinical Thermometry in Modern Britain and Japan (March 2019)
Takabayashi, Akinobu (Author)
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Volume: 13
Issue: 1
Pages: 17-37
Edition Details: Special Issue: Life, Science, and Power in History and Philosophy
Language: English
Modern medicine has developed a number of technologies to observe, diagnose, and intervene in the human body. Medical technologies make bodies visible by number and form. Many historians have studied how such medical technologies as the stethoscope, pulse meter, cardiograph, and thermometer were invented and subsequently influenced societies. However, recent historians have turned their attention to the technology-in-practice to show a unidirectional history intertwined by devices, clinicians, and users. This paper aims to follow this line of study by focusing on a history of clinical thermometry in modern Britain and Japan. First, it surveys secondary works on medical technologies in history and explores how clinical thermometers were invented, improved, sold, and consumed in two distinct cultures in Britain and Japan. It argues that clinical thermometry was used for consumers' own sakes, for example, performing a gender role and dreading influenza, and also framed by such external factors as war and pandemics.
...MoreArticle Suzuki, Akihito (March 2019) The Life, Restoration, and Faking of the Bust of Nagayo Matarō. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (pp. 113-114).
Article Okumura, Daisuke; Suzuki, Akihito (March 2019) Essay: Osamu Kanamori and His Legacies on Epistemology, Criticism, and Cultural Study of Science. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (pp. 101-112).
Article Sasaki, Kaori (March 2019) Bioethics between Imaginary and Reality: Tracing Science Fiction and Its Shaping of Transplant Medicine Protocols in Japan. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (pp. 77-99).
Article Nakamura, Eri (March 2019) Psychiatrists as Gatekeepers of War Expenditure: Diagnosis and Distribution of Military Pensions in Japan during the Asia-Pacific War. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (pp. 57-75).
Article Suzuki, Akihito (March 2019) Public Health, Laboratory Experiment, and Asymptomatic Carriers in Japan, ca. 1920–1950. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (pp. 39-55).
Article Suzuki, Akihito; Takabayashi, Akinobu (March 2019) Life, Science, and Power in History and Philosophy. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal (pp. 9-16).
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