History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | history of medicine

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The Fitzroy Report, 1904: How the poor physical condition of Boer War army recruits prompted social change

By on April 30, 2021 in Learning in Focus

Following the end of the second Boer War in 1902, the government appointed an Inter-Departmental Committee to investigate why so many would-be recruits had been in poor physical condition. The Committee, chaired by civil servant Almeric FitzRoy, has become known as the Fitzroy Report.  Second-year UoP history student Ben Hessey discusses the report, what it tells us about contemporary ideas about parenting, gender, eugenics and social provision, and its longer-term significance.  This piece was originally written for the second-year Danger! module, which investigates issues of censorship and state control between 1850 and 2000 and is taught by Dr Rob James and Dr Mike Esbester. During the early twentieth century the […]

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Coping with epidemic disease in the seventeenth century

By on June 30, 2020 in Learning in Focus

Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower [1] One of the first school history projects I can remember doing, before leaving Australia at the age of fourteen, was to create my own facsimile newspaper reporting on the great plague of 1665. Who would have thought at that stage that I would have ended up as a seventeenth-century historian? I spent hours poring over a London bill of mortality, copying the forms of 17th century handwriting and the strange unfamiliar fatal diseases: ‘apoplexie’, ‘ague’, ‘chrisomes’, ‘dropsie’, ‘griping’ in the […]

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Fantine from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, by Margaret Bernadine Hall (1863-1910)

The morality of state intervention in sexually-transmitted disease

By on April 28, 2020 in Learning in Focus

Is it appropriate for governments to restrict personal liberty in an effort to control disease? This issue has come very much to the fore in the wake of the current worldwide Coronavirus epidemic.  In this post, Darcy Mckinlay, a second year history student, writes about nineteenth-century arguments against forcible methods of controlling venereal diseases. During the nineteenth century there was an increase in state intervention, marking a transformation from a previous ‘non-interference’ government approach.[1]  In 1864, the first of three Contagious Diseases Acts was passed, permitting the compulsory medical inspection and detention of prostitutes with venereal diseases.[2]  This law was specifically aimed at working-women in military-based towns because the government […]

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History Research Seminars Winter/Spring 2019

By on January 8, 2019 in Events, News

Every year, the History team at Portsmouth organise a series of research seminars that take place across the autumn, winter and spring terms. Historians are invited from a range of institutions, both in Britain and abroad, to talk about their latest research projects. The subjects presented cover a broad historical timespan and offer insight into a diverse range of topics. In this winter and spring terms there will be talks on children’s writing in 1930s Britain, relationships in early modern England, immigration in Tudor Southampton, the Royal Marines’ institutional legacy, and the health of British seamen while travelling overseas. All are welcome to attend. All talks take place in Milldam […]

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History & practice – images of wellbeing

By on September 14, 2018 in Events, News, Research in Focus

In this post, Mike Esbester discusses how his research into the history of communicating health and safety messages is linked to a current initiative to promote wellbeing and better awareness of mental health at work and beyond. ‘History is more or less bunk’. So Henry Ford claimed – rather unfairly, I would suggest. There’s a great deal to be gained from studying and understanding the past, something historians and others have been pointing out for a very long time. I’m not going to rehash that here, other than to note that in addition to the analytical and critical skills gained from engaging meaningfully with the past, the insight it brings […]

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