A Medical History of Skin: Scratching the Surface

295 Pages·2013·2.484 MB·English

by  Jonathan Reinarz and Kevin Siena (eds)

A MEDICAL HISTORY OF SKIN:
SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
Studies for the Society for the
Social History of Medicine
Series Editors: David Cantor
Keir Waddington
Titles in this Series
1 Meat, Medicine and Human Health in the Twentieth Century
David Cantor, Christian Bonah and Matthias Dörries (eds)
2 Locating Health: Historical and Anthropological Investigations of
Place and Health
Erika Dyck and Christopher Fletcher (eds)
3 Medicine in the Remote and Rural North, 1800–2000
J. T. H. Connor and Stephan Curtis (eds)
4 A Modern History of the Stomach: Gastric Illness, Medicine and British
Society, 1800–1950
Ian Miller
5 War and the Militarization of British Army Medicine, 1793–1830
Catherine Kelly
6 Nervous Disease in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain: Th e Reality of a
Fashionable Disorder
Heather R. Beatty
7 Desperate Housewives, Neuroses and the Domestic Environment,
1945–1970
Ali Haggett
8 Disabled Children: Contested Caring, 1850–1979
Anne Borsay and Pamela Dale (eds)
9 Toxicants, Health and Regulation since 1945
Soraya Boudia and Nathalie Jas (eds)
Forthcoming Titles
Th e Care of Older People: England and Japan, A Comparative Study
Mayumi Hayashi
Child Guidance in Britain, 1918–1955: Th e Dangerous Age of Childhood
John Stewart
Human Heredity in the Twentieth Century
Bernd Gausemeier, Staff an Müller-Wille and Edmund Ramsden (eds)
Biologics, A History of Agents Made From Living Organisms
in the Twentieth Century
Alexander von Schwerin, Heiko Stoff and Bettina Wahrig (eds)
Modern German Midwifery, 1885–1960
Lynne Fallwell
Bacteria in Britain, 1880–1939
Rosemary Wall
Western Maternity and Medicine, 1880–1990
Linda Bryder and Janet Greenlees (eds)
Psychiatry and Chinese History
Howard Chiang (ed.)
Institutionalizing the Insane in Nineteenth-Century England
Anna Shepherd
www.pickeringchatto.com/sshm

A MEDICAL HISTORY OF SKIN:
SCRATCHING THE SURFACE
Edited by
Jonathan Reinarz and Kevin Siena
PICKERING & CHATTO
2013
Published by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited
21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH
2252 Ridge Road, Brookfi eld, Vermont 05036-9704, USA
www.pickeringchatto.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
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without prior permission of the publisher.
© Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Ltd 2013
© Jonathan Reinarz and Kevin Siena 2013
To the best of the Publisher’s knowledge every eff ort has been made to contact
relevant copyright holders and to clear any relevant copyright issues. 
Any omissions that come to their attention will be remedied in future editions.
british library cataloguing in publication data
Reinarz, Jonathan.
A medical history of skin: scratching the surface. – (Studies for the Society for
the Social History of Medicine)
1. Skin – Diseases – History – 18th century – Case studies. 2. Skin – Diseases
– History – 19th century – Case studies. 3. Skin – Diseases – History – 20th
century – Case studies. 4. Skin – Diseases – Treatment – History – 18th century
– Case studies. 5. Skin – Diseases – Treatment – History – 19th century – Case
studies. 6. Skin – Diseases – Treatment – History – 20th century – Case studies.
I. Title II. Series III. Siena, Kevin Patrick.
616.5’009-dc23
ISBN-13: 9781848934139
e: 9781781440407
∞

Th is publication is printed on acid-free paper that conforms to the American
National Standard for the Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group
CONTENTS
List of Contributors ix
List of Figures and Tables xiii
Scratching the Surface: An Introduction – Kevin Siena and
Jonathan Reinarz 1
Part I: Th e Emerging Skin Field
1 Drain, Blister, Bleed: Surgeons Open and Close the Skin in Georgian
London – Lynda Payne 17
2 Abominable Ulcers, Open Pores and a New Tissue: Transforming the
Skin in the Norwegian Countryside, 1750–1850 – Anne Kveim Lie 31
3 Protecting the Skin of the British Empire: St Paul’s Bay Disease in
Quebec – James Moran 43
4 ‘Italic Scurvy’, ‘Pellarina’, ‘Pellagra’: Medical Reactions to a
New Disease in Italy, 1770–1815 – David Gentilcore 57
Part II: Skin, Stigma and Identity
5 Th e Moral Biology of ‘the Itch’ in Eighteenth-Century Britain
– Kevin Siena 71
6 Syphilis, Backwardness and Indigenous Skin Lesions through French
Physicians’ Eyes in the Colonial Maghreb, 1830–1930
– Adrien Minard 85
7 Discovering the ‘Leper’: Shift ing Attitudes towards Leprosy in
Twentieth-Century Uganda – Kathleen Vongsathorn 99
8 Sex and Skin Cancer: Kaposi’s Sarcoma Becomes the ‘Stigmata of
AIDS’, 1979–83 – Richard A. McKay 113
Part III: Skin, Disease and Visual Culture
9 ‘An Alteration in the Human Countenance’: Inoculation, Vaccination
and the Face of Smallpox in the Age of Jenner
– Matthew L. Newsom Kerr 129
10 Portraying Skin Disease: Robert Carswell’s Dermatological
Watercolours – Mechthild Fend 147
viii A Medical History of Skin
11 Atavistic Marks and Risky Practices: Th e Tattoo in Medico-Legal
Debate, 1850–1950 – Gemma Angel 165
12 ‘Kissed by the Sun’: Tanning the Skin of the Sick with Light
Th erapeutics, c. 1890–1930 – Tania Woloshyn 181
13 ‘Classic, Characteristic or Typical’: Th e Skin and the Visual
Properties of External Anthrax Lesions – James F. Stark 195
Aft erword: Reading the Skin, Discerning the Landscape: A Geo-historical
Perspective of our Human Surface – Philip K. Wilson 209
Notes 221
Index 269
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Gemma Angel is an interdisciplinary doctoral researcher in History of Art at
University College London, UK. She is currently working in collaboration with
the Science Museum, London, on a historic collection of 300 preserved tat-
tooed human skins. Her publications include ‘Th e Tattoo Collectors: Inscribing
Criminality in Late Nineteenth Century France’ in a special issue of the German
journal of science and technology studies, Bildwelten des Wissens, 9:1 (Spring
2012), addressing ‘prepared specimens’.
Mechthild Fend is Reader in History of Art at University College London, UK.
She specializes in French eighteenth- and nineteenth-century visual culture and
art theory, and has a particular interest in images of the body, including medi-
cal imagery and specimens. Fend’s publications in this area include ‘Bodily and
Pictorial Surfaces: Skin in French Art and Medicine, 1790–1860’, in Art History,
28 (2005); and ‘Emblems of Durability: Tattoos, Preserves and Photographs’,
in Performance Research, 14:4 (2009). A book entitled Fleshing Out Surfaces:
Skin in French Art and Medicine 1650–1850 is forthcoming with Manchester
University Press.
David Gentilcore is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leices-
ter, UK. His current interest in maize and pellagra emerged out of a Leverhulme
Trust-funded research project on the reception and assimilation of New World
food plants in early- and late-modern Italy. His most recent books are Pomodoro!
A History of the Tomato in Italy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010) and
Italy and the Potato: A History, 1550–2000 (London: Continuum, 2012).
Anne Kveim Lie is Associate Professor in Medical History and Medical Anthro-
pology at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her recent publications include (with
Hilde Bondevik) Rødt og Hvitt (Red and White) (Oslo: Akademika, 2012);
Tegn på sykdom (Signs of Illness) (Oslo: Unipub, 2009); and Radesygens tilbliv-
else (Th e Coming-into-being of the Norwegian Radesyge) (Oslo: Unipub, 2008).
Richard A. McKay is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of
Cambridge’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science. His current
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