Warwick H. Anderson

Ten Years and More of Health & History

In the guise of a shrewd strategist, Geoff Kenny approached me sometime in 1997 and whispered that the Australian Society of the History of Medicine (ASHM) was likely to support a journal soon and I should be sure to offer it a home in the new Centre for the Study of Health and Society (CSHS) at the University of Melbourne. I wonder now if there were any other contenders for this honour. In any case, it did seem at the time the sort of responsibility we should assume at Melbourne. We boasted a relatively long, if occasionally conflicted, lineage of medical historians, including Diana Dyason, Kenneth Russell, and Harold Attwood; recently we had re-launched the history of medicine programme, recruiting Janet McCalman among others; and I was talking with the Johnstone-Need family to ensure endowment of the Medical History Unit (which now bears their name). And yet, my feelings were mixed. I had never edited a journal before and already I was over-committed to developing the CSHS and to devising and delivering a significant portion of the new medical curriculum at Melbourne. At some point I also hoped to finish my book, The Cultivation of Whiteness. But whenever I looked around, there was Geoff Kenny at my shoulder, ever persistent.	1
It soon became clear he was not alone. Peter Winterton, Geoff Miller, John Pearn, Ben Haneman, Di Tibbits, Linda Bryder, Barry Smith and many others in the ASHM also campaigned vigorously and subtly for a journal. After the Norfolk Island conference, there was a general feeling of confidence and heft in the society, a sense of maturity that seemed to demand some flagship publication. In the circumstances I mostly was excited to be offered the editorship. I hoped the new journal would help to consolidate and promote the growing community of historians of medicine in Australia, New Zealand, and perhaps even Southeast Asia. But reservations about my capacity to take on this task alone led me to ask Janet McCalman to share editorial burdens. Some trepidation also was expressed in my insistence on calling the serial a bulletin, not a journal—I argued that this echoed the successful Bulletin of the History of Medicine, but it was additionally a means of lowering the bar, of still appearing respectable should we happen to receive few submissions. But as soon as I departed three or more years later, Health and History, clearly by then capable of attracting ample material, claimed its rightful status as a 'journal.'	2
The new serial's title, Health and History, expansively encompassed the diversity of historical interests found in the ASHM. In particular, it seemed to please the historians of public health, nursing, and pharmacy among us. Moreover, it appealed to general social and cultural historians who hesitate to claim medical expertise. As I observed in the editorial note to the first issue: The international journals rarely publish on Australian or Asian topics: we are in an excellent position to develop and to publish historical accounts of disease and health care in the Asia-Pacific region. Other journals have a publishing legacy that tends to favour a rather narrow definition of health care: we can, from the beginning, declare our interest in the rigorous historical analysis of the enormous variety of health care. How punctiliously I repeated 'health care' and eschewed 'medicine'! I might, though, have been rather more attentive to our friends and colleagues across the Tasman, who since then have graciously contributed so much to the journal's success.	3
We were unusually lucky with the first issue, thanks largely to Emily Booth who arranged for us to publish the proceedings of a workshop on the history of disease held at Latrobe University. James Patterson, a distinguished professor of history at Brown University, surveyed recent studies in the social history of medicine in the United States, followed by the responses of four local scholars, including me. Excerpts from Patterson's article later were republished in a US 'reader' in the history of medicine, a text targeting undergraduate students. I now read my contribution to the issue with wry amusement. Evidently, I was trying to negotiate the perennial tensions between medically trained historians and those with higher degrees in history who express interest in medical issues. Much of the essay was an attempt to reassure both groups that the new serial would be kind to them. I managed, however, at the same time to make some intellectually substantive points about the need for more interdisciplinary studies in medical history, especially those making connections with anthropological investigations of the impact of disease. As I read this article again recently, I found to my surprise that it largely pre-figured my approach over the past few years to writing the history of the disease kuru.	4
Later issues could turn into a struggle, as many contributors and perhaps a few readers recognised. We were reliably late and sometimes resorted to the old standby of the double issue to catch up—though I can plausibly deny any responsibility for the issue that simply was omitted altogether, causing considerable consternation to subscribers and librarians. The size of each issue and its design also varied deplorably (or amusingly?). Routinely, too, there was some difference of opinion about the fate of papers delivered at the biennial meetings, many of them ending up secreted in an obscure volume of proceedings rather than disseminated in the journal. Yet all the issues contained a number of significant articles and revealing reflections, as well as an increasing number of book reviews. There was an important special issue on the usefulness of medical records and the threats to their preservation in Australia. This served as template and exemplar for subsequent issues on pressing topics such as Maori health and Aboriginal Australian health. Without the devoted care of Jane Yule and Renae Stoneham in those early years, and the financial support of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, I suspect our society's offspring would have counted in the perinatal mortality figures. Instead, it soon became a robust toddler.	5
From the beginning, the editors have sought to be ecumenical, soliciting and accepting essays from medical doctors with historical enthusiasms and historians with medical (I mean 'health care') enthusiasms. Indeed, I believe Health and History has maintained a better balance of such contributors than any other medical history journal, though it has not always been easy. Perhaps there may be some benefit from the current editor convening a session at the next meeting of the ANZSHM conference to discuss what he looks for in submissions to Health and History? The more information and guidance the society's membership receives, the higher their chances of success in publishing their valuable research. Many of us would be dismayed to find Health and History had become just another publication for scoring academic points.	6
As the current issue shows, Health and History has flourished under the editorship of Janet McCalman and now the estimable Hans Pols. It displays a scholarly maturity and range of which the society can be proud. It now takes its place alongside other Australian history journals and international medical history journals—a little more fresh and unpredictable perhaps, but issue by issue, gaining in achievement. University of Sydney	7

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