We tend to think of sleep as a private concern, a night-time retreat from the physical world into
the realm of the subconscious. Yet sleep also has a public side; it has been the focal point …

Most histories of psychology weave a story around the rise of objective methods of
investigation and the decline of subjective introspection. This paper sidesteps such disciplinary …

Encephalitis lethargica, also known as epidemic encephalitis, emerged as a new infectious
disease near the end of the First World War. Bacteriologic, epidemiologic, and clinical …

… Competing interests: Kenton Kroker has received a research grant from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada. No other competing interests were declared. …

Immunity is as old as illness itself, yet historians have only just begun to take up the
challenge of reconstructing the modern transformation of attempts to protect against disease. …

Rapid movement (REM) is a phenomenon of sleep easily visible to the naked eye of a careful
observer. Yet it was not discovered until 1953. Why did it take so long for this phenomenon …

Widely regarded as an umbrella term for contemp orary medical research, biomedicine
appears entirely self-evident—a word without definitional worry or historical baggage. In fact, …

Historians have clearly articulated the ways in which sleeplessness has long been part of the
human condition. As an object of medical expertise and public health intervention, however…

The idea that scientific expertise and testing of recruits, rather than socioeconomic status or
the caprice of officers, should govern the selection and placement of military personnel was …

The history of epidemic encephalitis offers a profound challenge to any assumption that, in
the early twentieth century, pathologies of the nervous system were somehow the exclusive …