["Long and difficult years followed". The situation of Freud's family after their arrival in Vienna in 1859]

New documents--notes in Viennese newspapers--have shed new light on the social circumstances of Freud's childhood. His father's arrival in Vienna can now be dated to the 23rd of December 1859. In a "reminder", issued by the commercial court of Vienna in the gazette of the Wiener Zeitung in February 1860, Jakob Freud was ordered to repay a debt to his creditor Benjamin Leisorowitz, and liquidation proceedings were initiated against him in the same month. Jakob was nevertheless able to carry on doing business, as is evidenced by further records in the gazette where he is mentioned as taking part in a salt and draft business. This information contributes to clarifying the question of how Jakob Freud managed to feed his growing family, maintain a middle class life style and finance the education of his children in Vienna. Furthermore the article provides a list of all known addresses of the family from 1859 to 1896.

Medical, demographical and social aspects of syphilis: the case of infected sex workers in Greece during Interwar

The aim of this research is to present syphilis among women described as "indecent" according to the records of the Venereal Diseases Hospital "Andreas Syggros", which is located in Athens, during the period 1931-1935. In impoverished Greece of the Interwar period, factors such as criminal ignorance, or lack of information on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) along with inadequate health controls of sex workers, resulted in a dramatic spread of syphilis, whereas "Andreas Syggros" hospital accommodated thousands of patients. The inflow of 1.300.000 Greek refugees from Asia Minor, after the Greek defeat by the Turkish army in the war of 1922, resulted in a notable change in the demographics of the country, while the combination of miserable living conditions, unemployment, economic crisis of the Interwar period, political instability and dysfunction of the State led to an increased number of illegal sex workers and syphilis outbreaks. Despite the introduction of an ad hoc Act to control STDs since 1923, the State was unable to limit the transmissibility of syphilis and to control prostitution. Unfortunately, the value of this historical paradigm is borne out by a contemporary example, i.e. the scandal of HIV seropositive sex workers in -beset by economic crisis- Greece in May 2012. It turns out that ignorance, failure to comply with the law, change in the mentality of the citizens in an economically ruined society, and most notably dysfunction of public services during periods of crisis, are all risk factors for the spread of serious infectious diseases.

Ideology and disease identity: the politics of rickets, 1929-1982

How can we assess the reciprocal impacts of politics and medicine in the contemporary period? Using the example of rickets in twentieth century Britain, I will explore the ways in which a preventable, curable non-infectious disease came to have enormous political significance, first as a symbol of socioeconomic inequality, then as evidence of racial and ethnic health disparities. Between the 1920s and 1980s, clinicians, researchers, health workers, members of Parliament and later Britain's growing South Asian ethnic communities repeatedly confronted the British state with evidence of persistent nutritional deficiency among the British poor and British Asians. Drawing on bitter memories of the 'Hungry Thirties', postwar rickets-so often described as a 'Victorian' disease-became a high-profile sign of what was variously constructed as a failure of the Welfare State; or of the political parties charged with its protection; or of ethnically Asian migrants and their descendants to adapt to British life and norms. Here I will argue that rickets prompted such consternation not because of its severity, the cost of its treatment, or even its prevalence; but because of the ease with which it was politicised. I will explore the ways in which this condition was envisioned, defined and addressed as Britain moved from the postwar consensus to Thatcherism, and as Britain's diverse South Asian communities developed from migrant enclaves to settled multigenerational ethnic communities.

Wealthier Jews, taller Gentiles: inequality of income and physical stature in fin-de-siècle Hungary

The stereotype of rich Jews versus poor Gentiles does not apply to fin-de-siècle Hungary. Although the average income of Jews was higher than that of Gentiles, the distribution of income among Jews was extremely unequal, far more so than among Christians. Jews were over-represented at the poor end as well as at the rich end of the income spectrum. In four high schools studied the average height of Jewish students was approximately 1cm below that of Gentiles. This height-income discrepancy goes far to explain the divergence in income distribution between the members of the two faiths.

Global health and development: conceptualizing health between economic growth and environmental sustainability

After World War II, health was firmly integrated into the discourse about national development. Transition theories portrayed health improvements as part of an overall development pattern based on economic growth as modeled by the recent history of industrialization in high-income countries. In the 1970s, an increasing awareness of the environmental degradation caused by industrialization challenged the conventional model of development. Gradually, it became clear that health improvements depended on poverty-reduction strategies including industrialization. Industrialization, in turn, risked aggravating environmental degradation with its negative effects on public health. Thus, public health in low-income countries threatened to suffer from lack of economic development as well as from the results of global economic development. Similarly, demands of developing countries risked being trapped between calls for global wealth redistribution, a political impossibility, and calls for unrestricted material development, which, in a world of finite land, water, air, energy, and resources, increasingly looked like a physical impossibility, too. Various international bodies, including the WHO, the Brundtland Commission, and the World Bank, tried to capture the problem and solution strategies in development theories. Broadly conceived, two models have emerged: a "localist model," which analyzes national health data and advocates growth policies with a strong focus on poverty reduction, and a "globalist" model, based on global health data, which calls for growth optimization, rather than maximization. Both models have focused on different types of health burdens and have received support from different institutions. In a nutshell, the health discourse epitomized a larger controversy regarding competing visions of development.

[Traditional diet in Southern Italy, between myth and reality]

"Mediterranean diet" is commonly defined as a type of diet based on traditional foods of the Southern Italian regions, assuming that in the past the southern populations enjoyed a balanced and healthy diet. In fact, up to the middle of the twentieth century, widespread poverty in large parts of the population led to malnutrition due to lack of calories and essential nutrients. Only among the upper classes consumption of food was reasonable and respectful of the recommendations of the "Mediterranean diet pyramid". The fact remains that many traditional dishes can be recommended because they are well balanced on nutrients, tasty and appetizing.

Indian hospitals and government in the colonial Andes

This article examines the reception of the early modern hospital among the indigenous people of the Andes under Spanish colonial rule. During the period covered by this study (sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries), the hospital was conceived primarily as a manifestation of the sovereign’s paternalistic concern for his subjects’ spiritual well being. Hospitals in the Spanish American colonies were organised along racial lines, and those catering to Indians were meant to complement the missionary endeavour. Besides establishing hospitals in the main urban centres, Spanish colonial legislation instituted hospitals for Indians in provincial towns and in small rural jurisdictions throughout the Peruvian viceroyalty. Indian hospitals often met with the suspicion and even hostility of their supposed beneficiaries, especially indigenous rulers. By conceptualising the Indian hospital as a tool of colonial government, this article investigates the reasons behind its negative reception, the work of adaptation that allowed a few of them to thrive, and the eventual failure of most of these institutions.

Modernization and rural health in Mexico: the case of the Tepalcatepec Commission

Mexican policymakers instituted community-based health programs in the 1940s and 1950s to encourage rural participation in state-sponsored health and economic development initiatives. The Tepalcatepec Commission (1947-1961) united previously independent government programs into a multi-tiered collaboration that addressed regional development through national, state, and local networks. While national policymakers and state officials designed plans to improve agricultural production, promote industrialization, utilize the area's natural resources, and expand communication channels, health workers established unprecedented relationships with indigenous community members by introducing the Commission's projects in culturally relevant ways. They used their on-the-ground experiences to learn local languages, customs, and beliefs, and incorporated these factors into their health education and disease treatment campaigns. The result serves as an example of short-term cooperative relationships between healthcare workers and indigenous groups that not only reduced the major health risks in the area, but also paved the way for collective economic development.

Seeing the countryside through medical eyes: social service reports in the making of a sickly nation

This article explores sanitary reports sent by early generations of social service year medical students who wrote about their first encounters with rural diseases and the people who suffered them. By exploring what was reported we see how, instead of questioning the roots of rural illness, poverty, and the hunger that they witnessed, young doctors often unwittingly reinforced urban prejudices and concerns that blamed indigenous Mexicans for their own poverty and diseased status. Because sanitary reports were authored by medical students, they were often perceived as 'scientific' evidence of the living conditions and unhealthy choices of rural Mexicans. The author argues that as in the case of travel narratives, medical students' written assessments influenced how the rest of society came to understand rural Mexico.

"The environment as a cause of disease in children": Josef Friedjung's transnational influence on modern child welfare theory

Josef K. Friedjung's Advanced Pediatrics--A Companion to Traditional Textbooks (Erlebte Kinderheilkunde--eine Ergänzung er gebräuchlichen Lehrbucher), published in 1919 in Vienna, has cast a long but nearly-vanished shadow over modern child welfare theory. The originality of his focus on "the whole child" was in some ways a commentary on Sigmund Freud, but its overtly progressive political character gave Friedjung's argument visible applicability within the field of urban social welfare. As a pediatrician and an ardent cosmopolitan, Friedjung was willing to consider conflicting values between traditional family systems and the state. Had the Nazis not forced him into exile in Palestine, where he died in 1946, Friedjung's pioneering oeuvre would have joined our child welfare narrative long ago. Fortunately today archival evidence on which this study draws, fragmented as it is in both German and English, does confirm that the first and second generation psychoanalysts, Friedjung among them, built a mental health movement around a social justice core closely allied to the cultural context of central Europe from 1918 to 1933. In many ways, child welfare as we know it emerged as a practical implementation of that ideology.

'Those, that die by reason of their madness': dying insane in London, 1629-1830

Dying insane provoked 'great fear, and apprehension' in the minds of men and women. Death as a lunatic disrupted deathbed performance and rendered the victim incapable at law. This article examines lunacy as a cause of death in the metropolis between 1629 and 1830. It draws on new material from the admission registers of St Luke's Hospital, existing data from Bethlem and the London Bills of Mortality and unique biographical data on pauper lunatics dying in the parish of St Martin in the Fields. The article argues that lunacy being ascribed as a cause of death had a distinctive chronology in this period. Those most vulnerable to the stigma of lunacy at death were those dying as parish paupers and those who inhabited metropolitan institutions.

'Abnormalities and deformities': the dissection and interment of the insane poor, 1832-1929

The body trade of anatomy schools in Victorian times that underpinned the expansion of medical education has been neglected. This article examines dissection records of insane paupers, sold to repay their welfare debt to society. Each cadaver was entered in an 'Abnormalities and Deformities' dissection book. Student doctors paid fees to anatomists to be taught the pathology of insanity under the Medical Act. Anatomists also dissected cadavers to do further brain and eye research on epilepsy and glaucoma in the insane. These bodies were often dissected to their extremities. Their fragmentary remains were then disposed of in a common grave. This secret body trade and its asylum supply-chain merit further work in disability studies and the history of psychiatry.

On hunger and child mortality in India

Despite accelerated growth there is pervasive hunger, child undernutrition and mortality in India. Our analysis focuses on their determinants. Raising living standards alone will not reduce hunger and undernutrition. Reduction of rural/urban disparities, income inequality, consumer price stabilization, and mothers’ literacy all have roles of varying importance in different nutrition indicators. Somewhat surprisingly, public distribution system (PDS) do not have a significant effect on any of them. Generally, child undernutrition and mortality rise with poverty. Our analysis confirms that media exposure triggers public action, and helps avert child undernutrition and mortality. Drastic reduction of economic inequality is in fact key to averting child mortality, conditional upon a drastic reordering of social and economic arrangements.

The man with the dirty black beard: race, class, and schools in the antebellum South

The problem of poor, degraded white people in the antebellum South presented a problem to both reformers and proponents of slavery. Sharpening the differences of race meant easing those of class, ensuring that public schooling did not always receive widespread support. The cult of white superiority absolved the state of responsibility for social mobility. As better schooling was advocated for religious and civic reasons, wealthy planters determined to avoid taxes joined with their illiterate neighbors in fighting attempts at “improvement” that undermined the slave system based on the notion of black inferiority.