Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Title	Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Discipline	History of medicine
Abbreviation	J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci.
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Country	United States
History	1946–present
Frequency	Quarterly
Issn	0022-5045
Eissn	1468-4373

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences is a peer-reviewed quarterly academic journal focusing on the history of medicine and related allied sciences. Founded in the mid-20th century, the journal has published scholarship engaging subjects such as physicians, hospitals, pharmacology, public health, and scientific institutions across periods and regions. Its contributors and readers include historians associated with institutions like Harvard University, Oxford University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Cambridge, and Columbia University.

History

The journal was established in 1946 during the post-World War II expansion of historical scholarship alongside journals such as Isis (journal), Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Medical History (journal), Annals of Science, and Social History of Medicine. Early editorial boards included scholars connected to Yale University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, King's College London, and University of Toronto. Throughout the Cold War era it published work intersecting with events and institutions like World War II, Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, United States Public Health Service, and the World Health Organization. In subsequent decades the journal reflected historiographical shifts influenced by scholars from Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan, and University of Oxford.

Scope and Content

Articles examine topics ranging from case studies of individuals such as Hippocrates, Galen, Andreas Vesalius, William Harvey, and Ignaz Semmelweis to institutional histories involving Royal Society, Mayo Clinic, Beth Israel Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Johns Hopkins Hospital. The journal publishes research on medical texts like Hippocratic Corpus, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, Principia Mathematica (in relation to biomedical sciences), and on figures related to public health reforms like Edwin Chadwick, Florence Nightingale, Rudolf Virchow, and John Snow. Contributors address intersections with events such as the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918–19, Industrial Revolution, Great Depression, World War I, and Smallpox eradication. The journal also covers allied sciences through studies touching on pharmacy with links to Paracelsus, Dmitri Mendeleev, Alexander Fleming, and institutions like Eli Lilly and Company and Roche.

Editorial and Publication Details

Published by Oxford University Press, the journal issues four numbers per year with submissions undergoing anonymized peer review by scholars affiliated with institutions including Harvard Medical School, Yale School of Medicine, University College London, McGill University, and University of Edinburgh. Past editors and advisory board members have been associated with Howard University, Columbia University Medical Center, Cornell University, Northwestern University, and Duke University. The journal maintains editorial practices consonant with standards from organizations such as Modern Language Association, American Historical Association, and Committee on Publication Ethics where applicable.

Abstracting and Indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in major services alongside journals like The Lancet, BMJ, New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, and Science. Indexing platforms and bibliographic services that include the journal commonly used by researchers at National Institutes of Health, British Library, Library of Congress, Wellcome Trust, and Sloan Foundation facilitate discovery and citation tracking. It appears in database compilations consulted by researchers from PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR, and ProQuest.

Impact and Reception

Scholarly reception has positioned the journal among leading venues in the history of medicine alongside Medical History (journal), Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Isis (journal), and Social History of Medicine. Its articles are cited in monographs from university presses such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Princeton University Press, Harvard University Press, and MIT Press, and are used in curricula at institutions including King's College London, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, and Yale University. Reviews in venues like American Historical Review, Isis (journal), and Journal of British Studies have highlighted contributions addressing subjects from colonial medicine (represented by figures and places such as Joseph Chamberlain and British Raj) to biomedical ethics debates involving names like Hippocratic Oath proponents and critics tied to Nuremberg Code discussions.

Notable Articles and Contributors

Notable contributors include historians and scholars associated with Roy Porter, George Sarton, Laudan, Thomas Laqueur, Charles E. Rosenberg, Hannah Landecker, Vivian Nutton, Nancy Tomes, Margaret Pelling, Siddhartha Mukherjee (historical essays), Londa Schiebinger, Dorothy Porter, Geoffrey C. Robinson, Nicholas Jewson, Adriana Petryna, Paul Starr, Allan Brandt, Edmund Ramsden, Vivette García-Deister, and Peter N. Stearns. Representative influential articles have examined topics such as the professionalization of surgery in the era of William Halsted, the epidemiology of cholera linked to figures like John Snow, the institutionalization of psychiatry in places like Bedlam, and pharmaceutical developments involving penicillin and insulin. The journal has also published archival-based studies drawing on collections from Wellcome Collection, National Archives (United Kingdom), National Archives and Records Administration, and university special collections at Harvard, Yale, and UCL.

Category:History of medicine journals