Meat, Medicine and Human Health in the Twentieth Century

Editors: David Cantor, Christian Bonah and Matthias Dörries

Studies for the Society for the Social History of Medicine

Hb: 272pp: 2010
978 1 84893 103 9: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00

978 1 84893 104 6

By the beginning of the twentieth century, meat eating was a regular part of daily life in the Western world. Whilst the extra protein in this diet had a beneficial effect on growth and resilience to certain diseases, excessive amounts were found to promote cancer, heart disease and obesity. When it comes to meat this is often what we talk about today: its implications for us, our planet and our health. However, few seem to agree on what these implications are.

This collection of ten historical essays explores some of the complex relations between meat and human health in twentieth-century North America and Europe. Its subjects include the relations between the meat and the pharmaceutical industries, the slaughterhouse and the rise of endocrinology, the therapeutic benefits of meat extracts and the short-lived fate of liver ice-cream in the treatment of pernicious anaemia. Other articles examine responses to BSE and bovine tuberculosis, cancer and meat consumption, DES in cattle, American-style meat in Mexico and Nazi attitudes towards meat eating. Together these papers highlight a complicated array of often contradictory attitudes towards meat and human health.

Sample pages

Readership

History of Medicine and Science, Social and Cultural History, Food Industry and Health Sciences

Introduction: Meat, Medicine, and Human Health in the Twentieth Century – David Cantor and Christian Bonah

I Meat and Therapeutics
1 Zomine: A Tale of Raw Meat, Tuberculosis, Industry and War in Early Twentieth-Century France – Ilana Lowy
2 Treat with Meat: Protein, Palatability and Pernicious Anaemia in the 1920s–1930s – Susan Lederer
3 How Abattoir 'Biotrash' Connected the Social Worlds of the University Laboratory and the Disassembly Line – Naomi Pfeffer

II Meat, Politics, and Culture
4 What’s Meatpacking Got to Do with Worker and Community Health? – Donald D Stull and Michael J Broadway
5 Is Refrigerated Meat Healthy? Mexico Encounters the Chicago Meatpacking ‘Jungle’ c1910 – Jeffrey M Pilcher
6 Confused Messages: Meat, Civilization and Cancer Education in the Early Twentieth Century – David Cantor
7 What’s for Dinner? Science and the Ideology of Meat in Twentieth-Century US Culture – Rima D Apple
8 Vegetarianism, Meat and Life Reform in Early Twentieth-Century Germany and their Fate in the ‘Third Reich’ – Ulrike Thoms

III Meat, Risk and Regulation
9 Mad and Coughing Cows: Bovine Tuberculosis, BSE and Health in Twentieth Century Britain – Keir Waddington
10 Food, Drug and Consumer Regulation: The ‘Meat, DES and Cancer’ Debates in the United States – Jean-Paul Gaudillière