Jacob Steere-Williams
Biographic Data
| ID | 1170885 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jacob Steere-Williams |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jacob |
| FAMILY NAME | Steere-Williams |
| SIGNATURE | STEERE-WILLIAMS J |
| AFFILIATIONS | College of Charleston |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
American Disgust
Essay review
In 1820 two French scientists – Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Jean Bienaimé Caventou – discovered and named the active alkaloid substance extracted from cinchona bark: quinine. The bark from the ‘wondrous’ fever tree, and its antimalarial properties, however, had long been known to both colonial scientists and indigenous Peruvians. From the mid-seventeenth century, cinchona bark, taken from trees that grow on the eastern slopes of the Andes, was pa…
Re-Writing Pandemic Histories
The COVID-19 pandemic, much like the generation-defining HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, has generated renewed public interest in the history of pandemics, especially their beginnings and endings. Indeed, over the past few years there has been an avalanche of reflection pieces on what past pandemics can offer as mediating devices between past and present, and what clues they offer about the effectiveness of public health measures and cont…
Carbolic Colonialism
Industrial capitalism has engendered human and animal bodies toxic in myriad and uneven ways—internal, external, environmental, ecological. This article examines the entanglements of public health, technology, coal, and the body through a singular chemical: carbolic acid (also known as phenol). Derived from coal tar production in British factories, carbolic acid exploded in use from the 1870s in Europe and across colonial environments. Though her…
Seeing germs, selling germs
The germ theory of infectious disease, which developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is often considered a pivotal breakthrough in modern science, medicine, biology, and public health. The germ theory provided a new way to study disease in laboratory, clinical, and community settings, and a new rationale for public health intervention. This article explores two important facets of the germ theory; how the physical techniqu…
Rethinking “Herd” Mentalities and Rethinking the Value of the History of Public Health
Rethinking “Herd” Mentalities and Rethinking the Value of the History of Public Health Jacob Steere-Williams PhD Affiliation Jacob Steere-Williams is an associate professor of history and director of medical humanities at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC. He also is the president of the Waring Library Society at the Medical University of South Carolina and associate editor of The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. …
Remaking the Case for History in Medical Education
A Slow Disaster Historical Experiment
Looking at the pandemic in the long historical view of “slow disasters” shows how it is a continuation of previous health emergencies rather than a discrete event. The tendency of politicians to prematurely declare an end to the pandemic has not helped improve public trust in health policy
Communicating the History of Medicine
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has thrust many historians of medicine, myself included, into popular conversations about public health, the cultural framing of disease, and the social determinants of health. At no other time in recent memory, save perhaps for the response historians mounted to contextualize the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the work of historians as expert witnesses for tobacco companies in the 1980s and 1990s, respectiv…
A "Menace" or a Martyr to the Public's Health
Previous articleNext article FreeA “Menace” or a Martyr to the Public’s Health?Jacob Steere-WilliamsJacob Steere-WilliamsCollege of Charleston Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAs a historian of public health, it strikes me that the concept of uncertainty is key to understanding pandemics. M…
Edward Ballard and the Practice of Epidemiology in the 19th-Century United Kingdom
This article recovers the history of Victorian epidemiology through the career of British physician Edward Ballard (1820–1897). Ballard’s career provides a useful window into the practices of epidemiology in the 19th century because he held notable public health posts as medical officer of health for Islington and inspector at the Medical Department of the Local Government Board. By the time of his death, in 1897, he typified the transition towar…
Bill Luckin, Death and Survival in Urban Britain, 1800–1950
Bill Luckin has left an indelible mark on the history of medicine, stubbornly insisting for the past 40 years that urban studies and environmental history are key frames for studying public health, disease and medicine. What a pleasure it is then, to have in one volume the central body of his work. Death and Survival in Urban Britain is a collection of eight previously published articles and book chapters that represent the core of Luckin’s schol…
Anne Hardy. Salmonella Infections, Networks of Knowledge, and Public Health in Britain, 1880–1975
“A large family ... with a beautiful name but most unpleasant habits.” Such is a forceful description of the bacterial genus, Salmonella, the subject of Anne Hardy's new monograph. The group was confounded in the late nineteenth century by the nebulous monikers enteric fever, typhoid, and summer diarrhea, yet a century later, microbiologists recognized over two thousand and five hundred specific zoonotic serotypes of Salmonella, the most virulent…
Women Travelers in Egypt
Book Review| October 01 2014 Women Travelers in Egypt: From the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century Women Travelers in Egypt: From the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Deborah Manley Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2012; pp. xi +216. $24.95 cloth. Jacob Steere-Williams Jacob Steere-Williams The College of Charleston Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Northeast African Studies (2014) 14 (2): 1…
No prominent works on this page.
Women Travelers in Egypt
Book Review| October 01 2014 Women Travelers in Egypt: From the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century Women Travelers in Egypt: From the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Deborah Manley Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2012; pp. xi +216. $24.95 cloth. Jacob Steere-Williams Jacob Steere-Williams The College of Charleston Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Northeast African Studies (2014) 14 (2): 1…
Bill Luckin, Death and Survival in Urban Britain, 1800–1950
Bill Luckin has left an indelible mark on the history of medicine, stubbornly insisting for the past 40 years that urban studies and environmental history are key frames for studying public health, disease and medicine. What a pleasure it is then, to have in one volume the central body of his work. Death and Survival in Urban Britain is a collection of eight previously published articles and book chapters that represent the core of Luckin’s schol…
Anne Hardy. Salmonella Infections, Networks of Knowledge, and Public Health in Britain, 1880–1975
“A large family ... with a beautiful name but most unpleasant habits.” Such is a forceful description of the bacterial genus, Salmonella, the subject of Anne Hardy's new monograph. The group was confounded in the late nineteenth century by the nebulous monikers enteric fever, typhoid, and summer diarrhea, yet a century later, microbiologists recognized over two thousand and five hundred specific zoonotic serotypes of Salmonella, the most virulent…
Edward Ballard and the Practice of Epidemiology in the 19th-Century United Kingdom
This article recovers the history of Victorian epidemiology through the career of British physician Edward Ballard (1820–1897). Ballard’s career provides a useful window into the practices of epidemiology in the 19th century because he held notable public health posts as medical officer of health for Islington and inspector at the Medical Department of the Local Government Board. By the time of his death, in 1897, he typified the transition towar…
A "Menace" or a Martyr to the Public's Health
Previous articleNext article FreeA “Menace” or a Martyr to the Public’s Health?Jacob Steere-WilliamsJacob Steere-WilliamsCollege of Charleston Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAs a historian of public health, it strikes me that the concept of uncertainty is key to understanding pandemics. M…
Communicating the History of Medicine
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has thrust many historians of medicine, myself included, into popular conversations about public health, the cultural framing of disease, and the social determinants of health. At no other time in recent memory, save perhaps for the response historians mounted to contextualize the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the work of historians as expert witnesses for tobacco companies in the 1980s and 1990s, respectiv…
A Slow Disaster Historical Experiment
Looking at the pandemic in the long historical view of “slow disasters” shows how it is a continuation of previous health emergencies rather than a discrete event. The tendency of politicians to prematurely declare an end to the pandemic has not helped improve public trust in health policy
Seeing germs, selling germs
The germ theory of infectious disease, which developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is often considered a pivotal breakthrough in modern science, medicine, biology, and public health. The germ theory provided a new way to study disease in laboratory, clinical, and community settings, and a new rationale for public health intervention. This article explores two important facets of the germ theory; how the physical techniqu…
Rethinking “Herd” Mentalities and Rethinking the Value of the History of Public Health
Rethinking “Herd” Mentalities and Rethinking the Value of the History of Public Health Jacob Steere-Williams PhD Affiliation Jacob Steere-Williams is an associate professor of history and director of medical humanities at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC. He also is the president of the Waring Library Society at the Medical University of South Carolina and associate editor of The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. …
Remaking the Case for History in Medical Education
Re-Writing Pandemic Histories
The COVID-19 pandemic, much like the generation-defining HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, has generated renewed public interest in the history of pandemics, especially their beginnings and endings. Indeed, over the past few years there has been an avalanche of reflection pieces on what past pandemics can offer as mediating devices between past and present, and what clues they offer about the effectiveness of public health measures and cont…
Carbolic Colonialism
Industrial capitalism has engendered human and animal bodies toxic in myriad and uneven ways—internal, external, environmental, ecological. This article examines the entanglements of public health, technology, coal, and the body through a singular chemical: carbolic acid (also known as phenol). Derived from coal tar production in British factories, carbolic acid exploded in use from the 1870s in Europe and across colonial environments. Though her…
American Disgust
Essay review
In 1820 two French scientists – Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Jean Bienaimé Caventou – discovered and named the active alkaloid substance extracted from cinchona bark: quinine. The bark from the ‘wondrous’ fever tree, and its antimalarial properties, however, had long been known to both colonial scientists and indigenous Peruvians. From the mid-seventeenth century, cinchona bark, taken from trees that grow on the eastern slopes of the Andes, was pa…
Medicine (10 works) · History (8 works) · Public health (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis (4 works) · History of Science and Medicine (4 works) · Pathology (4 works) · Archaeology (3 works) · Art (3 works) · Biology (3 works)