Thomas Schlich
Biographic Data
| ID | 518245 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Schlich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | Schlich |
| SIGNATURE | SCHLICH T |
| AFFILIATIONS | McGill University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 178 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Performing excellence: Nobel Prize nomination networks in North America
This paper examines how scientific excellence is performed in Nobel nominations for medical scientists. Performing excellence encompasses both conducting excellent scientific work and being recognized for it. Both dimensions are closely intertwined: doing and recognizing excellent work depend on each other. Tracing nominations from the Nobel Archives in Solna, Sweden, the paper shows that Nobel Prizes are only the tip of the iceberg of networks o…
Beyond the Nobel Prize: Scientific recognition and awards in North America since 1900
No Time for Statistics: Joseph Lister's Antisepsis and Types of Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century British Surgery
This article documents Joseph Lister's reluctance to publish numerical material and aims at explaining his skeptical view about statistics through an investigation of his approach in its historical context. In this context, statistics was only one kind of evidence used in surgery, along with case histories and experimental results from the laboratory. They represent different "ways of knowing," anchored in different social, conceptual, and practi…
Order and Cleanliness: The Gendered Role of Operating Room Nurses in the United States (1870s–1930s)
This paper looks at the history of operating room nurses in the light of the history of nursing and the history of surgery at a time of change in both domains. Geographically, its focus is on the United States as a national context where the specialization in this field occurred early on. The examination of instructional literature, e.g., textbooks, provides insight into the normative universe of the American operating rooms at the time. It shows…
Surgical Innovation and the Multiple Meanings of Randomized Controlled Trials: The First RCT on Minimally Invasive Cholecystectomy (1980–2000)
This article uses the case of the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating laparoscopic cholecystectomy to investigate the introduction of minimally invasive surgery in the 1990s and explore the meaning of RCTs within the context of the introduction of a new surgical technology. It thus brings together the history of the use of laparoscopic cholecystectomy to remove the gallbladder, and the history of the RCT, shedding light on particul…
One and the Same the World Over”: The International Culture of Surgical Exchange in an Age of Globalization, 1870–1914
This paper examines the international exchange in surgery in the decades before World War I, a period of growing globalization in communication and transport. Focusing on Europe and North America, it looks first at the various means of exchange, especially surgical travel and the culture emerging around it and follows specific directions of exchange, from France and Britain, first to the German-speaking countries and finally to North America. Sub…
Farmer to industrialist: Lister's antisepsis and the making of modern surgery in Germany
This paper analyses what is possibly the most important long-term impact of Joseph Lister's method of antisepsis on surgery, namely its role in replacing surgery's traditional regime of the management of chance by what can be called a regime of modern risk management. It was a crucial step for the expansion of surgery and thus the formation of modern surgery, as we know it today. It put surgery on a par with contemporary trends in industry, trans…
Negotiating Technologies in Surgery: The Controversy about Surgical Gloves in the 1890s
This article examines the controversial discussions about surgical gloves in the German-language countries in the 1890s. Analyzing the controversy as a contradiction between two important strategies of modern surgery, manual control and aseptic control, it looks at the various ways surgeons dealt with the conflict. Most important, they tried to resolve the problem by designing gloves that reconciled the two conflicting control strategies. This pe…
Rezension: Biologie der Juden. Jüdische Wissenschaftler über “Rasse” und Vererbung 1900–1935 von Veronika Lipphardt
Biomedical Conventions and Regulatory Objectivity: A Few Introductory Remarks
This special issue of Social Studies of Science centers on the topic of regulation in medicine and, in particular, on the notion of regulatory objectivity, defined as a new form of objectivity in biomedicine that generates conventions and norms through concerted programs of action based on the use of a variety of systems for the collective production of evidence. The papers in the special issue suggest ways in which the notion of regulatory objec…
The Perfect Machine: Lorenz Böhler's Rationalized Fracture Treatment in World War I
This essay examines Lorenz Böhler's modernist system of rationalized fracture care as a particular case of medical rationalization and standardization. Böhler's locally created culture of standardized practices is analyzed in the context of its concrete work environment but also situated in relation to aspects of its wider cultural environment. It will be described as part of a more general trend of body-based rationalization efforts in industry …
The Art and Science of Surgery: Innovation and Concepts of Medical Practice in Operative Fracture Care, 1960s-1970s
In this article, I am using the example of the introduction of osteosynthesis into surgical routine practice to analyze the use of the notions of art and science in medical innovation. The examination of the renegotiations of power and responsibility associated with the introduction of this new technique shows that proponents and critics actively linked their arguments to more fundamental epistemological and social issues. The proponents claimed …
People, other animals and health knowledges: Towards a research agenda
Surgery, Science and Modernity: Operating Rooms and Laboratories as Spaces of Control
Trauma Surgery and Traffic Policy in Germany in the 1930s: A Case Study in the Coevolution of Modern Surgery and Society
This paper analyzes how in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century the development of surgery and modern automobile traffic were intertwined. It describes the mutual influence of traffic policy and trauma surgery under the conditions of National Socialist politics of modernization. This coevolutionary development provides an example of how the rise of much of modern surgery can be better understood by taking into account other, nonmedi…
Regulatory objectivity and the generation and management of evidence in medicine
Medizin und Kolonialimperialismus: Deutschland 1884-1945 (review)
"Colonial economy should make the negroes' strong arms subject to its purposes, hygiene should preserve their strength and increase their number" (p. 59). This is a statement made in 1911 by Ludwig Külz, physician to the German Imperial government in Togo and Cameroon. Külz was eager to point out that the specialist in tropical medicine had the responsibility of preserving the most valuable possession the colonial power had: the natives' physical…
Medizingeschichte: Aufgaben ‐ Probleme ‐ Perspektiven”︁ Bericht über ein Symposion in Bad Homburg, 18.‐21.12.1996
Kranke und Krankheiten im Juliusspital zu Wurzburg, 1819-1829: Zur fruhen Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses in Deutschland (review)
Reviewed by: Kranke und Krankheiten im Juliusspital zu Würzburg, 1819–1829: Zur frühen Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses in Deutschland Thomas Schlich Johanna Bleker, Eva Brinkschulte, and Pascal Grosse, eds. Kranke und Krankheiten im Juliusspital zu Würzburg, 1819–1829: Zur frühen Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses in Deutschland. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, no. 72. Husum, Germany: Matthiesen…
Medizin und Wissenschaftstheorie: Die Geschichte der Wismuttherapie als wissenschaftstheoretische Fallstudie (review)
Die Entwicklung der Pharmazie zur Hochschuldisziplin (1750-1875): Ein Beitrag zur Universitats- und Sozialgeschichte. Berthold Beyerlein
Medicalization and Secularization: The Jewish Ritual Bath as a Problem of Hygiene (Germany 1820s–1840s)
In the 1820s and 1840s the Jewish ritual bath in Germany was criticized on the basis of medical arguments. Associated with this critique were demands for a change in the traditional Jewish way of life in general, especially as concerning the Jewish religion. The new role assigned to religion can be seen as part of a process of 'secularization'. The criticism of the ritual bath was justified by medical arguments and entailed a demand for an extens…
Animal Models in Health and Disease: Historical Perspectives’︁ Bericht über ein Symposium des Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London (23. Februar 1994)
The Early History of Renal Transplantation. Bericht über das Witness Seminar der ‚History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group’︁ des Wellcome Instituts am 30. September 1994 in London
How Gods and Saints Became Transplant Surgeons: The Scientific Article as a Model for the Writing of History
L'A. decrit et explique comment les chirurgiens viennent a ecrire des faits historiques qui manquent a la regle historiographique de base qui replace les faits dans leur contexte, et montre comment un article scientifique est organise
Regulatory objectivity and the generation and management of evidence in medicine
Biomedical Conventions and Regulatory Objectivity: A Few Introductory Remarks
This special issue of Social Studies of Science centers on the topic of regulation in medicine and, in particular, on the notion of regulatory objectivity, defined as a new form of objectivity in biomedicine that generates conventions and norms through concerted programs of action based on the use of a variety of systems for the collective production of evidence. The papers in the special issue suggest ways in which the notion of regulatory objec…
People, other animals and health knowledges: Towards a research agenda
The Art and Science of Surgery: Innovation and Concepts of Medical Practice in Operative Fracture Care, 1960s-1970s
In this article, I am using the example of the introduction of osteosynthesis into surgical routine practice to analyze the use of the notions of art and science in medical innovation. The examination of the renegotiations of power and responsibility associated with the introduction of this new technique shows that proponents and critics actively linked their arguments to more fundamental epistemological and social issues. The proponents claimed …
The Perfect Machine: Lorenz Böhler's Rationalized Fracture Treatment in World War I
This essay examines Lorenz Böhler's modernist system of rationalized fracture care as a particular case of medical rationalization and standardization. Böhler's locally created culture of standardized practices is analyzed in the context of its concrete work environment but also situated in relation to aspects of its wider cultural environment. It will be described as part of a more general trend of body-based rationalization efforts in industry …
Making mistakes in Science: Eduard Pflüger, his scientific and professional concept of Physiology, and his unsuccessful theory of diabetes (1903–1910)
Surgery, Science and Modernity: Operating Rooms and Laboratories as Spaces of Control
Order and Cleanliness: The Gendered Role of Operating Room Nurses in the United States (1870s–1930s)
This paper looks at the history of operating room nurses in the light of the history of nursing and the history of surgery at a time of change in both domains. Geographically, its focus is on the United States as a national context where the specialization in this field occurred early on. The examination of instructional literature, e.g., textbooks, provides insight into the normative universe of the American operating rooms at the time. It shows…
One and the Same the World Over”: The International Culture of Surgical Exchange in an Age of Globalization, 1870–1914
This paper examines the international exchange in surgery in the decades before World War I, a period of growing globalization in communication and transport. Focusing on Europe and North America, it looks first at the various means of exchange, especially surgical travel and the culture emerging around it and follows specific directions of exchange, from France and Britain, first to the German-speaking countries and finally to North America. Sub…
Religion und Universität: Der Streit um die Berufung jüdischer Professoren an der Universität Marburg im Vormärz
L'emancipation des juifs dans la societe bourgeoise allemande au debut du XIX e siecle n'a pas ete facilement acceptee dans les universites. Le refus de quatre professeurs juifs postulants (J.K.F. Rubino, L. Eichelberg, J. Hoffa et G.G. Valentin) par l'universite de Marbourg en est un exemple. Ce refus, justifie soit par l'aptitude soit par la religion juive du candidat, est etudie dans son contexte historique (Aufklarung, Liberalisme, Loi juive …
Making mistakes in Science: Eduard Pflüger, his scientific and professional concept of Physiology, and his unsuccessful theory of diabetes (1903–1910)
Medicalization and Secularization: The Jewish Ritual Bath as a Problem of Hygiene (Germany 1820s–1840s)
In the 1820s and 1840s the Jewish ritual bath in Germany was criticized on the basis of medical arguments. Associated with this critique were demands for a change in the traditional Jewish way of life in general, especially as concerning the Jewish religion. The new role assigned to religion can be seen as part of a process of 'secularization'. The criticism of the ritual bath was justified by medical arguments and entailed a demand for an extens…
Animal Models in Health and Disease: Historical Perspectives’︁ Bericht über ein Symposium des Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London (23. Februar 1994)
The Early History of Renal Transplantation. Bericht über das Witness Seminar der ‚History of Twentieth Century Medicine Group’︁ des Wellcome Instituts am 30. September 1994 in London
How Gods and Saints Became Transplant Surgeons: The Scientific Article as a Model for the Writing of History
L'A. decrit et explique comment les chirurgiens viennent a ecrire des faits historiques qui manquent a la regle historiographique de base qui replace les faits dans leur contexte, et montre comment un article scientifique est organise
Die Entwicklung der Pharmazie zur Hochschuldisziplin (1750-1875): Ein Beitrag zur Universitats- und Sozialgeschichte. Berthold Beyerlein
Kranke und Krankheiten im Juliusspital zu Wurzburg, 1819-1829: Zur fruhen Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses in Deutschland (review)
Reviewed by: Kranke und Krankheiten im Juliusspital zu Würzburg, 1819–1829: Zur frühen Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses in Deutschland Thomas Schlich Johanna Bleker, Eva Brinkschulte, and Pascal Grosse, eds. Kranke und Krankheiten im Juliusspital zu Würzburg, 1819–1829: Zur frühen Geschichte des Allgemeinen Krankenhauses in Deutschland. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, no. 72. Husum, Germany: Matthiesen…
Medizin und Wissenschaftstheorie: Die Geschichte der Wismuttherapie als wissenschaftstheoretische Fallstudie (review)
Medizingeschichte: Aufgaben ‐ Probleme ‐ Perspektiven”︁ Bericht über ein Symposion in Bad Homburg, 18.‐21.12.1996
Medizin und Kolonialimperialismus: Deutschland 1884-1945 (review)
"Colonial economy should make the negroes' strong arms subject to its purposes, hygiene should preserve their strength and increase their number" (p. 59). This is a statement made in 1911 by Ludwig Külz, physician to the German Imperial government in Togo and Cameroon. Külz was eager to point out that the specialist in tropical medicine had the responsibility of preserving the most valuable possession the colonial power had: the natives' physical…
Trauma Surgery and Traffic Policy in Germany in the 1930s: A Case Study in the Coevolution of Modern Surgery and Society
This paper analyzes how in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century the development of surgery and modern automobile traffic were intertwined. It describes the mutual influence of traffic policy and trauma surgery under the conditions of National Socialist politics of modernization. This coevolutionary development provides an example of how the rise of much of modern surgery can be better understood by taking into account other, nonmedi…
Regulatory objectivity and the generation and management of evidence in medicine
The Art and Science of Surgery: Innovation and Concepts of Medical Practice in Operative Fracture Care, 1960s-1970s
In this article, I am using the example of the introduction of osteosynthesis into surgical routine practice to analyze the use of the notions of art and science in medical innovation. The examination of the renegotiations of power and responsibility associated with the introduction of this new technique shows that proponents and critics actively linked their arguments to more fundamental epistemological and social issues. The proponents claimed …
People, other animals and health knowledges: Towards a research agenda
Surgery, Science and Modernity: Operating Rooms and Laboratories as Spaces of Control
Biomedical Conventions and Regulatory Objectivity: A Few Introductory Remarks
This special issue of Social Studies of Science centers on the topic of regulation in medicine and, in particular, on the notion of regulatory objectivity, defined as a new form of objectivity in biomedicine that generates conventions and norms through concerted programs of action based on the use of a variety of systems for the collective production of evidence. The papers in the special issue suggest ways in which the notion of regulatory objec…
The Perfect Machine: Lorenz Böhler's Rationalized Fracture Treatment in World War I
This essay examines Lorenz Böhler's modernist system of rationalized fracture care as a particular case of medical rationalization and standardization. Böhler's locally created culture of standardized practices is analyzed in the context of its concrete work environment but also situated in relation to aspects of its wider cultural environment. It will be described as part of a more general trend of body-based rationalization efforts in industry …
Rezension: Biologie der Juden. Jüdische Wissenschaftler über “Rasse” und Vererbung 1900–1935 von Veronika Lipphardt
Farmer to industrialist: Lister's antisepsis and the making of modern surgery in Germany
This paper analyses what is possibly the most important long-term impact of Joseph Lister's method of antisepsis on surgery, namely its role in replacing surgery's traditional regime of the management of chance by what can be called a regime of modern risk management. It was a crucial step for the expansion of surgery and thus the formation of modern surgery, as we know it today. It put surgery on a par with contemporary trends in industry, trans…
Negotiating Technologies in Surgery: The Controversy about Surgical Gloves in the 1890s
This article examines the controversial discussions about surgical gloves in the German-language countries in the 1890s. Analyzing the controversy as a contradiction between two important strategies of modern surgery, manual control and aseptic control, it looks at the various ways surgeons dealt with the conflict. Most important, they tried to resolve the problem by designing gloves that reconciled the two conflicting control strategies. This pe…
Surgical Innovation and the Multiple Meanings of Randomized Controlled Trials: The First RCT on Minimally Invasive Cholecystectomy (1980–2000)
This article uses the case of the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating laparoscopic cholecystectomy to investigate the introduction of minimally invasive surgery in the 1990s and explore the meaning of RCTs within the context of the introduction of a new surgical technology. It thus brings together the history of the use of laparoscopic cholecystectomy to remove the gallbladder, and the history of the RCT, shedding light on particul…
One and the Same the World Over”: The International Culture of Surgical Exchange in an Age of Globalization, 1870–1914
This paper examines the international exchange in surgery in the decades before World War I, a period of growing globalization in communication and transport. Focusing on Europe and North America, it looks first at the various means of exchange, especially surgical travel and the culture emerging around it and follows specific directions of exchange, from France and Britain, first to the German-speaking countries and finally to North America. Sub…
Order and Cleanliness: The Gendered Role of Operating Room Nurses in the United States (1870s–1930s)
This paper looks at the history of operating room nurses in the light of the history of nursing and the history of surgery at a time of change in both domains. Geographically, its focus is on the United States as a national context where the specialization in this field occurred early on. The examination of instructional literature, e.g., textbooks, provides insight into the normative universe of the American operating rooms at the time. It shows…
No Time for Statistics: Joseph Lister's Antisepsis and Types of Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century British Surgery
This article documents Joseph Lister's reluctance to publish numerical material and aims at explaining his skeptical view about statistics through an investigation of his approach in its historical context. In this context, statistics was only one kind of evidence used in surgery, along with case histories and experimental results from the laboratory. They represent different "ways of knowing," anchored in different social, conceptual, and practi…
Philosophy (16 works) · Medicine (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · History (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Medical History and Innovations (9 works) · Medical History and Research (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices (7 works)