Psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy played an important role in attempts to regulate and rehabilitate New Zealand men imprisoned for sodomy and indecent assault between 1910 and 1960. Little attention has, so far, been paid to the specific psychological ‘treatment’ of such incarcerated men in the international context, but New Zealand’s archives offer-up much valuable detail. This article adopts a Foucauldian approach and explores shifting epistemic beliefs alongside the specific practices of key medical officials, and it considers how prisoners’ subjectivities were shaped in the process. Attempts to displace homoerotic desire gradually gave way to the articulation of same-sex sexuality. New possibilities emerged: when the psychologising of homosexuality in prisons opened the door to self-expression it showed an affinity with the organised resistance of the 1970s.

Growing interest to Tibetan medicine among the Russian scientific community and popularisation of its practices in the Russian Empire metropolitan areas in the second half of the nineteenth century to early twentieth century concurred with on-going changes in perception of the Orient by Russian society, establishment of its positive image, increased interest to the elements of oriental culture and practices within the framework of the Silver Age values, and the development of the natural science and experimental medicine, both of which caused an improvement in the healthcare system in Russia. At the turn of the twentieth century, Russian society manifested an ambivalent attitude towards Tibetan medicine. On the one hand, there was an increasing interest to theoretical foundations, a desire for scientific understanding, and spread of the Tibetan medicine practical component in the sociocultural environment of the metropolitan society, previously unfamiliar with oriental traditions and beliefs. On the other hand, an issue of the possibilities and principles of Tibetan medical treatment had opposed Western scientific medicine, which produced many discussions and critical reviews. The controversy was repeatedly caused by the negative attitude towards principal metropolitan specialist in Tibetan medicine – Peter Badmaev and distrust to his activities, as opposed to the medical skills of actual lamas. Despite the fact that it was virtually impossible to integrate Tibetan medicine into the Russian healthcare system, interest in it became a factor of attraction to the East and the oriental culture in Russian society at the turn of the twentieth century.

The emergence of modern health-related commodities and tourism in the late Meiji and Taishō eras (1900s–1920s) was accompanied by a revival of spiritualist religions, many of which had their origins in folk belief. What helped this was the people’s interpretation of radiation. This article underscores the linkages between radiation, science and spiritualism in Japan at the time of modernisation and imperialism. In the early twentieth century, the general public came to know about radiation because it was deemed to have special efficacy in healing the human body. In Japan, the concept of radiation harmonised with both Western culture and Japanese traditional culture. One can see the fusion of Western and traditional culture both in people’s lives and commercial culture through the popularity and availability of radium hot springs and radioactive commodities. Radium hot springs became fashionable in Japan in the 1910s. As scholars reported that radium provided the real potency of hot springs, local hot springs villages seized on the scientific explanation and connected their developments with national policies and industries. This paper illustrates how the discourse about radium, which came from the field of radiation medicine, connected science and spiritualism in modern Japan.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the notion that the uterus is a useless and pathological organ after a woman has had ‘enough’ children emerged alongside news reports of excessive hysterectomy in Taiwan. This notion and hysterectomy became two sides of the same coin, the former pointing to the burden of birth control and cancer risk, and the latter to sterilization and removing cancer risk. I explore how, in post-war Taiwan, the notion became commonplace through the intersection of three historical formations: the medical tradition of employing surgery to manage risk (such as appendectomy for appendicitis), American-dominated family planning projects that intensified the surgical approach and promoted reproductive rationality, and cancer prevention campaigns that helped cultivate a sense of cancer risk. The gender politics operating in the family planning and cancer prevention projects were apparent. The burden of birth control fell mainly on women, and the cancer prevention campaign, centring almost exclusively on early detection of cervical cancer, made cancer into a woman’s disease. I argue that the discourses of reproductive rationality and disease risk were parallel and, in several key ways, intersecting logics that rendered the uterus useless and pathological and then informed surgeons’ practice of hysterectomy. Exploring the ways in which the uterus was envisioned and targeted in the history of medicine in Taiwan, this paper shows overlapping bio-politics in three strands of research in an East Asian context – namely women’s health, family planning and cancer prevention – and offers a case for global comparison.

From the 1930s, psychiatrists and sociologists documented the prevalence of Irish alcohol-related psychiatric admissions in the United States. These studies seemed to suggest that the Irish, as a race, had a remarkable relationship with drink, therefore reinforcing the enduring ‘drunken Irish’ stereotype. By the 1960s, the alleged Irish susceptibility to alcoholism gained increasing attention from researchers and officials in Ireland itself. Significantly, this renewed awareness coincided with a shift in Ireland’s place on the international landscape and was intertwined with the broader social, cultural and political environment. While anxieties about the apparently rising incidence of alcoholism and alcohol-related harm were not unique to Ireland, the specific cultural meanings attached to excessive drinking in a nation internationally renowned for this problem mapped onto shifting international frameworks, informing medical perceptions and shaping policy developments. This article explores expert and official interpretations of alcoholism and the ‘drunken Irish’ stereotype from 1945 to 1975. This period saw a number of important developments, including the introduction of the Irish Mental Treatment Act of 1945, the establishment of the Irish National Council on Alcoholism in 1966 and the creation of specialist alcohol treatment facilities in several psychiatric hospitals. In the same era, the contexts for understanding problem drinking began to shift from the disease concept of alcoholism towards the public health perspective on alcohol. As will be argued, in Ireland, these frameworks were coloured by concerns that social and cultural factors were contributing to rising levels of alcohol consumption and psychiatric admissions for alcoholism.