A number of articles in the April 2023 issue of the Canadian Journal of Health History will interest AHP readers. Full titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.

“The Varieties of Psychedelic Expertise in 1960s Canada: The Psychiatrists behind the Addiction Research Foundation’s Study of LSD Therapy,” Andrew Jones. Abstract:

In 1962, Ontario’s Addiction Research Foundation launched the first double-blind randomized controlled trial of LSD therapy as a treatment for alcoholism. The study, which found that LSD was not effective, was heavily criticized by other therapists working with the drug. These critics argued that the Toronto researchers who carried out the study were biased against LSD and used an anti-therapeutic method that was destined to produce negative results. Instead of creating a comfortable and supportive environment, they stressed, the Toronto group restrained patients to a bed in a hospital ward, used an unusually large dose of LSD, and hardly provided any careful therapeutic support. Some even compared this method to a “form of torture.” Historians have paid little attention to the study, mentioning it only as an example of flawed or naïve LSD therapy that contrasted with the more advanced “psychedelic” approach developed in Saskatchewan. In this paper, I take a closer look at the Toronto psychiatrists who carried out the study and created the unique method that was employed. I show that they were actually quite excited about LSD and were more sophisticated in their approach to its use than has been appreciated by historians and critics. In many ways, they had their own brand of LSD expertise that differed from that of the Saskatchewan group. Some of the problems with the ARF study, then, did not stem from negative bias or a lack of competency, but instead resulted from the awkward relationship between LSD therapy and controlled trials.

En 1962, la Fondation pour la recherche sur la toxicomanie de l’Ontario lançait son premier test aléatoire et contrôlé en double aveugle de thérapie par le LSD pour traiter l’alcoolisme. L’étude, qui concluait que le LSD n’était pas efficace, a fait l’objet de critiques sévères de la part d’autres thérapeutes qui utilisaient cette drogue. Ces thérapeutes soutenaient que le groupe de recherche torontois avait un parti pris défavorable au LSD et avait employé des méthodes antithérapeutiques dans le but de produire des résultats négatifs. Ainsi, selon eux, au lieu de créer un environnement offrant un réel soutien, le groupe de Toronto attachait les patients à leur lit d’hôpital, employait des doses inhabituellement élevées de LSD et ne fournissait à peu près aucun soutien thérapeutique. La méthode a même été comparée à « une forme de torture ». Les historiennes et les historiens ont accordé peu d’attention à l’étude, sauf pour la citer comme exemple déficient ou naïf de thérapie par le LSD, en l’opposant à l’approche « psychédélique » plus avancée mise au point en Saskatchewan. Dans cet article, je m’intéresse aux psychiatres qui ont mené l’étude de Toronto et conçu la méthode originale employée à la Fondation. Je montre que l’usage du LSD suscitait beaucoup d’enthousiasme dans le groupe et que son utilisation de cette drogue était plus complexe que l’ont reconnu jusqu’ici l’histoire et la critique. À plusieurs égards, le groupe de Toronto disposait de sa propre expertise en matière de LSD, différente de celle de ses collègues de la Saskatchewan. J’en conclus qu’une partie des problèmes attribués à l’étude conduite par la Fondation ne provient pas d’un préjugé défavorable ou d’un manque de compétence, mais plutôt des liens complexes entre la thérapie par le LSD et les essais cliniques.

“Confinia Psychiatrica: Patient Art and the Diagnosis of Mental Illness,” Jacalyn Duffin and Lynda Mikelova. Abstract:

In 1950 in Paris, the inaugural World Conference on Psychiatry hosted an exhibit of artwork by patients, including 150 works from 22 patients of Montreal’s Dr. Ewen Cameron. This event marked the inception of a vigorous but short-lived movement in the history of psychiatry and its relationship to art – not as therapy but as a tool for diagnosis. Two theses elevated the topic to the realm of serious research; their authors became leaders in the field: Robert Volmat (1953) and Irene Jakab (1956).

Identifying roots in the earlier works of Ambroise Tardieu and Hans Prinzhorn and with connections to the Art Brut movement of artist Jean Dubuffet, a group of adherents formed the Société International de la Psychopathologie de l’Expression (SIPE) in Verona, Italy, in 1959. Members sought to release the hidden diagnostic potential of patient art through research on symbols, colour, structure, and content, deriving codes that would point to specific epistemic categories of evolving psychiatric nosology. National societies also arose in many countries. The related journal Confinia Psychiatrica (Borderland of Psychiatry) ran from 1958 to 1980.

If patient art could be diagnostic, changes in it could be used to assess therapeutic progress. Perhaps for this reason, the pharmaceutical company Sandoz took a particular interest in SIPE, publishing, small collections of patient art of various diagnostic categories and scholarly analysis for distribution to practitioners. We argue that this publishing exercise was a form of corporate advertising – attractive, informative, avant-garde.

This paper traces the history of Confinia and SIPE through the publications and meetings, showing how the attempt to use art for “diagnosis” evolved into the more durable process of art as therapy.

En 1950, à Paris, le premier Congrès mondial de psychiatrie accueillait une exposition consacrée à des œuvres d’art produites par des patient·es, notamment 150 œuvres de 22 des patient·es d’un médecin montréalais, le Dr Ewen Cameron. L’évènement marqua la naissance d’un mouvement qui fut bref, quoique vigoureux, dans l’histoire de la psychiatrie et de sa relation à l’art entendu non pas comme une thérapie, mais comme un outil de diagnostic. Deux thèses élevèrent ensuite le sujet au rang des recherches sérieuses ; l’auteur de la première, Robert Volmat (1953), et l’autrice de la seconde, Irene Jakab (1956), allaient éventuellement figurer parmi les personnalités les plus en vue de ce domaine.

Se reconnaissant des affinités avec les travaux antérieurs d’Ambroise Tardieu et de Hans Prinzhorn, et cultivant des liens avec le mouvement de l’art brut représenté par Jean Dubuffet, un groupe d’adeptes fonda la Société internationale de la psychopathologie de l’expression (SIPE), à Vérone, en Italie, en 1959. Par leurs recherches sur les symboles, les couleurs, la structure et le contenu des œuvres de patient·es, ses membres cherchaient à libérer le potentiel diagnostique caché de ces œuvres en extrayant des codes censés indiquer des catégories épistémiques précises de la nosologie psychiatrique alors en pleine évolution. Des sociétés nationales furent aussi fondées dans de nombreux pays. Une revue associée à ces travaux, Confinia Psychiatrica (Les Confins de la psychiatrie), fut publiée de 1958 à 1980.

Si les œuvres de patient·es pouvaient servir au diagnostic, leur évolution devait logiquement permettre d’évaluer les progrès d’une thérapie. C’est pour cette raison, peut-être, que la compagnie pharmaceutique Sandoz s’intéressa de près à la SIPE, publiant de petites collections d’œuvres de patient·es relevant de catégories de diagnostic variées, accompagnées d’analyses savantes, afin de les distribuer aux praticien·nes. Nous soutenons que cet exercice de publication était en fait une sorte de publicité d’affaires – séduisante, informative, d’avant-garde.

Dans cet article qui remonte, à travers publications et colloques, le cours de l’histoire de Confinia et de la SIPE, nous montrons que la tentative d’employer l’art comme un outil de diagnostic a évolué, jusqu’à devenir cette approche plus pérenne qui consiste à considérer l’art comme une forme de thérapie.

“Making Sense of “Insanity”: Law, Psychiatry, and the Royal Commission on the Law of Insanity as a Defence in Criminal Cases,” Eli Remington. Abstract:

In 1954, the Canadian government established the Royal Commission on the Law of Insanity as a Defence in Criminal Cases. While its final report had little impact at the time, the creation of the commission points to the emergence of insanity as a newly complex problem within the context of postwar Canada. Spurred on by the growing psychiatric profession and the destabilization of capital punishment as a viable sentence, the commission quickly realized that the building blocks of its solution – legal and psychiatric expertise – were largely incompatible. This article explores the commission’s problematization of insanity, which, far from providing solutions, highlighted the difficulties surrounding the integration of both psychiatric and legal knowledges of the day. The commission played an important role in upholding the status quo, and it provides an early example of the stasis that would characterize this area of the law until the early 1990s.

En 1954, le gouvernement du Canada mettait sur pied la Commission royale chargée d’étudier la défense d’aliénation mentale en matière criminelle. Même si son rapport eut peu de répercussions à l’époque, la création de la Commission suggère que le problème de l’aliénation mentale avait acquis une complexité nouvelle dans le contexte de l’après-guerre au Canada. La Commission, aiguillonnée par la profession psychiatrique en expansion et la remise en cause de la peine capitale comme sentence acceptable, a vite réalisé que les éléments de base de la solution à ce problème – les expertises juridique et psychiatrique – étaient en grande partie incompatibles. Cet article s’intéresse à la manière dont la Commission problématise l’aliénation mentale : loin de fournir des solutions, elle fait plutôt ressortir la difficuté d’arrimer les savoirs psychiatriques et juridiques de l’époque. La Commission a joué un rôle important dans le maintien du statut quo, et constitue un exemple précoce de l’immobilisme qui allait caractériser ce domaine du droit jusqu’au début des années 1990.

“Scénariser l’expérience infirmière en contexte de déshospitalisation psychiatrique : nord de l’Ontario, 1965-2015,” Marie LeBel. Abstract:

À partir d’une base de données sociohistoriques constituée d’entretiens semi-directifs avec des infirmières de la grande région du nord-est ontarien, nous explorons une nouvelle manière de présenter les résultats d’une recherche en histoire des soins et services de santé mentale en les scénarisant. Les témoins, des infirmières qui ont pratiqué en contexte régional nord-ontarien entre 1965 et 2015 auprès de patients aux prises avec des troubles de santé mentale graves (TSMG), font part des défis qu’a pu présenter pour elles de dispenser des soins psychiatriques selon les moments de cette période durant lesquels elles exerçaient. De leurs témoignages, nous avons extrait et construit un récit scénarisé.

Based on a socio-historical database consisting of semi-directional interviews with nurses from the Northeastern Ontario region and using narrative approach, this paper exploring a new way to present the results of research in the history of mental health care and services. The witnesses, nurses who practiced in a northern Ontario regional setting between 1965 and 2015 with patients with severe mental health disorders (SMHD), describe the challenges they may have faced in providing psychiatric care at different times of this long period of time during their practice. From the data we drew (extract) and build a narrative fictional scenario.

““If Ever a Wreck Came Back from Overseas She Was One”: The Treatment and Pensioning of Psychologically Traumatized Nursing Sisters after the First World War,” Lyndsay Rosenthal. Abstract:

During the First World War, 2845 women served as nursing sisters with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. After the war, some women developed nervous and mental conditions that they said were caused by their wartime service and applied for military pensions and treatment. So how were these women treated by doctors and pension boards? Men who suffered from psychological trauma were frequently labelled as “cowards” or “malingerers.” Many of the symptoms typically associated with nervous cases, such as hysteria, were viewed as inherently feminine at the time but we know little about how this criterion was applied to female veterans. One hundred forty-three nursing sisters who applied for pensions reported that they suffered from mental and nervous illnesses. An examination of veteran pension files suggests that psychologically traumatized women were also judged based on gendered stereotypes and encountered similar barriers to male veterans in trying to prove that their conditions were attributable to their service. These findings reveal the unique challenges and trauma women faced long after the war had ended.

Pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, 2 845 femmes ont servi comme infirmières militaires au sein du Corps expéditionnaire canadien. Après la guerre, certaines ont développé des troubles nerveux et mentaux qui, selon elles, étaient causés par leur service en temps de guerre et ont demandé des pensions et des traitements militaires. Alors, comment ces femmes étaient-elles traitées par les médecins et les gestionnaires des fonds de pension? Les hommes qui souffraient de traumatismes psychologiques étaient souvent qualifiés de «lâches» ou de «simulateurs». Bon nombre des symptômes généralement associés aux cas nerveux, tels que l’hystérie, étaient considérés comme intrinsèquement féminins à l’époque, mais nous savons peu de choses sur la manière dont ce critère a été appliqué aux femmes vétérans. Cent quarante-trois infirmières qui ont demandé une pension ont déclaré souffrir de maladies mentales et nerveuses. L’examen des dossiers de pension des anciens combattants suggère que les femmes psychologiquement traumatisées ont également été jugées sur la base de stéréotypes sexistes et ont rencontré des obstacles similaires à ceux des vétérans masculins en essayant de prouver que leurs problèmes de santé étaient attribuables à leur service. Ces résultats révèlent les défis et traumatismes uniques auxquels les femmes ont été confrontées longtemps après la fin de la guerre.

“In Charcot’s Shadow: On the Allure of “Great Men” and the Privileging of Epistemology in the History of Science and Medicine,” Courtney E. Thompson. Abstract:

This article explores the allure of “great men” in medical history through a comparative account of the work and lives of Jean-Martin Charcot and his student and collaborator, Désiré-Magloire Bourneville, in late nineteenth-century France. While historians of science and medicine have self-consciously rejected Whiggish and hagiographic “great man” history, the fixity of certain historical actors within our social and cultural histories reveals the continued hold of these figures and what they stand for within the grand narrative. The privileging of institutional and intellectual contributions has been perpetuated in such a way that bottom-up experiences and contributions in realms such as public health have been neglected. I argue that the continued prominence of certain historical medical figures, like Charcot, over forgotten contemporaries, like Bourneville, is representative of the way that historians of science and medicine have implicitly privileged intellectual contributions over social, political, or structural contributions.

Cet article explore l’attrait pour les « grands hommes » dans l’histoire de la médecine, en comparant la vie et l’œuvre de Jean-Martin Charcot et de son élève et collaborateur, Désiré-Magloire Bourneville, dans la France de la fin du XIXe siècle. Bien que le milieu de l’histoire des sciences et de la médecine ait plus ou moins rejeté les approches historiques fondées sur le whiggisme et l’hagiographie des « grands hommes », la permanence de certains acteurs historiques dans notre histoire sociale et culturelle révèle l’emprise que ces figures conservent sur les grands récits et le rôle qu’elles continuent d’y jouer. Le privilège accordé aux contributions institutionnelles et intellectuelles s’est perpétué, de telle sorte que les expériences et les apports provenant de la base dans des domaines comme la santé publique sont demeurés dans l’ombre. Je soutiens ici que l’attention reçue sans cesse par certains personnages de l’histoire de la médecine, tel Charcot, au détriment de leurs contemporains ayant sombré dans l’oubli, tel Bourneville, est représentative de la manière dont les historiens et les historiennes des sciences et de la médecine privilégient toujours, implicitement, les contributions intellectuelles plutôt que les contributions sociales, politiques ou structurelles.

A new piece now available online in History of Psychiatry may interest AHP readers: “The epistemologies of research on the survival of consciousness after death in the golden era of the Society for Psychical Research (1882–1930),” Pedro Henrique Costa de Resende, Alexander Moreira-Almeida, and Humberto Schubert Coelho. Abstract:

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) of London was founded in 1882 with the purpose of investigating psychical phenomena, especially the theme of survival, with scientific rigour. Despite the recognized importance of the SPR for dynamic psychiatry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there are few studies of its epistemological contributions to the theme of survival and its implications to science. In order to fill this gap, we have consulted the main journals of the SPR in its golden period, and highlight the epistemologies of Sidgwick, Myers, James, Podmore, Schiller, Lodge and Richet. We conclude that the authors, whether for or against survival, argued in defence of an expanded science, and looked forward to understanding the complexity of human experience.

AHP readers will be interested in a new piece in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences: “Trauma, protest, and therapeutic culture in Algeria since the 1980s,” Mélanie Henry. Abstract:

This article focuses on the shift in sensitivities that took place between the 1980s and 2019 toward psychological suffering in Algeria. Promoters of psychotherapy showed an increase in receptivity—via the media, public authorities, and the general population—to their practices and discourses during this period. Based on professional literature, interviews with psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts, and newspaper articles and essays, this article considers the following aspects: the use of psychotherapy, the authority of psychoanalytic/psychopathological analyses, and the ethics of relation in politics. Taking a social and cultural history of politics approach, it traces the discontinuous politicization of psychotherapy over the course of events (namely the uprising of 1988, the civil war of the 1990s, and the 2019 popular movement) and examines the interactions between the state, popular mobilizations, and the psychotherapists. The civil war of the 1990s coincided with the normalization of “trauma” on a global scale, and procedures for the prevention of posttraumatic stress disorder were put in place in Algeria from 1997 onwards. In this process of legitimizing psychological suffering and its treatment, the promoters of psychotherapy who belonged to the less visible margins gained authority. The year-long protest movement (2019) against the regime performed the ethics of relation, focusing on human relations, reflexivity, and living together. Promoters of psychotherapy identified consistently with the political subjectivities produced within the 2019 popular movement characterized by massive pacifist marches against the regime.

AHP readers may be interested in a new book: Murder and Madness on Trial: A Tale of True Crime from Early Modern Bologna by Mònica Calabritto. The book is described as follows:

On October 24, 1588, Paolo Barbieri murdered his wife, Isabella Caccianemici, stabbing her to death with his sword. Later, Paolo would claim to have acted in a fit of madness—but was he criminally insane or merely pretending to be? In this riveting book, Mònica Calabritto addresses this controversy by reconstructing Paolo’s life, prosecution, and medical diagnoses.

Skillfully combining archival documents unearthed throughout Italy, Calabritto brings to light the case of one person and his family as insanity ravaged their financial security, honor, and reputation. The very notion of insanity is as much on trial in Paolo’s case as the defendant himself. A case study in the diagnosis of insanity in the early modern era, Barbieri’s story reveals discrepancies between medical and legal definitions of a person’s mental state at the time of a crime. Murder and Madness on Trial bridges the micro-historical dimensions of Paolo’s murder case and the macro-historical perspectives on medical and legal evidence used to identify intermittent madness.

A tragic and gripping tale, Murder and Madness on Trial allows readers to look “through a glass darkly” at early modern violence, madness, criminal justice, medical and legal expertise, and the construction and circulation of news. This erudite and engaging book will appeal to early modern historians and true crime fans alike.

A new piece in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences will interest AHP readers: “A supposedly objective thing I’ll never use again: Word association and the quest for validity and reliability in emotional adjustment research from Carl Jung to Carl Rogers (1898–1927),” Catriel Fierro. Abstract:

As the first two decades of the 20th century unfolded, clinical psychologists, who had until then been mainly associated with intelligence testing, attempted to implement a specific psychological method—Carl Gustav Jung’s (1875–1961) word-association “test”—in individual personality assessments. As one of the early clinical psychologists who attempted to use the method, Carl Ransom Rogers (1902–1987) is conspicuously absent from the historiography of clinical psychological testing. In fact, historians have recently suggested that we are lacking narratives about Rogers’ early ideas and techniques in the context of both the development of clinical psychology and the emergence of psychological testing as clinicians’ foremost scholarly activity. In light of the above, this paper pursues two main goals. First, it attempts to reconstruct Rogers’ first original research project on emotional adjustment testing in young children in the broader context of the development of word-association tests as carried out by Jung and Whately Smith (1892–1947). Second, it aims to reconstruct Rogers’ earliest theoretical ideas as well as his epistemological assumptions regarding test objectivity, validity and reliability. By drawing on unpublished documents and heretofore overlooked primary sources I show that although Rogers initially drew from Jung and Smith’s complex and refined tradition, he ultimately rejected it as well as the tests themselves. At first drawn to Smith’s quantitative, empiricist and experimental philosophy of psychology, Rogers was deterred when the data gathered through his own research in 1927 suggested that word association tests had no real, effective clinical value when used in children. By showcasing the complex process of test construction and validation undertaken by 1920s clinical psychologists, Rogers’ case illustrates the research practices, the methodological problems and the epistemological dilemmas faced by most if not all of his contemporaries.

AHP readers may be interested in a new piece in Theory & Psychology: “Wundt’s logic: Old resource for new ideas,” Natalie Rodax, Dominik S. Mihalits, and Jaan Valsiner. Abstract:

Despite recent scholarship reappraising the complexity of Wilhelm Wundt’s complete works on psychology, contemporary psychology tends to overlook the fundamental epistemological and methodological principles outlined in his less popular writings on logic when engaging in methodological discussions. This article addresses this by situating Wundt’s logic volumes in his oeuvre and demonstrating the continued relevance of his methodological insights for contemporary psychology. Analysing Wundt’s Logic of Psychology, we develop three theses: (a) a multimethodological model is necessary to understand the interaction between individual psychology and völkerpsychologie, (b) Wundt’s völker-psychological analysis highlights the significance of cultural (document) data for psychology, and (c) the comparison between the theories of language of Wundt and Bühler clarifies that Wundt’s approach lacks a concept of dialogicality. We argue that only by understanding how cultural products serve a function in the individual history of micro-interactions can a meaningful connection between the individual and collective emerge.

AHP readers may be interested in a new open-access piece and winner of the 2022 History of the Human Sciences Early Career Prize: “The regional survey movement and popular autoethnography in early 20th-century Britain,” Harry Parker. Abstract:

This article’s subject is the theory and practice of ‘regional survey’, the method of social and environmental study associated with Scottish thinker Patrick Geddes (1854–1932). Despite being overlooked or dismissed in most accounts of early 20th-century social science, regional survey had a wide influence on the development of the nascent disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and human geography. Emerging from late 19th-century field biology, the regional survey came to typify a methodological moment in the natural and social sciences that favoured the holistic analysis of geographically delimited areas. By the interwar period, the kinds of projects that went under its name can clearly be seen as forerunners of the post-Second World War tradition of community studies. Additionally, in its self-presentation as a civic, participatory exercise, the regional survey can be read as a form of popular autoethnography that contrasts with other, more familiar social-scientific ventures in the first half of the 20th century, and defies the dichotomy between ‘gentlemanly’ and ‘technical’ modes of social science. As a result, this article argues, the regional survey provides an alternative point of departure for thinking about the origins and development of the modern social sciences in Britain.

AHP readers will be interested in a piece at Counterpunch, “Censorship at the American Psychological Association,” which explores a troubling case of censorship at the journal History of Psychology.

As Roy Eidelson writes,

… a manuscript can become ensnared by behind-the-scenes maneuvering and decision-making that have little to do with the merits of the article itself. In such cases, non-scholarly considerations supersede the well-established guideposts of impartial peer review and unbiased evaluation of a submission’s worthiness for publication. That was apparently the unfortunate fate of “A Military/Intelligence Operational Perspective on the American Psychological Association’s Weaponization of Psychology Post-9/11.” This article’s circuitous journey bears recounting here as a cautionary tale for the profession and for the APA.

Read the full piece here.

The Early Text Cultures research group based at the University of Oxford is delighted to announce our research seminar in Trinity Term (April – June 2023), will be on ‘Madness in Premodern and Early Cultures’. Sessions one and two will take place online on Wednesdays from 14:00-15:00 (UK Time). The third session comprises two talks and will begin at the earlier time of 11:00, concluding at 13:00. 

Humans experiencing mental distress have been attested throughout all regions and time periods. However, when discussing these experiences, our lexicon is often bound to modern psychological and medical jargon such as ‘illness’, ‘disorder’ and ‘mental health’. Yet Madness was – and can be – conceived of in a plethora of different ways. Disability Studies, Anti-psychiatry and the burgeoning discipline of Mad Studies offer new useful paradigms with which to conceptualise Madness in the modern age, but how should we discuss Mad people in history?

This series seeks to explore presentations of Madness from early and pre-modern time periods. From the widespread practice of trephination in numerous cultures of North Africa and South America, to medieval models for understanding mental distress in Foucault’s seminal Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (1961), Madness is a key theme within pre-modern studies. This series hopes to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing about new lenses with which to engage with texts.

The sessions will be held online, on Wednesday 2-3 pm (UK Time). Please note that the third session comprises two talks and will begin at 11 am, ending at 1 pm. The first session will be on Wednesday 24 May. Dr Alex Johnston (Oxford) will speak about ‘Divine Possession and Language in Homer and Sophocles’.

Please register here to receive Zoom links on the day of each session.

Programme

Week 5, 24 May

Alex Johnston (Oxford): Divine Possession and Language in Homer and Sophocles

Week 6, 31 May

Avital Rom (Cambridge): Messy Minds: The Epistemology of Madness in Ancient China

Week 9, 21 June (please note this session will begin at the earlier time of 11:00 and run until 13:00)

Toby Brandon (Northumbria) and Guest (TBD): Introducing Mad Studies

Natasha Downs (Edinburgh): A Mad-positive reading of Japanese Translations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms

A new piece in a special Focus section dedicated to “Supplied Knowledge: Resouce Regimes, Materials, and Epistemic Tools” in the June 2023 issue of Isis will interest AHP readers: “Sounding Acoustic Precision: Tuning Forks and Cast Steel’s Nineteenth-Century Euro-American Networks,” Fanny Gribenski and David Pantalony. Abstract:

A great variety of tuning forks survive in collections around the world, from departments of physics, phonetics, and psychology to medical settings, conservatories, and museum collections. Their ubiquity speaks to their iconic status, while their diversity points to the multifaceted cultures of materiality that shaped and formed around these objects. This essay traces the complex supply chains of nineteenth-century tuning forks, from the gathering and processing of iron ore and crucible steel, to their sites of manufacture, to their various uses. By probing further into these nodes of supply and use, the essay uncovers a chain of values and contingencies that reveal the interdependencies between extracting, commercial, scientific, and artistic practices of the past.