Molecularizing Biology and Medicine

New Practices and Alliances, 1920s to 1970s

Soraya de Chadarevian, Harmke Kamminga

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN:
  9789057022937
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135298005
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The contributors present a coherent set of case studies of practices, technologies and strategies aimed at the isolation, investigation, manipulation, production, and uses of molecules including vitamins, hormones, blood products, antibiotics, and vaccines. These case studies examine how processes of molecularization were set in motion in the inter-war period, how they were used as a resource in the biomedical 'mobilization' of World War II, and how new alliances and strategies created as part of the war effort played a central role in the reorganisation of biomedicine in the post-war period.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Illustrations and Credits
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Plants, Cells and Bodies: The Molecular Biography of Colchicine, 1930–1975
• Chapter 2: Chemistry in the Clinic: The Research Career of Donald Dexter Van Slyke
• Chapter 3: Vitamins and the Dynamics of Molecularization: Biochemistry, Policy and Industry in Britain, 1914–1939
• Chapter 4: Producing Molecular Therapeutics from Human Blood: Edwin Cohn’s Wartime Enterprise
• Chapter 5: The Molecularization of Cancer Etiology in the Postwar United States: Instruments, Politics and Management
• Chapter 6: Following Molecules: Hemoglobin Between the Clinic and the Laboratory
• Chapter 7: The Struggle Over Metabolic Screening
• Chapter 8: “A ‘Cage’ of Ovulating Females”: The History of the Early Oral Contraceptive Pill Clinical Trials, 1950–1959
• Chapter 9: Immunotherapy of Cancer from Coley’s Toxins to Interferons: Molecularization of a Therapeutic Practice
• Chapter 10: Reflections: Molecularization, Standardization and the History of Science