Office: 3647 Peel St., Room 201
Phone: 398-6274
Email: george.weisz@mcgill.ca

Biography

George Weisz is interested in medicine in 19th and 20th century Europe and North America. He has just completed book called Divide and Conquer: A Comparative History of Medical Specialization, 1830-1950 and edited a collective volume on The History and Sociology of Quantification in Medicine. He is the author of The Medical Mandarins: The French Academy of Medicine in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (1995) and (editor) Greater than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine 1920-1950 (1998). Earlier books include: (editor) Social Science Perspectives on Medical Ethics (1990), The Emergence of Modern Universities in France, 1863-1914 (1983), (editor) The Organization of Science and Technology in France, 1808-1914 (1980). Current research interests include the therapeutic uses of mineral waters, history of gynecology, and standardization in medicine since 1945, all treated from a comparative perspective.

He served as the Chair of the Department from 1993-1998 and organized several departmental conferences. In 1988, he organized the first departmental conference, "Social Science Perspectives on Medical Ethics," and he also prepared the third departmental conference, "The Holistic Turn in Western Biomedicine, 1920-50." More recently he organized meetings on quantification in medicine and the use of hormones in gynecology. In October 2004 he organized a meeting on Child Health in comparative and interdisciplinary perspective that took place at the McCord Museum in Montreal. George has received funding for his research and his conferences from CIHR, SSHRC, FCAR and Associated Medical Services (Hannah Institute). He has been a Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin). In 1998 he received the Burroughs Wellcome Fund 40th Anniversary CareerAward in the History of Medicine and Science.

Publications

BOOKS

2008 Healing the World's Children: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Health in the Twentieth Century, edited with Cynthia Comacchio and Janet Golden, McGill-Queens Press.

2006 Divide and Conquer: A Comparative History of Medical Specialization, Oxford University Press.
Cover [.pdf]

2005 Body Counts: Medical Quantification in Historical and Sociological Perspectives // Perspectives historiques et sociologiques sur la quantification médicale, edited with Gérard Jorland and Annick Opinel, McGill-Queens Press.
Cover & Contents [.pdf]

1998 Greater than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine 1920-1950, edited with Chris Lawrence, Oxford University Press.

1995 The Medical Mandarins: The French Academy of Medicine in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Oxford University Press.

1990 Social Science Perspectives on Medical Ethics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990. (The paperback edition appeared in 1991, University of Pennsylvania Press.)

1983 The Emergence of Modern Universities in France, 1863 1914, Princeton University Press. (The paperback edition appeared in 1986.)

1980 The Organization of Science and Technology in France, 1808 1914, edited with Robert Fox. Cambridge University Press.

ARTICLES

2009 Diagnosing and Treating Premenstrual Syndrome in Five Western Nations [.pdf]with Loes Knaapen in Social Science and Medicine 68 (2009), 1498–1505.

2008 The Biomedical Standardization of Premenstrual Syndrome [.pdf]with Loes Knaapen in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 39 (2008), 120–134.

2007 The Emergence of Clinical Guidelines [.pdf] with A. Cambrosio, P. Keating, T. Schlich and L. Knaapen, V. Tournay, in The Milbank Quarterly 75(2007), 691–727.

2006 "Making Medical History [.pdf]," in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80(2006), 153-159.

2005 "From Clinical Counting to Evidence-Based Medicine [.pdf]," in Body Counts: Medical Quantification in Historical and Sociological Perspectives // Perspectives historiques et sociologiques sur la quantification médicale, edited with Gérard Jorland and Annick Opinel, McGill-Queens Press.

2005 "Introduction: Who Counts? [.pdf]," with Gérard Jorland in Body Counts: Medical Quantification in Historical and Sociological Perspectives // Perspectives historiques et sociologiques sur la quantification médicale, edited with Gérard Jorland and Annick Opinel, McGill-Queens Press.

2005 "Naissance de la spécialisation médicale dans le monde germanophone [.pdf]," Actes de la recherche en science sociales, Numéro 156-157, Mars 2005, pp. 37-51.

2005 "French Hormones: Progestins and Therapeutic Variation in France [.pdf]," with Ilana Löwy in Social Science and Medicine.

2003 "The Emergence of Medical Specialization in the Nineteenth Century [.pdf]," in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77, 636-575.

2002 "Le Thermalisme en France au XXe siècle," Revue médecine/sciences.

2002 "Specialist Regulation in France during the First Half of the Twentieth-Century," Social History of Medicine 15, (no. 2).

2001 "Spas, Mineral Waters and Hydrological Science in Twentieth-Century France [.pdf]," Isis 92, (no. 3), 451-483.

2001 "Hippocrates, Holism and Humanism in Interwar France," in Reinventing Hippocrates, ed., David Cantor, Ashgate, pp. 257-279.

2001 "Reconstructing Paris Medicine," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75, 105-119.

1999 "Stations thermales et eaux minérales dans la France du XXe siècle," in Olivier Faure, ed., Les Thérapeutiques: Savoirs et Usages, Collections Fondation Mérieux, pp.285-301.