A fetus in the world: Physiology, epidemiology, and the making of fetal origins of adult disease.

Since the late 1980s, the fetal origins of adult disease, from 2003 developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD), has stimulated significant interest in and an efflorescence of research on the long-term effects of the intrauterine environment. From the start, this field has been interdisciplinary, using experimental animal, clinical and epidemiological tools. As the influence of DOHaD on public health and policy expanded, it has drawn criticism for reducing the complex social and physical world of early life to women's reproductive bodies as drivers of intergenerational ills.

Sustaining youth physical activity in times of challenge and change: lessons from COVID-19.

Physical activity (PA) is recognized as essential for positive physical and mental well-being in young people. However, participation in PA is known to decline as adolescents emerge into adulthood under the influence of complex social and structural factors. Globally, COVID-19 restrictions resulted in changes to PA and PA participation levels in youth populations, providing a unique opportunity for gaining insight into PA barriers and enablers in circumstances of challenge, limitation and change.

Understanding the importance of the early-life period for adult health: a systematic review.

Evidence clearly indicates that the nutritional and non-nutritional environment and level of physical activity during the early-life period from preconception through infancy has a lifelong impact on the child's health. However this message must be communicated effectively to parents and other stakeholders such as grandparents, health professionals, policymakers and the wider community in order for positive change to occur. This systematic review explores how both awareness and understanding of the long-term effects of the early-life environment have been measured in various populations and whether any patterns are evident.

Towards Post-Pandemic Sustainable and Ethical Food Systems.

The current global COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deep and multidimensional crisis across all sectors of society. As countries contemplate their mobility and social-distancing policy restrictions, we have a unique opportunity to re-imagine the deliberative frameworks and value priorities in our food systems. Pre-pandemic food systems at global, national, regional and local scales already needed revision to chart a common vision for sustainable and ethical food futures.

Publicity, politics, and professoriate in fin-de-siècle Vienna: The misconduct of the embryologist Samuel Leopold Schenk.

This essay uses the case of the fin-de-siècle Vienna embryologist Samuel Leopold Schenk to analyze the factors at play in allegations of misconduct. In 1898, Schenk published a book titled (Schenk's theory. Influence on the sex ratio).

The laboratory and the asylum: Francis Walker Mott and the pathological laboratory at London County Council Lunatic Asylum, Claybury, Essex (1895-1916).

London County Council's pathological laboratory in the LCC asylum at Claybury, Essex, was established in 1895 to study the pathology of mental illness. Historians of psychiatry have understood the Claybury laboratory as a predecessor of the Maudsley Hospital in London: not only was this laboratory closed when the Maudsley was opened in 1916, but its director, Frederick Walker Mott, a champion of the 'German' model in psychiatry, was instrumental in the establishment of this institution. Yet, as I argue in this essay, for all the continuities with the Maudsley, the Claybury laboratory should not be seen solely as its predecessor - or as a British answer to continental laboratories such as Theodor Meynert's in Vienna.

The Science and Politics of Naming: Reforming Anatomical Nomenclature, ca. 1886-1955.

Anatomical nomenclature is medicine's official language. Early in their medical studies, students are expected to memorize not only the bodily geography but also the names for all the structures that, by consensus, constitute the anatomical body. The making and uses of visual maps of the body have received considerable historiographical attention, yet the history of production, communication, and reception of anatomical names-a history as long as the history of anatomy itself-has been studied far less.

Food, growth and time: Elsie Widdowson's and Robert McCance's research into prenatal and early postnatal growth.

Cambridge scientists Robert McCance and Elsie Widdowson are best known for their work on the British food tables and wartime food rations, but it is their research on prenatal and early postnatal growth that is today seen as a foundation of the fields studying the impact of environment upon prenatal development and, consequently, adult disease. In this essay I situate McCance's and Widdowson's 1940s human and 1950s experimental studies in the context of pre-war concerns with fetal growth and development, especially within biochemistry, physiology and agriculture; and the Second World War and post-war focus on the effects of undernutrition during pregnancy upon the fetus. I relate Widdowson's and McCance's research on the long-term effects of early undernutrition to the concern with recovery from early trauma so pertinent in post-war Europe and with sensitive (critical) periods, a concept of high importance across different fields.

How evolutionary principles improve the understanding of human health and disease.

An appreciation of the fundamental principles of evolutionary biology provides new insights into major diseases and enables an integrated understanding of human biology and medicine. However, there is a lack of awareness of their importance amongst physicians, medical researchers, and educators, all of whom tend to focus on the mechanistic (proximate) basis for disease, excluding consideration of evolutionary (ultimate) reasons. The key principles of evolutionary medicine are that selection acts on fitness, not health or longevity; that our evolutionary history does not cause disease, but rather impacts on our risk of disease in particular environments; and that we are now living in novel environments compared to those in which we evolved.

Epigenetic mechanisms that underpin metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.

Cellular commitment to a specific lineage is controlled by differential silencing of genes, which in turn depends on epigenetic processes such as DNA methylation and histone modification. During early embryogenesis, the mammalian genome is 'wiped clean' of most epigenetic modifications, which are progressively re-established during embryonic development. Thus, the epigenome of each mature cellular lineage carries the record of its developmental history.

Cultures of death and politics of corpse supply: anatomy in Vienna, 1848-1914.

Nineteenth-century Vienna is well known to medical historians as a leading center of medical research and education, offering easy access to patients and corpses to students from all over the world. The author seeks to explain how this enviable supply of cadavers was achieved, why it provoked so little opposition at a time when Britain and the United States saw widespread protests against dissection, and how it was threatened from mid-century onward. To understand permissive Viennese attitudes, we need to place them in a longue durée history of death and dissection and to pay close attention to the city's political geography as it was transformed into a major imperial capital.

Surgery and national identity in late nineteenth-century Vienna.

For historians of medicine, the professor Theodor Billroth of the University of Vienna was the leading European surgeon of the late nineteenth century and the personification of intervention by organ or body part removal. For social and political historians, he was a German nationalist whose book on medical education heralded the rise of anti-Semitism in the Austrian public sphere. This article brings together and critically reassesses these two hitherto separate accounts to show how, in a period of dramatic social and political change, Viennese surgery split into two camps.

Medico-legal practices in the fifteenth century Dubrovnik.

We analyzed the beginnings of medico-legal practices in Dubrovnik, using the first eight books of criminal records series Liber de maleficiis from the early 15th century. We also looked into the mechanisms of individual and public control of the issues such as the patient-physician relationship and the control of epidemics. At that time, surgeons rather than physicians reported wounds to the court of justice and, in most cases, provided medical expertise when requested by the authorities.

[Founding and activity of the Society of Physicians of the Kingdom of Croatia and Slovenia as reported in the newspapers from 1874 to 1875].

The article presents the first active year of the Association of Physicians of the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia, today's Croatian Medical Association, (from February 26, 1874 until the annual assembly held on June 31, 1875), based upon the articles published in Zagreb daily newspapers Obzor and Narodne novine and a Zadar newspaper--Narodni list. The writings of these newspapers are situated in the spatial and temporal context based on data from secondary literature and Austrian daily newspapers. These articles were employed as historical sources, which we used to find answers to following questions: How did the Croatian public accept the foundation of the Association of Physicians of the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia? What did the public expect and what duties was this Association to fulfill according to the public? Finally, how did the public evaluate the results of the Association's work at the end of its first year of existence? The foundation of the Association of Physicians of the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia coincided with numerous initiatives on the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy level.