Harry M. Marks, Ph. D.

Institute of the History of Medicine
The Johns Hopkins University
1900 East Monument Street
Baltimore, MD 21205

Telephone: 410-955-4899
E-mail: hmarks@jhmi.edu

Adjunct Appointments:

Department of Epidemiology, Bloomberg School of Public Health; Department of Anthropology, Krieger School of Arts & Sciences; Department of History, Krieger School of Arts & Sciences.

Research:

My research centers on the history of clinical medicine, of public health and of disease in the 20th century US. My teaching interests are broader, focusing on the history of disease and of public health in a comparative context, both European and non-European. This teaching links to a long-standing interest in the history of state capacity: how do states acquire the abilities to monitor, analyze and manage populations, and what are the limits of these capacities? I have written about the uses of data in contexts ranging from 18th century inoculation controversies in France to drug regulation and social epidemiology in the 20th century US.

I am currently working on two book projects. The first is a collection of essays on time and modern medicine--how is it that some researchers come to see the temporal development of disease as significant, and what are the practices by which these researchers make time visible? The second is a social history of pellagra, a nutritional disorder which became endemic in the American South between 1900 and 1940, killing tens of thousands, many of them women and/or African-Americans. Between them, the two projects capture my interests in the intellectual and the social history of disease.

Selected Publications:

The Progress of Experiment: Science and Therapeutic Reform in the United States, 1900-1990 (Cambridge University Press, 1997, 2000)

La médecine des preuves. Histoire et anthropologie des essais cliniques (1900-1990). Paris: Institut Synthelabo, 1999 [Translation: Progress of Experiment].

"'Until the Sun of Science...the true Apollo of Medicine has risen': Collective Investigation in Britain and America, 1880-1910," Medical History, 2006, 50: 147-166.

"When the State Counts Lives: Eighteenth-Century Quarrels Over Inoculation,"
in Body Counts. Medical Quantification in Historical Perspective, McGill-
Queens University Press, 2005, pp. 51-64.

"An Interview with Paul Meier," Clinical Trials 1 (2004), 131-138.

"Epidemiologists Explain Pellagra: Gender, Race and Political Economy in the Work of Edgar Sydenstricker," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 58 (2003), 34-55.

"Rigorous Uncertainty: Why R.A. Fisher Is Important," International Journal of Epidemiology, 32 (2003), 932-937.

"American Medicine, 1880-1945," and "American Medicine, 1945-1990," in Paul Boyer, ed. Oxford Companion to United States History. (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 488-492.

"Trust and Mistrust in the Marketplace: Statistics and Clinical Research, 1945-1960," History of Science 38 (2000), 343-355. [Also published as "Confiance et mefiance dans le marche: les statistiques et la recherche clinique (1945-1960)," Sciences sociales et Sante 18 (Decembre 2000), 9-28]

"L'irruption de la preuve en medicine," La Recherche no. 316 (Janvier, 1999), 76-81.

"Revisiting 'The Origins of Compulsory Drug Prescriptions,'" American Journal of Public Health (January, 1995), 109-115.

"Other Voices: A Response to Labinger," Social Studies of Science 25 (1995), 329-334.

"Fatal Years: An Introduction to the Symposium," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 68 (Spring, 1994), 86-94.

"Medical Technologies: Social Contexts and Consequences," Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, ed. W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (Routledge, 1993), 1592-1618.

"Cortisone, 1949: A Year in the Political Life of a Drug," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 66 (Fall, 1992), 419-439.

Course Syllabi:

- Curing Disease with Drugs Physician & Society Selective Year One (Spring 2003)
- History of Modern Medicine: 18th-20th Centuries (Spring 2007)
- HSMT 150.702 Outline of the History of Medicine, 18th-20th Centuries (Spring 2007)
- MED 150.465/ AS 140.465 Disease Control: Historical and Comparative Perspectives
- History of Epidemiology 340.673 (2007)