Tower of power: the Drummond Medical Building and the interwar centralization of medical practice.

This paper focuses on Montreal's Drummond Medical Building (1929), designed by the well-known architectural firm of Nobbs & Hyde, as a case study of the new typology that emerged in urban Canada in the 1920s: a modern, purpose-built high-rise for healthcare professionals, with elevators, telephones, indoor parking, and retail shops, located in an upscale commercial district. What role did medical high-rises play in the practice of modern medicine? We speculate that these clinics marked the end of the house-office era across Canada, centralizing the practice of healthcare professionals. This CIHR-funded project illustrates complex social and physical networks among architects and doctors, drawing attention to the importance of studying architecture as a technology in the history of modern medicine.

Tuberculosis mortality and recent childbirth: a retrospective case-control study of Gibraltarian women, 1874-1884.

Prior to the introduction of effective treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis, there was little consensus on the potential health risk of pregnancy among infected women. While, intuitively, pregnancy was viewed as a risk for tuberculosis disease and mortality, early studies could not establish such a link with any great certainty. Our case study combines the methods of family reconstitution and a case-control approach to explore the possibility that the physiological and social strains of recent childbirth and the early mothering of infants may have been risk factors in adult female tuberculosis mortality in late 19th-century Gibraltar. The study is based on 244 reproductive age women who died between 1874 and 1884; some 55% of these deaths were attributed to tuberculosis. The record linkage indicates that almost 12% of the women who died had given birth within the year preceding their death. Factoring in the effects of age at death, marital status, and religion, the logistic regression results indicate that recent childbirth did not increase the risk of tuberculosis mortality among these women.

A matter of privilege: infant mortality in the Garrison Town of Gibraltar, 1870-1899.

The British colony of Gibraltar offers an opportunity to compare the infant mortality rates of the civilian and military populations inhabiting a small-scale urban setting from 1870 to 1899. Both groups shared the same poor-quality housing, the same sanitary infrastructure, and the same environmental inseparability. Sufficient water supply, in particular, proved to be a daily struggle for the families living on the Rock. Privilege for the military meant that service families had preferential access to a pure water supply after the installation of a water-condensing plant as well as to a better quality supply of water and milk. The availability of these privileges to one group, and not the other, is associated with a marked decline in infant mortality in the second half of the study period.