What are the historical roots of the COVID-19 infodemic? Lessons from the past

This scoping review explores the history of the term infodemic and its usefulness as a tool for public health policy-making. It presents the information-related problems the term has encompassed; historical research on these problems, which predate the term itself; and in-depth analyses of their iterations in three historical outbreaks with long-term significance for public health policy: the 1918 influenza pandemic, the beginning of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, and the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Particular attention is paid to the characteristics of scientific practice that inadvertently contributed to the generation of misinformation, as well as other factors that played a role: historical legacies, persistent inequalities and a growing distrust of scientific authority. Historical perspective helps balance contemporary analyses of infodemics that focus too narrowly on the role of new social media in disseminating misinformation and disinformation. Insights derived from the historical record can also be useful to contemporary infodemic management.

"Not Just for Doctors Anymore": How the Merck Manual Became a Consumer Health "Bible".

The transformation of the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy from a "doctors-only" reference into a consumer health bible illuminates a critical era in the history of the twentieth-century medical book. Merck and Company restricted sales of its Merck Manual, first published in 1899 to offer up-to-date information for the busy practitioner, to physicians and other health care professionals until the 1970s. As more laypeople sought to get involved in their own health care decision making, the Merck Manual developed a devoted following. In the late 1980s, with almost a quarter of its sales going to nonphysicians, Merck and Company decided to put out a home edition of its famous manual. This evolution provides important insights into both the history of the medical book and the doctor-patient relationship in the United States.

Introduction.

This article offers an overview of the life and work of Gerald N. Grob. As part of a generation of scholars intent on overturning the old "Whig history" of medicine, Grob pioneered the use of institutional history as an analytical tool. His work on American psychiatry combined a formidable command of archival sources with a strong commitment to putting medical practice in social context. Grob's personal and political views put him at odds with other scholars of the asylum; he conducted some very public feuds with David Rothman and Andrew Scull. At the same time, he showed a more benevolent side to younger historians interested in psychiatry; he took particular pains to encourage women (including the authors of this introduction) to enter a historical specialty then dominated by men. To honor Grob's legacy as a scholar and a person, this special issue features articles written by several generations of scholars influenced and inspired by his work.

"Destroyer and teacher": Managing the masses during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic.

The Spanish influenza arrived in the United States at a time when new forms of mass transportation, mass media, mass consumption, and mass warfare had vastly expanded the public places in which communicable diseases could spread. Faced with a deadly "crowd" disease, public health authorities tried to implement social-distancing measures at an unprecedented level of intensity. Recent historical work suggests that the early and sustained imposition of gathering bans, school closures, and other social-distancing measures significantly reduced mortality rates during the 1918-1919 epidemics. This finding makes it all the more important to understand the sources of resistance to such measures, especially since social-distancing measures remain a vital tool in managing the current H1N1 influenza pandemic. To that end, this historical analysis revisits the public health lessons learned during the 1918-1919 pandemic and reflects on their relevance for the present.

Is there a Rosenberg school?

Since his first book The Cholera Years appeared in 1962, Charles Rosenberg has had an enormous influence on the history of medicine. Not the least of that influence has been exercised through his role as a graduate teacher, advisor, and mentor. This article compares Rosenberg's work with that of his students, to see if there is such a historiographic identity as the "Rosenberg School." The authors, two Rosenberg students from different generations, conclude that there is not such a school, at least in the classic sense of the term. Yet they argue that certain common assumptions, or "Rosenberg Rules," have been passed on from Rosenberg to the other scholars he has influenced. They also discuss the challenges they have encountered in applying Charles's conceptual framework, worked out primarily in pre-1920 terms, to the late twentieth-century history of American medicine.

The patient as a policy factor: a historical case study of the consumer/survivor movement in mental health.

This paper analyzes the history of the modern consumer/survivor movement and its impact on the policy-making climate in the mental health field. The growing attentiveness to consumers' perspectives is presented largely as a consequence, not a cause, of radical restructurings of the mental health system. Consumers' perspectives have entered policy discourse in the wake of policy failures and have flourished in a climate of perpetual crisis and tight budgets. Precisely because it has been such a contested arena for so long, the mental health field has produced some innovative responses to demands for patient empowerment.

The great American medicine show revisited.

Since the late 1800s, changes in the advertising and marketing of medicinal drugs have produced heated debates in the United States. With the emergence of the modern prescription drug between 1938 and 1951, concerns that once focused primarily on patients' use of over-the-counter drugs were broadened to include physicians and their "doctors' drugs" as well. The medical profession's growing control over their patients' drug choices inevitably heightened the scrutiny of their own performance as consumers. Although deeply divided over issues of the patient's role in medical decision making, consumer activists and physician reformers expressed similar concerns about the impact of aggressive pharmaceutical marketing and advertising on the doctor-patient relationship, and starting in the late 1950s they employed strikingly similar strategies to counter the new corporate "medicine show." Yet their efforts to promote a more rational use of prescription drugs have usually been too little and too late to offset the effectiveness of pharmaceutical advertising and mar-keting activities.