This article considers trends in the writing of medical history in Australia and New Zealand since the 1980s. It traces the growing maturity of the discipline in this geographical region. It pinpoints a particular contribution to the wider discipline, the history of the health of indigenous peoples and their interaction with the state as well as the current political resonances of such historiography. It also shows how the history of health and medicine contributes to a broader understanding of those societies and their sense of nationalism or identity. Finally it addresses transnationalism in health histories and the ways in which medicine in these societies reflected or deviated from developments in the international medical community. This article demonstrates how international histories of medicine, as well as local social and political histories, have been enriched by this expanding historiography.
Derek A Dow (comp.), Annotated bibliography for the history of medicine & health in New Zealand, Dunedin, The Hocken Library, University of Otago, 1994, pp. xx, 322, illus., NZ$39.50 (+p&p). Available from the Hocken Library, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
