Accounting for Health

Axel C. Hüntelmann is Research Fellow in the Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine at the Charité – University of Medicine BerlinOliver Falk is Research Fellow in the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine at the University of Zurich

• Introduction – Axel C Hüntelmann and Oliver FalkPart I: Keeping the books1 Accounting, religion, and the economics of medical care in sixteenth-century Germany: Hiob Finzel’s Rationarium praxeos medicae, 1565–89 – Michael Stolberg2 ‘Making a living’: Accounting and the medical market in and around Geneva, 1760–1820 – Philip Rieder3 Accounted bodies and counted cases: Elliott Joslin’s diabetes research, 1898–1950 – Oliver FalkPart II: Household4 Economies of the hospital, 1790–1910 – Axel C Hüntelmann5 Contrasting accounting practices in the urban hospitals of England and France, 1890s to 1930s – Barry M. Doyle6 Reforming on paper: Accounting practices in the Leuven Academic Hospitals, 1920–60 – Joris Vandendriessche7 Asylum accounts in health and in money – Theodore M. PorterPart III: Production8 Charitable accounting: The Royal Jennerian Society and vaccine production – Andrea Rusnock9 The industry of clinical trials and the rise of medico-economic accounting: The case of antidepressants, 1970–90 – Jean-Paul Gaudillière and Volker Hess10 Accounting for Esther Smucker: The Mennonite Church, the US National Institutes of Health and the trade in healthy bodies, 1950–70 – Laura StarkPart IV: Polity11 States of healing in early modern Germany: Military healthcare and the management of manpower – Sebastian Pranghofer12 Miners’ chest: How performative accounting forged the ills of industry – J. Andrew Mendelsohn13 Administrating sickness: Th e workings of an all-female sickness fund, 1898–1931 – Helene Castenbrandt14 The health of nations: International health accounting in historical perspective, 1925–2011 – Christopher SirrsIndex

'Hüntelmann (Charité hospital, Berlin) and Falk (Univ. of Zürich) have brought together a group of gifted scholars to examine the intersecting histories of accounting and medicine, including structures and practices from both endeavors, while also giving due attention to economic history. Geographically, contributors focus on Western Europe and the US. Twin emphases, on recordkeeping and the methods of book history, inform each of the fourteen chapters, perhaps because the volume emerged from a larger project on paper technologies. For instance, in three ledgers kept between 1760 and 1820, Philip Rieder finds different purposes for keeping the records but similar competitions among physicians, who billed by social group rather than by service performed; Theodore Porter explores how 19th-century asylum directors organized data in reports to the state; while Andrea Rusnock shows how medical and financial accounting were mutually reinforcing methods of demonstrating a charity's effectiveness to donors. Other chapters consider various dimensions of medical research as well as public and private insurance in the 20th century. This book is likely to influence and even inspire further academic studies on health care, with impact comparable to that exercised by The History of Mathematical Tables, as edited by Martin Campbell-Kelly and others (CH, May'04, 41-5270), on the broader histories of mathematics and computing.'--A. K. Ackerberg-Hastings, independent scholarSumming Up: Highly recommended. All readers.Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association.'The collection succeeds wonderfully in its goal of knitting together economic and medical history around the concept of accounting.'Social History of Medicine