By David South
Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine Newsletter (Toronto, Canada), Number 18, Summer, 1993
Drawing on his thought-provoking book From Paralysis to Fatigue, the University of Toronto’s Hannah Professor Edward Shorter took the subject of psychogenic disorders to family doctors last May.
Delivering the Hannah Lecture in the History of Medicine at the Annual Scientific Assembly of the College of Family Physicians of Canada, Professor Shorter found an audience with special needs.
“They haven’t been exposed to the work of historians,” says Professor Shorter. “It was a real personal challenge to say something meaningful to an audience of clinicians.
“It was quite illuminating for them to see how patterns of psychogenic illness change historically – to see something like paralysis be replaced by chronic fatigue syndrome.”

Publisher: Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine
Location: Toronto, Canada
Editor and Writer: David South
I worked as Editor and Writer for the newsletter of the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine (under the direction of the Editor-in-Chief and Hannah Executive Director Dr. J.T. H. Connor) in the early 1990s. Located close to the University of Toronto and within a neighbourhood claiming a long association with medical and scientific discovery (Sir Frederick Banting, co-developer of insulin for the treatment of diabetes, lived at 46 Bedford Road,), the goal was to better connect Canada’s medical history community of scholars and raise the profile of the funding resources available to further the study of medical history in Canada.

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ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.
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