Biomedical communication and the reaction to the Queensland childhood lead poisoning cases elsewhere in the world

Abstract

Beginning in the 1890s, physicians in Queensland began reporting cases of lead poisoning in children.Lead poisoning up until that time-and for a long time after-was primarily an occupational disease, and the appearance of plumbism in children was therefore unusual, to say the least.As John Thearle has pointed out, the specific local events that brought Queensland physicians to interest themselves in the subject of lead poisoning in children constitute a striking incident in the history of medicine.Beyond that story, however, is what happened to the published reports of those physicians in the history of world medicine.1The Queensland experience suggests not only dimensions of the history of lead poisoning in children but shows how biomedical knowledge was-and was not- communicated.Citation studies of biomedical publications confirm impressionistic evidence that writers in the medical literature tended to cite work from their own national medical publications, rather than using, in an even-handed way, what was available in the world.2It is in this context of cultural provincialism that the fate of the reports from

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