Professor Michael Worboys
Contact details
Professor
Simon Building
Oxford Road
Manchester
M13 9PL
Tel: +44 (0)161 275 5431
Email: michael.worboys@manchester.ac.uk
Research Interests
Bacteriology and Laboratory Medicine
Since the publication of my book Spreading Germs, I have been working on the history of bacteriological laboratories in the period 1890 to 1920. Eventually this will include studies of the the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, the Public Health Laboratory in Manchester and a number of hospital laboratories. Most recently, I have been working with Dr Neil Pemberton on the history of rabies in Britain. In October 2007 we published a book entitled Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Rabies in Britain, 1830-2000 (Palgrave, 2007). This work has led to new work on the history of veterinary medicine and to the social history of the dog in Victorian Britain.
I continue to work on other aspects of the history of bacteriology and infectious disease, including the history of tuberculosis, the introduction of antibiotics, the standardisation of vaccines and the emergence of Chlamydia as a sexually transmitted disease.
Colonial medicine and science
I continue to work on various aspects of the tropical medicine and colonial science. A book, Fractured States: Smallpox, Public Health and vaccination Policy in British India (Orient Longman, 2005), co-authored with Dr Sanjoy Bhattacharya and Dr Mark Harrison, was published in 2005. A review essay, co-authored with Professor Roy MacLeod, on "Science and Imperialism", will be published in the Cambridge History of Science in 2009.
Publications
2009
Pemberton N, Worboys M (2009) 'Fancy Dogs'. BBC History 10(6): 58-61.
Condrau F, Worboys M (2009) 'Final Response: Epidemics and Infections in Nineteenth-Century Britain'. Social History of Medicine 22(1): 165-71.
Full text doi:10.1093/shm/hkp002
Worboys M (2009) 'Public Health'. Cambridge University Press Cambridge History of Science: Vol 6, Modern Life Sciences: 141-64.
2008
Pemberton N, Worboys M (2008) 'The Dog Days'. BBC History 9(8): 44-45.
Pemberton N, Worboys M (2008) British Rabies: Fact and Fiction. Veterinary Times 38: 12-14.
Macfarlane JT, Worboys M (2008) The Changing Management of Acute Bronchitis in Britain, 1940–1970: The Impact of Antibiotics. Medical History 52(1): 47-72.
2007
Worboys, M (2007) Vaccines: conquering untreatable diseases. British Medical Journal 334 s19.((Suppl. 1)): 19.
Pemberton, N, Worboys, M (2007) Mad Dogs and Englishmen. History Today 57(9): 20-22.
Pemberton N, Worboys M (2007) 'The Chief Constable of Clitheroe v M Pasteur': Mad Dogs and Lancastrians, c1890. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 87: 1-20.
Pemberton N, Worboys, M (2007) Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Rabies in Britain, 1830-2000. Palgrave: 250.
Worboys M (2007) Was there a bacteriological revolution in late nineteenth-century medicine?. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences 38(1): 20-42.
Full text doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2006.12.003
Condrau F, Worboys M (2007) 'Epidemics and Infections in Nineteenth-Century Britain'. Social History of Medicine 20(1): 80-90.
Full text doi:10.1093/shm/hkm001
2005
Bhattacharya S, Harrison M, Worboys M (2005) Fractured States: Smallpox, Public Health and Vaccination Policy in British India, 1800-1947. Orient Longman: 250.
2004
Worboys M (2004) Unsexing Gonorrhoea: Bacteriologists, Gynaecologists and Suffragists in Britain, 1860-1920. Social History of Medicine 17(1): 31-59.
Full text doi:10.1093/shm/17.1.41
2001
Worboys M (2001) Colonial Medicine as Mission and Mandate: Leprosy and Empire, 1900-1940. Osiris 15: 207-20.
PubMed entry PMID:11973829
Worboys M (2001) British Medicine and its Past at Queen Victoria's Jubilees and the 1900 Centennial. Medical History 45: 461-82.
PubMed entry PMID:11688252
2000
Worboys M (2000) Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865-1900. Cambridge University Press(History of Medicine): xvi + 327.
Worboys, M (2000) 'Colonial Medicine'. Harwood Academic Publishers Medicine in the Twentieth Century: 67-80.
1999
Worboys M (1999) Tuberculosis and Race in Britain and its Empire, 1900-1950. Routledge Race, Science and Medicine: 144-66.
1997
Marks L, Worboys M (1997) Migrants, Minorities and Health. Routledge(SSHM): 256.
Harrison M, Worboys M (1997) A Disease of Civilisation: Tuberculosis in Africa and Asia, 1900-1940..
1996
Worboys, M (1996) 'British Colonial Science Policy, 1918-1939' . ORSTOM Les Sciences Coloniales: Figures and Institutions: 99-112.
1993
Palladino P, Worboys M (1993) Science and Imperialism. Isis; an international review devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences 84: 84-102.