Lemma Soft Forums

I'm writing a piece that has two major settings. One is a postmodern medical school, the other is an Iron Curtain era (1946) medical research facility.

Medical school curriculum is easy to research, of course, since there are websites that give an overview of each course. I'm trying to write about a fictional study that occurred during the 50s, and I want to highlight the differences between medical science then and now. How different is medical practice nowadays? How much of the methods and discoveries found post-war are considered outdated or obselete? I'd like a good read on these, so if you know any good sources or articles, please give me them!

I'd also like to know how far we've come in terms of psychological research and how much we understand the human mind, so those would also be really helpful.

Thanks in advance!

You're asking quite the question!

Specifically, which medical practices are you looking to investigate? Narrowing your focus should help, though modern medicine has advanced all across the board.

Psychology, too, is considerably more modernized now than it was in the fifties. But we're always learning, and there are always new debates about different subjects. For example, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association until 1973, and other major mental health organizations followed. The World Health Organization took until 1990 to declassify it.

I suggest researching how hospitals (mental or otherwise) have changed since 1946. Stick to peer-reviewed medical journals if possible.

I'm not a med student (law studies. soz >~< )so I don't know much about it but here's my thought. A lot of the medical research today is exactly what the phrase is. research. That definitely plays the biggest role in the term. With the advancement of technology, and development within the medical world, there's various aspects within medical school itself.

Back in the day though, I think majority of the medical stuff revolves around the actual happening rather than trying to see the future in it (?) if it makes any sense.

Another thing is how there's now an existence of medical practice and spiritual practice in regards to medic. How there's now well-being living stuff and all those health nut stuff. whereas probably back in the day, people will seek medical attention only when there was a problem (someone getting sick, scare of disease, etc)

I did some quick historical research with some links too if anything's helpful! >~<
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/me ... m_1945.htm
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/06/7-d ... icine.html
http://www.drjohnm.org/2013/07/changing ... ng-hubris/

Snowflower wrote:I'm not a med student (law studies. soz >~< )so I don't know much about it but here's my thought. A lot of the medical research today is exactly what the phrase is. research. That definitely plays the biggest role in the term. With the advancement of technology, and development within the medical world, there's various aspects within medical school itself.

Back in the day though, I think majority of the medical stuff revolves around the actual happening rather than trying to see the future in it (?) if it makes any sense.

Another thing is how there's now an existence of medical practice and spiritual practice in regards to medic. How there's now well-being living stuff and all those health nut stuff. whereas probably back in the day, people will seek medical attention only when there was a problem (someone getting sick, scare of disease, etc)

I did some quick historical research with some links too if anything's helpful! >~<
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/me ... m_1945.htm
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/06/7-d ... icine.html
http://www.drjohnm.org/2013/07/changing ... ng-hubris/

I've read the first and third, but the second is new to me. Thanks for that!

Mad Harlequin wrote:You're asking quite the question!

Specifically, which medical practices are you looking to investigate? Narrowing your focus should help, though modern medicine has advanced all across the board.

Psychology, too, is considerably more modernized now than it was in the fifties. But we're always learning, and there are always new debates about different subjects. For example, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association until 1973, and other major mental health organizations followed. The World Health Organization took until 1990 to declassify it.

I suggest researching how hospitals (mental or otherwise) have changed since 1946. Stick to peer-reviewed medical journals if possible.

The academy in question is based on Russia, particularly Vasilievsky Island, where the University of Leningrad was situated. It was a major place for parapsychological study during the Iron Curtain, where Russian-based scientific findings are hidden away from the rest of the world. My particular interest is how they dealt with mental disorders back in the day, since psychological therapy is fairly modern.

In the context of the story, a group of med school student find this really old medical research facility underneath their school, and they would observe how different things were back then. I think it'd be fun to write about.

Wow, I never thought the day would come. I just happen to be a med student. Ask away. I'll tell you what I know, at least about the Australian medical system.

EDIT 1:

I'd also like to know how far we've come in terms of psychological research and how much we understand the human mind, so those would also be really helpful.

That is a very, very hard question and actually beyond the scope of what I can answer. :p all I can say is that we've come a long way and that we have a long way to go. This will tell you more about psychology than any med student could. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychology

EDIT 2:
Something that might be of interest to you: some of the medicine and theories that we have today are from studies we could never ethically do today. One of the "laws" of medicine is "first do no harm". The four pillars of medical ethics are:
- Beneficience (do good)
- Non-maleficence (do no harm)
- Autonomy (respect the independence of the patient)
- Justice (we have limited resources, so choices must be fair)

Yet, human experimentation (which was rather a big thing back in the day) led to scientific discoveries that could never happen today. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly which cases, but it was something similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

EDIT 3:

I suggest researching how hospitals (mental or otherwise) have changed since 1946. Stick to peer-reviewed medical journals if possible.

I agree with the former statement, but am leaning towards disagreeing with the latter statement. To be honest, having sifted through quite a few peer-reviewed medical journals, they are laden with lots of stuff about treatments, prognostic what-have-yous, and - a lot of the time - articles arguing against other articles. From a history point of view, I don't think that they'd be that useful. However, you could always try a PubMed search and see what comes up if you set the search limit for "before the 1950s". I've never tried it myself so I'm not going to 100% refute Mad Harlequin's advice until you try it out yourself.

EDIT 4:
Despite being a medical student, I don't think anything that I've said is very much helpful to your story...sorry. Haha.

I suggest researching how hospitals (mental or otherwise) have changed since 1946. Stick to peer-reviewed medical journals if possible.

In case you don't know about it, you can easily search peer-reviewed articles using Google Scholar. And I'm no expert on modern psychology at all, but I know that one mistake a lot of people make when writing about it is having modern therapists do things that are way out of date. If you go to see a therapist these days, they're not going to show you Rorschach blots or do Freudian analysis. Mostly they'll talk with you about what your problems are and what you can do to improve things.