Publications

Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition Now available for pre-order, my first book examines the development of nutritional therapeutics before modern “nutraceuticals” from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries in Britain and the United States.
Between Food and Medicine: Artificial Digestion, Sickness, and the Case of Benger’s Food This article examines a group of medicinal food products based on digestive enzymes, so-called artificially digested foods, in the late 19th century. It argues that such foods were tied to changing ideas about digestive disease and public health priorities.
Introduction: Food as Medicine, Medicine as Food Co-authored with Juliana Adelman, this Introduction to a Special Issue on ‘Food as Medicine, Medicine as Food’ makes the case for historical investigations of the shifting relationship between food and medicine.
Darby’s Fluid Meat, Digestion, and the British Imperial Food Supply This chapter in the edited volume Acquired Tastes: Stories about the Origins of Modern Food shows how concentrated meat extracts like “Darby’s Fluid Meat” were materialized attempts to economize the food supply.
Inimitable Innovation: Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach and the Renewal of Surgery, 1822-1847 This chapter reveals German surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach’s “plastic surgery” as an attempt to break with surgical empiricism and articulate an entirely new approach to surgery based on physiology and the plasticity of the skin. It forms part of an edited collection, titled Technological Change in Modern Surgery: Historical Perspectives on Innovation.
The ‘Contaminating Agent’ UNRRA, Displaced Persons, and Venereal Disease in Germany, 1945–1947 This article examines the campaign against “venereal disease” by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration among Displaced Persons in Germany during and after World War II.