This blog follows the history of psychiatry

Readers of h-madness may find the website Biopolitics of interest.  The editors describe the aims of the site this way:

Biopolitics is a website dedicated to the discussion of the interaction of medicine and politics. A fundamental premise of the site is that medicine and politics are always intertwined, even in topics that seem neither “medical” nor “political.” This inevitable interaction of medicine and politics is not to be lamented or rejected: It is something to explore. Such exploration will lead to new ways of imagining what medicine and politics can be.

Thinking about medicine and politics this way involves taking a step back from the discussion of them in the popular media, where they are frequently treated as separate entities whose dimensions are already clearly understood. Here, in contrast, we examine how medicine and politics change over time and come together in unexpected places. In addition to focusing on many issues in which the relationship between medicine and politics seems self-evident (such as health reform, abortion, euthanasia, and the “War on Drugs”), this space may also be a site for discussions of the medical dimension of neoliberal economic policies or the War on Iraq or, alternatively, the political aspects of HIV/AIDS or even the common cold.

Those interested in the history of psychiatry in particular may well find the first two issues of Biopolitics worth having a look at.  In volume 1, issue 1 focuses on the “Past and Present of Eugenics” and issue 2 of the same volume takes on the subject of “Mental Illness and Leadership.”