Using Digitised Medical Journals in a Cross European Project on Addiction History

Abstract

This article draws on research conducted as part of a European project on the changing terminology used to conceptualise habitual drug, alcohol or tobacco use. We wanted to find out what language was utilised in Italy, Poland, Austria and the UK and how those concepts had changed since the mid-nineteenth century. We intended to make use of digitised journals for key word searches to enable comparisons to be made across countries and across time. Nothing, however, was straightforward. Few countries had digitised medical journals, so researchers had to use traditional search methods. Even in the UK, where journals were available digitally, there were problems with access and the searches that could be made. Digitisation did not provide a quicker way of researching cross nationally. Nonetheless our work did arrive at some valuable new conclusions. Our experiences also raise wider questions about using digitised journals for historical research.

KEYWORDS:

• Medical journals
• digitisation
• keyword search
• addiction terminology
• text mining

Acknowledgments

The research leading to these results or outcomes has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), under Grant Agreement n° 266813 - Addictions and Lifestyle in Contemporary Europe – Reframing Addictions Project (ALICE RAP – www.alicerap.eu). Participant organisations in ALICE RAP can be seen at www.alicerap.eu/about-alice-rap/partners.html.

The views expressed here reflect those of the authors only and the European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Mussell, “Nineteenth-Century Newspapers in the Digital Age”; Nicholson, “Counting Culture; Or, How to Read Victorian Newspapers from a Distance”; Liddle, “Reflections on 20,000 Victorian Newspapers”; Brake, “Half Full and Half Empty”; Bingham, “‘The Digitization of Newspaper Archives”; Steel, “Introduction”.

2. Nicholson, “The Digital Turn”; Hitchcock, “Confronting the Digital”; Prescott, “I’d Rather Be a Librarian.”

3. See http://www.alicerap.eu Accessed 2 September 2016.

4. Hellman et al., Concepts of Addictive Substances and Behaviours Across Time and Place; Berridge et al., “Addiction Through the Ages”; Berridge, Mold, and Walke, “From Inebriety to Addiction”; Berridge et al., “Addiction in Europe, 1860s-1960s.”

5. Snelders and Pieters, “Speed in the Third Reich”; Snelders, Pieters, and Meijman, “Alcoholism and Heredity in the Medical Sphere”; Blok, “Pampering ‘Needle Freaks’ or Caring for Chronic Addicts?”; Stephens, Germans on Drugs; Padwa, Social Poison.

6. Porter, “The Drinking Man’s Disease.”

7. Levine, “The Discovery of Addiction.”

8. Berridge, “Morality and Medical Science”; Harding, Opiate Addiction Morality and Medicine.

9. Valverde, “‘Slavery from within’”; Valverde, Diseases of the Will.

10. Berridge, “The Society for the Study of Addiction.”

11. Berridge, Mold, and Walke, “From Inebriety to Addiction”; Moskalewicz and Herczyńska, “The Changing Meaning of Addiction in Polish Medical Literature of the Late Nineteenth Century and Early Twentieth Century”; Eisenbach-Stangl, “Passion and Insanity”; Beccaria and Petrilli, “The Complexity of Addiction.”

12. Berridge et al., “Addiction in Europe, 1860s-1960s”; Mold et al., “Concepts of Addiction in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s”

13. Beccaria and Petrilli, “The Complexity of Addiction.”

14. Moskalewicz and Herczyńska, “The Changing Meaning of Addiction in Polish Medical Literature of the Late Nineteenth Century and Early Twentieth Century.”

15. Eisenbach-Stangl, “Passion and Insanity.”

16. Eisenbach-Stangl; Moskalewicz and Herczyńska, “The Changing Meaning of Addiction in Polish Medical Literature of the Late Nineteenth Century and Early Twentieth Century”; Beccaria and Petrilli, “The Complexity of Addiction.”

17. This section draws on work published previously in Berridge et al., “Addiction in Europe, 1860s-1960s.”

18. Berridge, Mold, and Walke, “From Inebriety to Addiction.”

19. Beccaria and Petrilli, “The Complexity of Addiction.”

20. Eisenbach-Stangl, “Passion and Insanity.”

21. Moskalewicz and Herczyńska, “The Changing Meaning of Addiction in Polish Medical Literature of the Late Nineteenth Century and Early Twentieth Century.”

22. Gutzke, “‘The Cry of the Children’.”

23. Beccaria and Petrilli, “The Complexity of Addiction,” 48.

24. Moskalewicz and Herczyńska, “The Changing Meaning of Addiction in Polish Medical Literature of the Late Nineteenth Century and Early Twentieth Century,” 77.

25. Beccaria and Petrilli, “The Complexity of Addiction.”

26. Seymour and Blaxill, “Adventures in Text Mining with the London MoH Annual Reports.”

Additional information

Funding

The research leading to these results or outcomes has received funding from the European Union FP7 (FP7/2007-2013), under Grant Agreement n° 266813 - Addictions and Lifestyle in Contemporary Europe – Reframing Addictions Project (ALICE RAP – www.alicerap.eu).