Marcia L.
Meldrum
Lecturer/Researcher
meldrum@history.ucla.edu
Research interests: pain research and therapies, origins
and dynamics of new scientific fields, cultural and medical history of
contraception, history of clinical trials.
Recent publications:
“The Ladder and the Clock: Cancer Pain and Public Health Policy at the End
of the 20th Century.” Forthcoming, Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.
“The
Property of Euphoria: Research and
the Cancer Patient.” In ML Meldrum,
ed, Opioids and Pain Relief: A Historical Perspective.
“A Capsule History of Pain Management.” JAMA 290 (
Brief biography:
Marcia L. Meldrum received her
PhD in 1994 from SUNY Stony Brook, where she received the Distinguished Doctoral
Scholar Award for her dissertation, "Departures from the Design: the Randomized
Clinical Trial in Historical Perspective, 1946-1970.” She first came to UCLA as a postdoctoral
fellow in 1994. In 1998-2000, she
held the DeWitt Stetten Fellowship in the History of the Biomedical Sciences at
the National Institutes of Health, and then a Visiting Fellowship at the
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Research: | |
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PAIN Meldrum's current major research interest is the
development of the international, interdisciplinary field of pain studies,
in the years 1946-74. She is interested in the way in which pain, which
had been a minor problem in neurophysiology and in clinical medicine, was
reconstituted as a major scientific problem and the subject of a new
cross-disciplinary discourse. The epistemology of pain is located at the
intersection of philosophy, medicine, psychology, and neuroscience, and
its history reflects the changing nature of biological identity in the
twentieth century and the cultural construction of the body, mind, and
emotions. She also examines the way the subjectivity of pain is reframed
by the researcher for measurement and study, and the participation of the
pain patient in this process. In collaboration with UCLA colleagues in
psychology, history, and library and information science, she created and
is now Co-Director of the John C. Liebeskind History of Pain Collection,
including oral histories and document materials, to serve as the basis for
several planned studies and publications. The Liebeskind Collection is open
to all researchers: www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/biomed/his/pain.html She is interested in hearing from other scholars
who may be studying the history of pain medicine and analgesia, cultural
constructions and representations of pain, pain as an occupational
disorder, or in other contexts: meldrum@history.ucla.edu. Meldrum is a co-investigator on an NIMH grant,
awarded to PI Margaret Jacob in 2002, which is studying chronic pain in
children, using an integrated interdisciplinary approach of three
methodologies: standardized
questionnaires, conversational analysis of clinical interactions, and oral
history interviews with patients and families. For more information on this
project, visit: http://www.pain.ucla.edu/
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CONTRACEPTION Meldrum is also interested in cultural and scientific
constructions of fertility, and their embodiment in contraceptive
technology and policy. Her dissertation research dealt with the rehabilitation
of the intrauterine device by the Population Council in the 1960s
and its re-introduction into |
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CLINICAL
TRIALS Meldrum's dissertation, "Departures from the
Design," dealt with the use of the clinical trial methodology as a
knowledge-producing and legitimating technology in the 1950s and 1960s,
and the translation of the knowledge produced by trials into policy and
practice. Three case studies are examined: the Salk polio vaccine trials
of 1954, trials of barrier contraceptive methods and IUDs by the
Population Council and Planned Parenthood in the late 1950s and 1960s, and
trials of the analgesic Darvon in the 1950s and 1960s. (short
excerpt). A complete copy may be ordered from University Microfilms.
Comments, questions, and critiques are welcomed: meldrum@history.ucla.edu.
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