ABSTRACT
This special issue of Media History, arising from a workshop on nineteenth-century medical and health periodicals, aims to explore both the contemporary significance and readership of these periodicals, but also how their study has been approached by historians. We discuss existing work on medical periodicals—considering how these publications have been studied by literary and historical scholars—and how our understanding and use of them has developed in an era of digitisation. Finally, we examine how the contributors to this volume each highlight important issues in terms of the interpretation, reading, and materiality of medical and health periodicals.
