Technology and consumerism are two characteristic phenomena in the history medicine and healthcare, yet the connections between them are rarely explored by scholars. In this edited volume, the authors address this disconnect, noting the ways in which a variety of technologies have shaped patients' roles as consumers since the early twentieth century. Chapters examine key issues, such as the changing nature of patient information and choice, patients' assessment of risk and reward, and matters of patient role and of patient demand as they relate to new and changing technologies. They simultaneously investigate how differences in access to care and in outcomes across various patient groups have been influenced by the advent of new technologies and consumer-based approaches to health. The volume spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, spotlights an array of medical technologies and health products, and draws on examples from across the United States and United Kingdom.

Introduction: Technology and health in the age of the patient consumer - Thomas Schlich and Rachel Elder

Part I: New technologies and patient markets

1 Dental X- rays and the imagined patient - Vivien Hamilton
2 Chronic neglect: Race, dialysis, and vulnerable patienthood - Richard M. Mizelle, Jr
3 Patients, 'consumer sovereignty', and technological change: The adoption of minimally invasive surgery - Cynthia L. Tang

Part II: Informed patients and patient information

4 Tampons, technology, and toxic shock syndrome: From consumer to patient to informant - Sharra Vostral
5 Just stories: Side effects and the patient voice online - Antoine Lentacker

Part III: Co-opting disease, promoting prevention and healing

6 Sunbeds, dihydroxyacetone (DHA) fake tan, and MelanoTan injections: A history of 'safe' tanning
technologies - Fabiola Creed
7 Against 'prevention pills': North American breast cancer activists and chemoprevention - Grazia De Michele
8 'Mental health is not fashion': RIP shirts, stigma, and consumerism - Christopher M. Rudeen

Index

Editors

Rachel Elder is Research Associate in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University
Thomas Schlich is James McGill Professor in the History of Medicine and Department Chair of the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University