John C. Burnham; B.A., Stanford University, 1951; M.A., University
of Wisconsin, 1952; Ph.D., Stanford University, 1958.
Professor Burnham specializes in the history of medicine and American social history; his particular interest is the
history of psychiatry. His recent books include How Superstition
Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United
States (1987), Paths into American Culture: Psychology, Medicine,
and Morals (1988), Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs,
Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History (1993)
and How the Idea of Profession Changed the Writing of Medical History
(1998), and What Is Medical History? (2005). Dr. Burnham is presently studying the impact of Freud on the
Western world, and also the deinstitutionalization of mental patients
in the 1950s.
Professor Burnham has taught at Stanford and the Claremont Colleges,
and he has been a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Australia at the Universities
of Melbourne, Tasmania, and New England. He has also served as the Tallman
Visiting Professor at Bowdoin College. In 2002-2003, he was a visiting fellow at Robinson College in the University of Cambridge. He has served as President of
the American Association for the History of Medicine and has held many
other offices in scholarly organizations both in the United States and
abroad, and he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science.
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