This introduction to the special issue re-examines the emergence of nuclear medicine within a global and transdisciplinary framework. Moving beyond canonical narratives centred on technical breakthroughs and early U.S. developments, it highlights the field’s development through three analytical lenses: science diplomacy, transdisciplinarity, and socio-political impact. We argue that nuclear medicine took shape not only through innovations in physics and clinical practice, but also through international cooperation, geopolitical agendas, and the negotiation of public expectations. By tracing the circulation of knowledge, radioisotopes, and infrastructure across diverse regional contexts – from Sweden and Taiwan to India and Belgium – it sets the stage for a rethinking of nuclear medicine as a product of intersecting scientific, political, and societal forces during the Cold War and beyond.

This article studies the relation between research reactors, the development of nuclear research centres and the pharmaceutical industry in the recent history of nuclear medicine. While existing scholarship has rightfully highlighted how medical applications served as a useful argument to de-militarize the image of large-scale nuclear research infrastructure during the Cold War, this study extents this perspective beyond the Cold War era. Using the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre as a case study, this article highlights how their orientation was negotiated within economic and political considerations. From the 1990s onwards, therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals experienced increasing attention, while the amount of radioisotope-producing reactors was decreasing. In an era that had become more critical of nuclear infrastructure, this article shows how the production of radioisotopes became a social-political argument in the preservation of test reactors.

With this paper, I suggest focusing on diplo-scientific actors as a fruitful approach to study how certain actors have helped to shape international organisations through their diplomatic activities and scientific practices. Using the example of the Swedish medical physicist Rolf Sievert, I show how Sievert’s personality and preferences came to decisively shape the post-war trajectory of the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) and more broadly the international landscape of radiation protection. In the inter-war period, Sievert was engaged in the ICRP and its mother organisation, the International Radiological Congress (IRC), dealing with the interwoven questions of how to formulate international radiation standards and radiation protection initiatives. Following the Second World War, Sievert became concerned with the proliferation of nuclear technologies and the spread of radioactive fallout following nuclear test bombings. Because of this concern, Sievert set out to separate the ICRP from the IRC and form a new, independent group that could deal with the dangers of the new ‘Nuclear Age’. While Sievert was ultimately unsuccessful, his attempts would decisively change the purview and trajectory of the ICRP. This had large ramifications, as the ICRP continues to be the prime international organisation on radiological and medical radiation protection, formulating recommendations that are used by international, regional, national, and local groups, informing epistemic judgements on radiation research.

The onset of the atomic age in India embodied a unique postcolonial ambition to harness atomic energy for peaceful purposes. Within this vision, nuclear medicine became a key instrument to modernise the country’s colonial healthcare infrastructure. For India’s nascent community of radiologists, radioisotopes offered a promising frontier in clinical research and therapeutic applications. Yet the development of nuclear medicine was far from a straightforward extension of atomic research into clinical practice. Instead, it took shape within a centralised framework that concentrated technological resources and expertise in a small number of metropolitan centres. The centralisation of nuclear medicine practice was not merely a response to the resource constraints of a postcolonial economy. It also reflected a technopolitical project that linked the modernisation of public healthcare to expanding atomic energy infrastructure. Situating the emergence of nuclear medicine within the intertwined histories of radiology, cancer care, and atomic energy research, the paper examines the postcolonial aspiration to harness advanced medical specialities through the atomic enterprise. In doing so, it unpacks the technopolitics of nuclear medicine, highlighting the politico-epistemic negotiations that shaped its institutionalisation in India.

This paper examines competing treatments—surgery and radioactive iodine (RAI, I131)—for hyperthyroidism in the context of post-colonial Cold War nuclear science in Taiwan. Although the U.S.-led Cold War Atoms for Peace project pushed for the globalization of nuclear medicine, it had to compete with the Japanese colonial legacy in Taiwan (Republic of China). This government-in-exile embraced nuclear science and ushered in RAI with staged rituals. However, this modern procedure failed to overtake the surgical approach (thyroidectomy); in fact, as late as the 1990s, well after RAI had become a standard procedure throughout the world, surgery was still the major treatment option for this common disease in Taiwan. The tension between the global and the local is rooted in infrastructure as well as the materiality, regulation and availability of the Iodine 131 isotope, and, finally, the customary practice of the surgical tradition, established since the colonial period. Thyroid diseases, especially endemic goiter, were an important issue in colonial medicine, and the study, diagnosis, and treatments of thyroid diseases were an integral part of colonial surgeons’ identity. Surgical clinics had been a fixture of institutional medicine throughout Taiwan by the mid-twentieth century. In contrast, with the exception of a few prestigious hospitals in Taipei such as the National Taiwan University Hospital, most medical institutions and clinicians were not equipped to use isotopes. The availability of I131 was also limited, as the nuclear reactor did not become active until the 1960s. The preference for surgery thus points to the significance of material and social conditions of medical practice in Taiwan, amid the backdrop of the haunting images of the atomic bombs dropped by the U.S. on nearby Japan which the Atoms for Peace Project had aimed to overcome.

Torri’r Llech (TLl) (Welsh for ‘breaking the rickets’) was a bloodletting practice which remained popular in Wales from at least the mid-nineteenth up to the mid-twentieth centuries. The practice involved cutting the ear (pinna) to induce bleeding. Indications were numerous and dynamic. Vernacular medical practices, including bloodletting, have enjoyed a long history in Wales and were influenced by a multitude of conceptual paradigms over the centuries. By drawing on original oral histories, newspaper accounts, as well as existing secondary source material, this article aims to situate TLl within the wider framework of bloodletting practices in Wales and Britain more broadly. In doing so, this paper also considers the ways in which TLl changed over time and how this dynamism proved a persistent threat to the authority of official medical institutions in Wales. By then discussing how TLl itself appeared to draw on diverse conceptual frameworks, it is argued that it may more accurately be defined as a practice within the confines of popular humoralism – a syncretic medical paradigm influenced by humoralism, astrology, Christianity, as well as local belief systems. Ultimately, TLl exhibited remarkable longevity and may have been practised as late as the 1970s–80s in parts of the Upper Swansea Valley, potentially representing the latest example of a humoral bloodletting practice native to the British Isles. This analysis challenges more linear narratives of biomedical ascendancy, showcasing how TLl coexisted with orthodox medicine in a pluralistic medical marketplace in which Welsh patients consistently exercised agency over their own care.

This article discusses the development of the German-speaking anti-vaccination movement from the second half of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century as an actor-centred history of knowledge. Although the German anti-vaccination movement was a heterogeneous milieu, recurring shared narratives can be identified within the argumentation of its actors: The movement is characterised by a high affinity to conspiracy theories and an anti-science attitude. Antisemitism and völkish ideologies are also a recurring element of this radical rejection of vaccination in the German-speaking region from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. These narratives are used to construct a knowledge system of smallpox vaccination that was an alternative to medical science and the political decisions based on it.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Poland faced immense public health challenges amidst widespread destruction and political transformation. This article explores the largely overlooked medical mission of the Unitarian Service Committee (USC) in Poland, situating it within both humanitarian and geopolitical contexts. Drawing on archival research and press accounts, the study reconstructs the USC’s multifaceted aid efforts, including its Medical Teaching Mission, the establishment of the Piekary Śląskie hospital, and tuberculosis control initiatives. The analysis highlights how the USC combined direct medical assistance with educational outreach, aiming to support long-term recovery. However, operating behind the Iron Curtain, the Committee’s activities were subject to both surveillance and propaganda, revealing the entanglement of health and politics in Cold War Europe. This case offers new insights into the role of non-governmental actors in shaping postwar public health and diplomacy in Eastern Europe.

This paper traces the origins of qigong fever by locating Mao Zedong’s early practice of quiet sitting in 1916 within an intellectual lineage linking Jiang Weiqiao, Yang Changji, and Mao’s classmates. Deeply rooted in the Neo-Confucian tradition of self-cultivation and the circulation of jingluo, Jiang’s quiet sitting method was reinterpreted through Japanese hygienic languages during the Republican period, and later reframed in terms of Pavlovian neurophysiology in Maoist China. In 1954, Jiang’s claim that his long-term qigong practice had verified the existence of jingluo coincided with Mao’s renewed support for Chinese medicine. By legitimising the existence of jingluo through qigong practice, the circulatory jingluo system was codified into national Chinese medicine textbooks as the discipline’s core theoretical foundation, thereby laying the institutional and epistemic groundwork for the post-Mao qigong fever.

During World War II, the Japanese Kwantung Army’s Unit 731 secretly conducted large-scale, inhumane, and unethical human experimentation in China, culminating in one of the most heinous medical atrocities, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the Asia-Pacific theatre of the war. Despite the gravity of the subject matter and its historical significance, research on Unit 731 has, for a long time, been rather limited, but has gradually increased in recent decades. In this article, we identify several important characteristics and trends in research activities related to Unit 731, with a view to providing a general overview of the existing scholarship and to providing recommendations for future research.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, academic research started to accumulate. The second stage was one of rapid development from the 1980s to the 1990s. During this period, research efforts in Japan had a far-reaching influence and began to spread to China, Europe, and the U.S. Scholars from scientific, medical, and educational communities began participating in Unit 731 research successively. The third stage of multi-dimensional development began at the onset of the twenty-first century. Research expanded into comparative inquiries of Japanese medical atrocities and their Nazi counterpart; at the same time, research on many topics in diverse disciplines was also deepened and intensified. In addition to focusing on pragmatic issues such as reflections and actions of modern society and reconciliation, researchers have also been concerned with historical writing and collective memory.