Introduction : on theory and practice / Jennifer Stanton -- The effects of local context on the development of obstetric ultrasound scanning in two Scottish hospitals / Debbie Nicholson -- Organization, ethnicity and the British National Health Service / Helen Valier and Roberta Bivins -- The Western mode of nursing evangelized? Nursing professionalism in twentieth-century Japan / Aya Takahashi -- Acupuncture and innovation : 'New Age' medicine in the NHS / Roberta Bivins -- Degrees of control : the spread of operative fracture treatment with metal implants : a comparative perspective on Switzerland, East Germany and the USA, 1950s-1990s / Thomas Schlich -- Representing medicine : innovation and resistance in 1950s Britain / Kelly Loughlin -- The diffusion of two renal dialysis modalities in the UK, 1960s-1980s / Jennifer Stanton -- Midwifery re-innovation in New Zealand / Philippa Mein Smith -- French response to 'innovation' : the return of the living donor in organ transplantation / Martine Gabolde and Anne Marie Moulin