A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news.

• Syphilis and prosthetic noses.
• Early-twentieth century crusade against kissing.
• The ideal woman circa 1926.
• A new SARS-like virus?
• Nineteenth century Mormon courtship.
• A very fun time-lapse drawing of the history of music.
• A look at the early poetry of Sylvia Plath.
• A Civil War female surgeon?
• A feminist reads Friedan for the first time.
• Transgender students and college health plans.
• Eugenics and imagining future human bodies.
• U.S. fertility rates at an all-time low.
• 1920s Kodachrome film of flirting women.
• Mice are not good test subjects for human disease.
• A preservationist in search of historic playground photos.
• James Baldwin in exile.