In November 2016, my Facebook feed was filled with friends’ dreaded anticipation of Thanksgiving with extended family, and particularly with […]
Ruth Taylor Ballard: A Nursing Pioneer In the Jim Crow South
In 1954, the public school system of Mobile, Alabama, launched its first training program for black nursing students. It […]
Waiting for a Death Revolution: A Review of HBO’s Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America
I can’t decide what to do with my corpse. Embalming, the bread-and-butter of the American funeral industry, feels wrong. Is […]
Anoint an Aries with Sheep’s Blood: Finding the Familiar in the Astral Medicine in Ancient Mesopotamia
From so far in the future, the medicine of ancient Mesopotamia looks strange. After all, it’s easy to dismiss the […]
In Vitro Fertilization: From Science Fiction to Reality to History
It was not that long ago that “test tube babies” only existed in science fiction. I remember my shock when, […]
Butter and the History of U.S. Dietary Guides since 1894
Creamy, sometimes salty, and optimistically yellow, butter is one of my favorite foods. It’s also a scientific and cultural barometer. […]
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news How Italians became white. Menopause before menopause. The feminist […]
What to Expect When You’re Expecting in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.
Type “pregnancy” into any internet search engine today, and you’ll literally get a billion results. This plethora of information at […]
Cancer DIY: Gendered Politics, Colonialism, and the Circulation of Self-Sampling Screening Technologies in Canada
Innovative. Exciting. Easy. Painless. These are just some of the words used to describe the Delphi Screener — a sterile, […]
The Racist Misogyny behind Your “Does My Butt Look Fat in This?”: Reading Sabrina Strings’ Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia
Every so often, a book comes out that arrives as both an answer to a question and an answer to […]
