In the fall of 1918, seven young people were photographed wearing masks lined up near a railroad track in Mill […]
Have Leprosy, Will Travel: A Case of Early Modern Medical Tourism
On the tropical beach of a remote island, a group of ailing Europeans was spread across the white sands. Some […]
Incarcerated and Infected: The Fragility of Our State Prison System During the COVID-19 Pandemic
In the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic crisis, policymakers were forced to answer hard-hitting ethical questions: how would resources […]
Anacleto Palabay in the Metropole: Public Health, Migration, and Deportation in the Case of a Filipino Leprosy Patient
Anacleto Palabay, a young Filipino domestic worker in Washington, D.C., was intent on returning home to the Philippines. His soon-to-be […]
Deconstructing HIV and AIDS on Designing Women
Before protease inhibitors radically improved the lives of many people living with HIV in the mid-1990s, numerous sitcoms from Mr. […]
Losing ‘sorrow in stupefaction’: American Women’s Opiate Dependency before 1900
In 1791 Elizabeth Blake tried to help her sister, New Yorker Catalina Hale, to end her years-long dependency on laudanum, […]
The World Celebrates the First Malaria Vaccine—But Don’t Expect Malaria to Disappear
On October 6, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced it was recommending the first malaria vaccine, known as RTS,S, […]
Echo Chambers
Anthony Antonio has been charged with five crimes related to his participation in the January 6, 2021 insurrection, including violent […]
Assassination as Cure: Disease Metaphors and Foreign Policy
On January 3, 2020, I was at my mother’s house where CNN is her constant companion. A drone strike ordered […]
“Our Dogged and Deadly Archnemesis”: A Review of Timothy C. Winegard’s The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator
In 2015, mosquito-borne pathogens caused approximately 830,000 deaths worldwide. Malaria alone killed 435,000 people in 2017. Statistical extrapolations suggest that […]
