Two open textbooks, one blank with a pen on it, another with capitalized "BLAME"

The Blame Game: Searching for Historical Complexity

By Carrie Adkins

I am almost finished with my Ph.D. This fall I’ll defend my dissertation on the history of gynecology and obstetrics in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century United States, and then – barring some unforeseen disaster – I’ll finally be able to make everybody I know call me “doctor.” At this point, I should be a genuine expert on my topic, and in some ways, I guess I am. Want to hear about the dangers of childbirth in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era? Curious about the history of surgeries like clitoridectomy and hysterectomy? Want to talk about racism and eugenics as applied to female bodies? I’m your girl. Let’s have coffee. Just don’t blame me when you start having horrific nightmares about vesicovaginal fistula and pubic symphysiotomy.

Sunday Morning Medicine

Sunday Morning Medicine

By Jacqueline Antonovich

-Vintage kitchen kitsch.
-Cary Grant, Esther Williams, and LSD.
-Is this over-the-counter drug deadly?
-The man who brewed beer in his gut.
-The first African American flight attendants.
-Why do we still use 300-year-old fertility statistics?

Sunday Morning Medicine

Reflections: A Conference on Children and “Imperfection”

By Adam Turner

Over the past weekend, I had the pleasure of participating in the Centre for Medical Humanities Imperfect Children conference at the University of Leicester. The conference included a wonderful mix of disciplines and both historical and present-day perspectives on the concept of “imperfection” and children. This usefully provocative focus led to an ongoing discussion during the two-day meeting about the definition of imperfection and how it relates to concepts like normality, health, and ability.

Sunday Morning Medicine

By Jacqueline Antonovich

-A 16th-century nose job.
-17 of the world’s oldest films.
-The art of the 1950s motel postcard.
-The Reformation according to LEGO.
-20 beautiful color photos of Tsarist Russians.
-J.D. Salinger and the case of the missing testicle?

Thalidomide—The Good and The Bad

Sunday Morning Medicine

Sunday Morning Medicine

By Jacqueline Antonovich

-The Stockholm Syndrome turns 40.
-Nursery of the future (circa 1930s).
-The rise of the sex manual.
-19th-century men who killed their children.
-Prehistoric humans also hated bland food.
-Archivists work to preserve gay home movies.
-A midcentury map of American folklore.

Man Up: Give Blood Like a Victorian

By Sean Cosgrove

How do we convince people of the need to donate blood? It can be scary and uncomfortable, and I’ll be the first to admit, as someone who does not regularly donate, that it all seems like a lot of work. The answer, according to one comedian writing in a Sydney commuter magazine recently (which has unfortunately been lost to me and, to the best of my knowledge, is not reproduced online), at least in part, was to provoke people (especially men) into volunteering to roll up their sleeves. Rather than the softly-softly approach, the tugging on heart strings or outright begging, it suggested that we should try a more competitive approach: tell these people to drink their cup of concrete.