The February 5, 2018 New Yorker carried a story of Jahi McMath and her family. In 2013, McMath went into […]
The Persistence of Félicité Kina: Kinship, Gender, and Everyday Resistance
In January of 1803, the sixteen-year-old Félicité-Adelaïde Kina (née Quimard) traveled from Paris to Pontarlier to protest the imprisonment of […]
When Did We Get So Hormonal? An Interview with Randi Hutter Epstein
Randi Hutter Epstein’s new book, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything, traces the development of […]
The Dangerous Price of Diabetes: Not What the Pioneering Researchers Predicted
The 1921 discovery of insulin ushered in a new era in endocrinology. Canadian researchers transformed diabetes from certain death sentence […]
How To Cook and Cure: Early Modern Recetas
Recipes can quickly transport us to particular times and places. A glance at this vintage Jell-O recipe calls to mind […]
Lizards and the Idea of Mexico
In the summer of 1782, Don Juan de Luna, a respected elder citizen of the City of Mexico, nearly choked […]
New Medical Tourism on St. Kitts
The late William Halford of Southern Illinois University’s School of Medicine spent his life developing what Hollywood director Agustín Fernández […]
Remembering the Mothers of Gynecology: Deirdre Cooper Owens’ Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology
Antebellum physician James Marion Sims has been in the news quite a bit lately as a target of activism. After […]
Dying to Heal: Women and Syphilis in Colonial Lima, Peru
In the early modern world, syphilis victims suffered through four stages of disease over a ten- to thirty-year time span. […]
The Politics of Sobreparto: Beyond the Medical Dimensions of a Postpartum Condition
Migrant indigenous Andean women living in the lowland Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra often mention sobreparto (“following […]
