In December 1943 Colonel Derrick Vail, ophthalmologist and consultant to the Army Medical Department in Europe, wrote in a memo: […]
Renée Zellweger, Isabelle Dinoire, and the Stakes for Changing the Face
On October 20, 2014, Renée Zellweger attended the Elle Women in Hollywood event, her first appearance in the public eye […]
The Trauma of Displacement: How History Can Help Us Understand the Refugee Experience
In February of 1915, a fifty-five year old woman, who we will call Ella, was admitted to London’s Colney Hatch […]
What’s Truly Outrageous About Intersex?
On August 5, the World News Daily Report published an article that has been circulating on my Facebook newsfeed every […]
The Magic Liquid that Guarantees the Life of the Infant: Breast Milk as a Superfood
“Try squirting milk on that.” I stopped keeping track of how many times someone recommended healing my newborn’s ailments with […]
Book Review: Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital
America’s oldest public hospital started as a tiny, one-room infirmary in a New York City almshouse in 1736. Two hundred […]
Metaphors and Malignancy in Senator McCain’s Cancer Diagnosis
When my grandmother died from a mucosal melanoma (a form of skin cancer) in 2015, I sat around with my […]
The Black Politics of Eugenics
Eugenics is still a dirty word. It makes us think about science gone horribly wrong. It reminds us of the […]
Eyes of the Beholder: The Public Health Service Reports on Trachoma in White Appalachia and Indian Country
In 1912, the United States Public Health Service (PHS) set out to survey trachoma rates among two populations: Appalachian Whites […]
The Miseries and Heartbreak of Backstreet Abortions: Before and After Roe
In 1967, a group of clergy in New York City founded the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion (CCS) to “bring […]
