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 […]
Back to the Back Alley? Abortion Rights and Realities in the Trump Era
On the first day of his presidency, Donald Trump reinstated the global gag rule on abortion. This is no great […]
“Buried with Doctor’s Certificate”: Reading the Uses and Abuses of Bodies in a Medical School Thesis
Case I. May 27 1885. A. R. age 25 White, single. First pregnancy. Operation had been performed on her ten […]
“Witness the ‘Wall of Genitals’”: Anatomical Display at Brooklyn’s House of Wax
Located in the lobby of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Brooklyn, the House of Wax is a dimly lit bar […]
Nurse-Midwives are With Women, Walking a Middle Path to a Safe and Rewarding Birth
In childbirth politics as in all politics, extreme viewpoints make the news, and sensible centrists are ignored. A couple of […]
Strange Pain, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Womb: A Teacher’s Reflection on Bodies in History
[gblockquote source=’Bettina Judd, patient.‘]HOW TO MEASURE PAIN I In the woman it is a checklist: Can you imagine anything worse […]
