Trying to become a public historian and freelance writer in grad school is requiring me to walk a difficult tightrope. […]
PrEP, The Pill, and the Fear of Promiscuity.
By Ian Lekus
The first I learned of PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, came from the signs and postcards around Fenway Health, Boston’s LGBT community health center. Those advertisements appeared as Fenway served as one of two U.S. research sites for PrEP, in advance of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approving Truvada in July 2012 as the first drug deemed safe and effective for reducing the risk of HIV transmission.[1] As I started learning more, I quickly discovered how its advocates frequently compare PrEP to oral contraceptives. One PrEP researcher I consulted with early on in my investigations explicitly drew the parallel to her decision to use the Pill a few years earlier. Some of the similarities jump out immediately: for example, like oral contraceptives, PrEP — a pill taken daily to prevent HIV infection — separates prevention from the act of sexual intercourse itself.
On the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough?: Interpreting Mental Illness
By Mary Elene Wood
A highway patrol officer straddles a woman who lies on her back by the side of a highway. His arm lifts high into the air, then, with what looks like substantial force, he strikes her in the face with his clenched fist. He does this over and over again. Early in July, news programs around the country quickly spread the story of a California Highway Patrol officer caught on videotape violently beating Marlene Pinnock, a 51-year-old homeless, presumably mentally ill, woman, along the side of a freeway in Los Angeles. The California Highway Patrol claimed that the officer was only trying to stop the woman from walking out into traffic, yet journalists across the U.S. decried, in one writer’s words, “the lack of training given to law enforcement officers to handle such people, even though officers all too often are society’s frontline mental health care providers.”
A History of Neglect
By Adam Turner
Since as far back as the American Revolution, politicians and the public have welcomed soldiers home from war with promises of cutting edge medical knowledge, comprehensive rehabilitation, and ongoing care as compensation for their service. Just as often, though, these promises have gone unfulfilled in the face of their enormous expense. The history of the veteran’s health system thus has been one of best intentions and poor funding.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Walden Pond: The video game?
-Darwin’s pros and cons of marriage.
-Dead men’s teeth: A history of dentures.
-12 bizarre medical remedies from history.
-Before workplace harassment had a name.
-What was it like to discover laughing gas?
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Early modern hair dye?
-Preserving audio history.
-Paris reborn and destroyed.
-Who were the first “teenagers”?
-Ranch housing in postwar California.
-When cigarettes were good for women.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-If WWI was a bar fight.
-James Bond’s WWI origins.
-Vintage craft projects for kids.
-Women doctors in the movies.
-“Penicillin Girl” passes away in Denver.
-15 important Muslim women in history.
-Absolutely stunning photos of old Detroit.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-A 1950s survival guide.
-Einstein’s lost theorem.
-An oral history of Ghostbusters.
-27 strangest inventions in history.
-The quest for a sunken slave ship.
-Two suffragists, one cat, and a car.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Stethoscopes are really gross.
-The woman before Rosa Parks.
-The history of heroin addiction.
-Did slavery create modern medicine?
-Um…your earwax says a lot about you.
-Remembering Japan’s kamikaze pilots.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Very awkward vintage ads.
-Mark Twain’s advice to little girls.
-23 amazing Black History Tumblrs.
-9 beautiful buildings we tore down.
-What Honest Abe’s appetite can tell us.
-Was knitting a secret weapon in WWII?
