In 1650, a young, single English servant named Anne Greene miscarried into the privy and did not tell anyone. We […]
Beauty, Knowledge, Patriarchy, Power: A Book Review of Jill Burke’s How to be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity (Pegasus Books, 2024)
Somewhere in Missouri, Spring 2025: It’s morning, and I’m rushing to pack a stack of books, notes, and binders into […]
“They say that all women have the same apprehension”: Anxiety and Isolation in Seventeenth-Century Pregnancy
On August 19th, 1620, a young noblewoman sat alone in her château in Bayon, Lorraine. She was heavily pregnant with […]
Another Year, Another Body Part
This is a story of how, as a historian of medicine, my own aging has affected my sense of my […]
It’s Wonderful How Ice Can Be So Warm
“It is a pleasure to the real lover of nature to give winter all the glory he can.” – Dorothy […]
Fetal Remains, Knowledge, and the Making of Early Modern Monsters
In 1734, scholars at France’s Royal Academy of Medicine encountered something unique: a tiny, nearly perfect replica of a fetus […]
Reclaiming Richard III’s Disability
It’s been 10 years since archaeologists discovered Richard III’s skeleton under a parking lot in Leicester, England. But historians haven’t […]
Have Leprosy, Will Travel: A Case of Early Modern Medical Tourism
On the tropical beach of a remote island, a group of ailing Europeans was spread across the white sands. Some […]
