Around midnight on September 16, 1866, Dr. W. A. Wilcox of Saint Louis, Missouri, was called to the home of “Mrs. L,” a thirty-year-old married mother of two. Mr. L had been out for the evening and returned home at eleven to find his wife unconscious. When Dr. Wilcox arrived, Mrs. L was pale and… Read more →
Bags O’ Glass and Bayonet Eyes: Toy Safety and Consumer Protection, 1968–1976
On December 11, 1976, Saturday Night Live aired its first “Consumer Probe” sketch on the sale of unsafe toys. Drawing on print and broadcast safety warnings from organizations like Consumer Reports and the recently-established Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the sketch lampooned the U.S. toy industry for endangering kids to maximize profits. Featuring Candice Bergen… Read more →
Gender-Neutral Sex Toys: Turning Gender Dysphoria in the Bedroom into Gender Euphoria
Nestled amidst Allen Ginsberg’s dildo, some vanilla-flavored underwear that offers sexually-transmitted infection (STI) protection, and a Braille issue of Playboy magazine, the plastic Unisex Toy sits proudly behind a glass panel in New York City’s Museum of Sex. It’s shaped like a spinning top, with one end elongated into a pole and the other curved… Read more →
Trans Pregnancy and TikTok Activism: A Shifting Conversation
“Is society ready for this pregnant husband?” was the subheading of Thomas Beatie’s 2008 essay about his pregnancy. Mr. Beatie was considered the first pregnant trans man to come forward publicly; his story was hugely influential in terms of visibility but also the subject of hurtful jokes and discrimination (Barbara Walters, for example, referred to… Read more →
A Duet With History: Lizzo and James Madison’s Crystal Flute
At her Washington DC concert on September 27, 2022, musician and pop superstar Lizzo played a 200-year-old crystal flute that once belonged to James Madison onstage in front of an audience of thousands. While living in the White House, Madison continued to own and operate his Montpelier plantation in Virginia, where he enslaved over 300… Read more →
Law, Medicine, Women’s Authority, and the History of Troubled Births: Review of Proving Pregnancy
With Roe v Wade upended, the balance of power and authority among lawmakers, medical practitioners, and pregnant and birthing people is suddenly in flux. And at the center of the storm, the safety and autonomy of those carrying (and losing) pregnancies is in jeopardy. Historical investigations into troubled pregnancies and births, therefore, are salient and… Read more →
“If they were white and insured, would they have died?”: Contextualizing the 2022 Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Report
In December 2022 – a few days shy of the new year – the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee (MMMRC) and Department of State Health Services released a joint Biennial Report on maternal mortality and morbidity rates in the state. They use term “maternal mortality” to describe the death of a childbearing person… Read more →
The Season of NICU
We spent all of winter in the NICU. When I was 25 weeks pregnant, I went into preterm labor and gave birth to my daughter. She weighed just one pound 13 ounces and was barely one foot long. Having a micropreemie in the NICU feels like an alternate reality. Time stops working the way one… Read more →
Pregnancy Test: An Interview with Karen Weingarten
Karen Weingarten is a regular contributor to Nursing Clio and Associate Professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. She has just published a new book titled Pregnancy Test and is the author of Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880- 1940. Lara: How did you get interested in researching the history and culture… Read more →
A Burnout Confession: I’m a Foodie Academic Who Lost the Joy of Cooking
For most of last year, I worried that I’d broken my brain. As an academic whose job entails creating knowledge, this was utterly terrifying. I could still write, but getting words on the page was difficult and painfully slow. As I tried to rehab my writing muscles, I realized I’d missed a key warning sign…. Read more →