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 →
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 yet rewritten Richard’s biography to include this medieval English king’s experience with disability.[1] The 2012 discovery of Richard III’s skeleton confirmed his physical disability as historical fact, upending the certainties of earlier scholars who thought… Read more →
A Tale of Two Deaths: Chronic Illness, Race, and the Medicalization of Suicide
On a Thursday morning in 1726, French colonial officials in Pondichéry – France’s principal colonial holding on India’s southeastern coast – received word that a dead body had been discovered at the bottom of a well. The governor of Pondichéry dispatched three officials to investigate the report. The officials quickly located the body and identified… Read more →
Wondering About Wonder Foods: An Interview with Lisa Haushofer
In Wonder Foods: The Science and Commerce of Nutrition, Lisa Haushofer (Senior Research Associate in the History of Medicine Department at the University of Zurich) offers a vital history of our relationship with food, which is often easily distracted by the latest “superfood” or nutrition fad. She analyzes four “wonder foods” that gripped American and… Read more →
Race and Early American Medical Schools: Review of Christopher D.E. Willoughby’s Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools
In 2017, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts announced that it would stop using race as a factor in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) calculation, a measure of kidney function. Then, in 2020, several other medical systems, including the Massachusetts General Brigham system, the University of Washington, and the University of Pennsylvania, agreed… Read more →
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 lay soaking in medicinal baths assisted by local attendants; others dined on a special healing diet prepared from rare, locally-sourced ingredients. These exclusive treatments were not available in Europe, and sufferers were willing to pay… Read more →
Announcing the Nursing Clio Writers-in-Residence Program
Since 2012, Nursing Clio has been at the forefront of sharing histories of gender, medicine, and disability with a wide audience. The blog has published the work of over 500 writers, from undergraduates to professional historians, independent scholars to medical professionals. Now, Nursing Clio is seeking 2-3 writers to join our new Writers-in-Residence program. Writers-in-Residence will become a part… Read more →
Collaboration: A Margaret Bingham Stillwell Imprint
“I had a succession of Trustees who treated me vaguely but graciously in a Victorian way, even though they could not understand how it happened that a woman could be interested in books.” (MBS LAH xii) Margaret Bingham Stillwell (1887-1984) began her career at the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island when she… Read more →
Men and Women Can (and Should) Be Friends in the Modern Workplace
As a teenager, I loved the film When Harry Met Sally and would watch it whenever I was home sick from school. Most kids long to be adults, but Generation X expressed a specific affinity for the trappings of adulthood. In true Gen X fashion, what I pined for in adulthood was the friendship at… Read more →
On Football, War, and Trauma
There are few things more precious to Buffalonians than their football team. Not only do we love football, but we very specifically – and very fiercely – love the individuals who make up the current roster of the Buffalo Bills. So when safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field during a Monday Night Football game… Read more →