As I’ve written about for Nursing Clio previously, there’s been much debate in recent years about so-called ‘dark’ Civil War history. In that debate, Diane Miller Sommerville has been a vocal advocate for increased attention to the physical and psychological trauma wrought by the war. Her new book, An Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering… Read more →
Tag: Book review
“Acknowledgments in Essay Form:” Briallen Hopper’s Hard to Love
I agreed to review Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions a week before my long-time boyfriend broke up with me out of the blue one otherwise completely normal Wednesday afternoon. Needless to say, my copy of Briallen Hopper’s heartfelt and nourishing essays arrived at exactly the right time. Her collected musings — examining love, life,… Read more →
Seeking Health and Doing Harm: Gender Bias, Medical Sexism, and Women’s Encounters with Modern Medicine
A 2011 survey completed by faculty at forty-four medical schools in the United States and Canada indicated that 70% of institutions did not have “a formal sex- and gender-specific integrated medical curriculum,” failing to provide adequate instruction on specific health topics for which sex- and gender-based evidence exists.1 This striking statistic, coupled with a personal… Read more →
The Favorite Sister
There are few things I enjoy more in my fiction than a good, unreliable narrator. As someone who loves the art of storytelling, I find the way an unreliable narrator can construct a façade, building a truth out of a false assumption, a misremembered interaction, or an outright deception — and I find the tumble,… Read more →
I’m Not Crazy!: Abby Norman’s Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain
I was diagnosed with endometriosis when I had my first laparoscopy at 14. I’m very lucky. I got my period when I was 12, and from the start I was in such pain that I regularly missed school. Thankfully, my mother also had endometriosis and knew (although hoped she was not right) that I probably… Read more →
After the Mosquitoes Went Away: A Review of Debora Diniz’s Zika
In April 2015, Géssica Eduardo dos Santos — a Brazilian woman who lived in Juarezinho, a small town in the interior of the northeastern state of Paraíba — became pregnant for a second time. Géssica already had a young daughter, and this time she and her husband Silvandro da Silva Lima were hoping for a… Read more →
Remembering the Mothers of Gynecology: Deirdre Cooper Owens’ Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology
Antebellum physician James Marion Sims has been in the news quite a bit lately as a target of activism. After the Charlottesville white supremacist rallies, efforts to take down Confederate monuments have spread across the country, and those efforts have included statues of James Marion Sims. Sims is known for developing a successful technique for… Read more →
Nursing Clio Presents Its Third Annual Best Of List
Let’s face it, we all knew 2017 was going to be a garbage fire. But in between the political nightmares, nazis, and general terribleness, there were moments in 2017 that gave us life. Nursing Clio presents its third annual Best Of list. Favorite Book Laura Ansley: I can never pick just one. But favorite fiction this year… Read more →
A Well-Balanced Serving of School Food History — With a Side of Grassroots Reform
I have few memories of school lunches from my childhood. I do recall the small milk cartons and brown milky bubbles spilling out of them. I vaguely recall — or perhaps have learned from tumblr — that the meals were bland, carb-heavy, and overcooked; pastas and chicken nuggets with sides of yellow-orange vegetables. I have… Read more →
Book Review: Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital
America’s oldest public hospital started as a tiny, one-room infirmary in a New York City almshouse in 1736. Two hundred and eighty-one years later, it’s a sprawling hospital center complex with almost 900 beds, a massive outpatient service, dozens of adult and pediatric specialties, and medical care provided in over 200 languages. David Oshinsky narrates… Read more →