Before professional medical care became widely available, mental illness was often viewed as a personal malady with social impacts. Mental illness did not spread to others like contagious diseases could, yet it still affected those around the mentally ill individual. Families were often the first to experience how mental illness shaped someone’s behavior and interactions… Read more →
Tag: japan
Ōta Chōu’s Vaccination: Medicine and Modern Girls in 1930s Japanese Painting
In the midst of the 2021 COVID-19 mass vaccination campaign, the “vaccine selfie” – often a self-portrait cell-phone snapshot taken in the car or at the pharmacy with a small adhesive bandage on the arm and a vaccination card in the hand – has become a popular social media trend in the United States. Yet,… Read more →
The Japanese Imperial Family Invented
In May 2019, as now Emperor Emeritus Akihito passed the Chrysanthemum Throne to his son Emperor Naruhito, the world watched ceremonies and rites that appeared to be the timeless observations of the world’s longest continuous monarchy. Much was written throughout the course of the transition period on the unprecedented aspects of both the Heisei monarchy… Read more →