To the Stanton Foundation: When the Stanton Foundation announced their COVID-19 prize in April, the Nursing Clio (NC) team was thrilled. As a site that publishes extensively on the history of medicine, NC supported the idea of a prize rewarding public-facing historical work contextualizing a pandemic. The Stanton Foundation was inspired by the American Historical… Read more →
Category: News
Asymptomatic Lethality: Cooper, COVID-19, and the Potential for Black Death
Black people in the United States have long known that all white people, at any time, have the potential to hurt them. For centuries, white people have had easy access to histories of racial power and deploy them, almost like a pathogen, against Black people. Against people like me. Before the country erupted into a… Read more →
Absolutely Disgusting: Wet Markets, Stigma Theory, and Xenophobia
Since the initial descriptions of cases of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, there has been a persistent focus on “wet markets” and their role in spreading the virus. Wet markets are similar to farmers’ markets, offering stalls selling fresh meat and produce, with some markets featuring the slaughtering of animals on-site, which can – albeit… Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news We are at war. On grief, history, and COVID-19. The history of the Hawaiian shirt. Sex in the time of the Black Death. A brief criminal history of the mask. A history of mass graves for the poor. Horseback-riding nurses of the 1930s. Americans… Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news Why hair matters. The other pandemic. The trouble with Triscuits. The myth of black immunity. The history of jigsaw puzzles. Snails, salves, water, and syrups. The tiger king of the 19th century. The epidemic that preyed on children. Childbirth and maternal death in Venezuela. … Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news Shutting down Hawai‘i. The teenage murderess. Women also know Washington. Finding asexuality in the archives. Archiving web content on COVID-19. Medicinal leeches and where to find them. The fashionable history of social distancing. The surprisingly contentious history of Purell. Lessons from my grandma on… Read more →
Who Decides? Medical Intervention for Transgender and Intersex Children
Who should decide whether medical intervention on a child’s body is necessary? Ideally, the person who will undergo the treatment should have a say in these decisions. Patients themselves, even if they are children, should understand all their options and assent to whatever procedures are on the table. Technically, parents are the ones providing consent… Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news The first seizure. Eat like a 1970s radical. The queer history of flowers. 9 women who deserve a biopic. Sex education meets art history. The animated history of abortion pills. The first drag queen was a former slave. OB-GYNs are using Reddit to help… Read more →
Assassination as Cure: Disease Metaphors and Foreign Policy
On January 3, 2020, I was at my mother’s house where CNN is her constant companion. A drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump had killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani and nine others. I was horrified and wanted to hear the news, but I was only half-listening because I hate CNN’s so-called analysis and… Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news Charting pain in 1879. So you want to be a beatnik? Documenting sex ed in queer bodies. Teen girls don’t need routine pelvic exams. What’s the deal with mail-in sperm start-ups? A year’s diary of reckoning with climate anxiety. How medieval surgeons shaped sex… Read more →