As known cases of monkeypox in the United States, the vast majority of which are among gay and bisexual men, continue to increase, an argument is raging – in the news media and on Twitter – over how to talk to the public about the disease. Some want to emphasize that “everyone is at risk,”… Read more →
Category: News
Crying Foul: The Myriad Threats of Anti-Trans Legislation
Anti-trans bills are popping up all over the place in various contexts. Some are meant to restrict trans girls and women from playing on sports teams; others are meant to deny gender-affirming care for transgender children. Such legislation is unquestionably horrible for trans people. Recently, I heard a sad story about a mother afraid to… Read more →
Nursing Clio Presents Its Seventh Annual Best of List
Favorite Book Averill: Mystery: Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series – there are two so far, and they are delightful; romance: Helen Huang’s The Heart Principle; historical(ish): Alix E. Harrow, The Once and Future Witches; fantasy: Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms; and sci-fi: Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary. Most of these I listened to as audiobooks,… Read more →
Have Crisis, Feed Kids
“Here is public health’s bind,” wrote science journalist Ed Yong recently in The Atlantic: “Though it is so fundamental that it can’t (and arguably shouldn’t) be tied to any one type of emergency, emergencies are the one force that can provide enough urgency to strengthen a system that, under normal circumstances, is allowed to rot.”… Read more →
The Agency of the Irresponsible
Like many faculty at state universities, the beginning of this school year brings me more terror than excitement. Colorado Mesa University (CMU), the institution at which I have taught since 1999, will require neither masks nor vaccines for students, and faculty cannot enforce mask mandates in the classrooms. This flies in the face of… Read more →
Right All the Way Through: Dr. Minerva Goodman and the Stockton Mask Debate during the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic
During the 1918-19 influenza epidemic, Stockton, California, adopted a mask ordinance three times, totalling more than seventy days. In late December 1918, Dr. Minerva Goodman, the recently appointed city health officer, lost a debate about ending the second mask ordinance to those advocating a return to normal activities. Just weeks later, as cases rose again,… Read more →
A Historic Intersex Awareness Day
This year’s Intersex Awareness Day, October 26, marked a historic pivot. A few days before, Boston Children’s Hospital revealed that its physicians would no longer perform certain nonconsensual infant genital surgeries on babies born with atypical genitals. They join the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, which made a similar announcement in… Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
Contact your senators. Vote. May her memory be a revolution.
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news Elvis in the box. “Are you popular?” Skating on stolen land. Jingle Dress Dancers and pandemics. Cannabis in the 1950s British tabloids. The hidden Black history of Lovecraft Country. Gerald Ford rushed out a vaccine. It was a fiasco. One sperm donor. 36 children…. Read more →
An Open Letter to the Stanton Foundation
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 →