medical history

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/15/2020
  

  The African Roots of Inoculation in America: Saving Lives for Three Centuries

  by Gillian Brockell

  Knowledge carried by enslaved Africans supported rudimentary efforts at inoculation against smallpox in colonial Massachusetts.

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• 12/20/2020
  

  The Plague in Ancient Athens: A Cautionary Tale for America

  by Fred Zilian

  The United States in some respects has fared better under COVID than Athens did during the plague that accompanied the Peloponnesian War: a vaccine is in sight, and our head of state survived the day's most feared disease. But in both cases, disease showed the strains and cracks of a society and political system that will be difficult to repair.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/13/2020
  

  Vaccinated? Show Us Your App

  Medical historian Michael Willrich says that the prospect of smartphone-based credentialing to demonstrate an individual has been vaccinated is potentially invasive of privacy and the control of health data by private interests. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  12/1/2020
  

  The Struggle to Document COVID-19 for Future Generations

  by Pamela Ballinger

  Images of suffering have been powerful spurs to humanitarian action in history, but the process has the potential to reinforce messages of fault, blame, and separation. Assembling a visual archive of the age of COVID must avoid those traps to be useful in the future. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  11-30-20
  

  History Reminds Us that Vaccines Alone Don't End Pandemics

  by E. Thomas Ewing

  Positive news about advances on a vaccine for the novel coronavirus should not be taken as a license to stop mask-wearing and social distancing argues a historian of viral pandemics. 

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• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  11/5/2020
  

  The Racist Lady with the Lamp

  by Natalie Stake-Doucet

  "Nursing historiography is centered on whiteness. Even worse, nursing history revolves largely around a single white nurse: Florence Nightingale. This, unfortunately, doesn’t mean nurses understand who Nightingale was."

• 
• SOURCE: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
  10/18/2020
  

  Last Week Tonight: The World Health Organization

  The weekly comedy-investigative program includes an assessment of the World Health Organization's past work eradicating disease in the developing world and the Trump administration's attacks on the agency (includes some vulgar language and jokes).

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/15/2020
  

  Medieval Europeans Didn’t Understand how the Plague Spread. Their Response Wasn’t so Different from Ours Now

  "As we spoke with historians and searched for the plague’s lasting marks, what stood out most were the similarities, 672 years apart."

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  10/14/2020
  

  How Do Pandemics End? History Suggests Diseases Fade but are Never Truly Gone

  by Nükhet Varlik

  "Whether bacterial, viral or parasitic, virtually every disease pathogen that has affected people over the last several thousand years is still with us, because it is nearly impossible to fully eradicate them."

• 
• 10/4/2020
  

  "Follow the Science," but Explain and Apologize

  by Susan M. Reverby

  Governments need to establish trust so that their public health announcements are credible and persuasive, but have undermined that trust by conducting ethically questionable studies. A model of apology is part of the solution. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  9/8/2020
  

  Race, Medicine, and the Origins of American Psychiatry (Review)

  by Natalie Shibley

  Wendy Gonaver's book traces the relationiship between slavery and modern psychiatric medicine. 

• 
• SOURCE: History.com
  8/10/2020
  

  5 Hard-Earned Lessons from Past Pandemics

  Do any of the survival strategies developed by past societies seem familiar? 

• 
• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  8/4/2020
  

  Psychiatry and Homosexuality Draft Exemptions During the Vietnam War

  by Natalie Shibley

  Although many gay rights organizations argued that the exclusion of homosexuals from the armed forces was unconstitutional and discriminatory, several of the same groups also offered advice to gay men who wanted to be disqualified from military service.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/25/2020
  

  Ancient Teeth Show History of Epidemics is Much Older than we Thought

  Scientists and archaeologists now believe that the plague bacteria, which caused the medieval Black Death, infected humans roughly 5,000 years ago in the Stone Age.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/23/2020
  

  Good News: The Economy Usually Recovers Quickly Once Pandemics End

  by Laird M. Easton

  Since the Black Death of the mid-14th century, no major pandemic appears to have had a long-lasting, negative economic impact, at least in Europe and North America.

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• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  7/21/2020
  

  The Children’s Nutrition and Dental Clinics of Mobile: Public Health, Volunteerism, and the Color Line during the Great Depression

  by Daryn Glassbrook

  The Depression did not create a hunger and malnutrition crisis in the United States. It brought to the fore deep-seated structural weaknesses in our economic, political, and health systems that enabled this crisis to boil over.

• 
• SOURCE: Telegraph
  7/23/2020
  

  Wearing A Face Mask Is Not New - But The Backlash Against Them Is, Say Historians

  "The striking thing about 1941 is that there was no debate or controversy between the scientists and the government, there was just rapid agreement that this made sense and it wasn't costly," said Dr Jesse Olszynko-Gryn.

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  7/20/2020
  

  Sexism Pushed Rosalind Franklin Toward The Scientific Sidelines During Her Short Life, But Her Work Still Shines On Her 100th Birthday

  by Richard Gunderman

  Rosalind Franklin overcame skepticism and discouragement from family and peers to make vital contributions to understanding molecular structures (including for DNA) in her short life. 

• 
• SOURCE: Democracy Now!
  7/16/2020
  

  ‘The Pandemic Could Get Much Worse’: Public Health Historian On Whether Another Lockdown Is The Only Way To Avoid Catastrophe

  Public health historian John Barry is the author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.”

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  7/10/2020
  

  Facing America's History of Racism Requires Facing the Origins of 'Race' as a Concept

  by Andrew Curran

  Many of the most rearguard and unscientific European notions regarding race have remained deeply embedded in the American psyche.