All plant life are not made equal—at least not in the eyes of Japanese physcians during the Tokugawa period (1603–1868). This essay explores what was at stake when some plants were regarded as respectable medicinal herbs while others were dismissed as weeds for the poor.
Category: History of Medicine
“Scared Work”: Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The White Guard” and the limits of medicine
In 1918, the Russian writer and physician Mikhail Bulgakov set up a medical practice in his native Kyiv (Curtis 5-6). There, in the midst of the Russian revolution and civil war, he would witness the battles for Kyiv by various forces, including the Bolsheviks, the Whites, and the Ukrainian Nationalists. These experiences formed the basis…
Sutures of Photography
A crowded family photo (cover image). Rather a strange one though. People are nowhere to be seen as men replaced by specimen and each are clothed in jars.[1] The photo comes from a medical album that documents the surgical achievements in Haseki Nisa Hastanesi [Haseki Women’s Hospital] in Istanbul during the 1890s. The jars contain…
Communicable Experience: Oral History and Infectious Disease at Ellis Island
Family history is a standard component of most doctor’s appointments. Healthcare providers have good reasons for collecting this information – by learning more about the genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors that can affect our health, they’re developing a fuller picture of the patients in front of them. As a literary scholar, though, I have my…
The Performance of Pain
You cannot breathe; the world slows down around you; your chest tightens as you walk to your car. Once again, you feel as though you have failed to convince a doctor of your pain, and once again, you must face it alone. This is, unfortunately, the experience of far too many female patients, but the…
Writing through the “Hydra” of Shell Shock
“The magazine is to fulfil a two-fold function. On the one hand it provides a means for the expression of two further activities – the wielding of pen and pencil; while, on the other, it acts as the link between each and every activity.” -The Hydra Hospital Magazine, New Series Vol. 1 (p.2) “Capt….
Rationed Knowledge: Culture Films and Nutritional Propaganda in Wartime Japan
How was nutritional knowledge popularized on big screens in wartime Japan?
“Venereal Peril”: ‘Controlled’ Prostitution and French Regulationism After 1945
Penicillin and the French regulationist system The advent of penicillin in the 1930s marked a significant breakthrough that revolutionized the therapeutic landscape for diverse bacterial infections, including those causing venereal diseases (Brandt, Jones 1999). The use of penicillin during World War Two led to a decline in the incidence of syphilis and allowed for more…
The Long Hurt
The Long Hurt Here’s a joke I like: A caveman walks into a bar holding hands with a bear. The bartender asks, “What’s the deal here?” The caveman responds, “It’s a long story: bear with me.” That’s pretty good. Here’s another one: Two cavemen walk into a bar. The bartender asks, “What’ll it be?” The…
Seinfeld, “The Junior Mint,” and How Medical Knowledge Lands in the Public Sphere
Despite its infamy as a “show about nothing,” Seinfeld’s “Junior Mint” (1993) episode is emphatically about medicine—medical knowledge, the medical world, medical “miracles”. More specifically, it centers on how the ‘general population’ receives medical knowledge. Interwoven subplots caricature the routes through which information about the body’s illnesses and healings pass into what we might call…