Physician and Poet Michael Barthman Sarah Berry // This interview series features educators, scholars, artists, and healthcare providers whose work is vital to the growth of the health humanities. On Friday, September 4, I interviewed Dr. Barthman about his work as an emergency physician, medical educator, health humanities blogger, and poet. Sarah Berry: Can you…
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Reproductive politics everywhere: review of Reproduction on the Reservation by Brianna Theobald
Emilie Egger // Of her archival research process for her 2019 monograph Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century, historian Brianna Theobald writes that she “never knew where biological reproduction would pop up in the historical record or what would emerge as important context” (14). This realization holds the…
“Unique, but Similar”: The Paradox of Evidence-Based Medicine
Emily Wheater // During UK lockdown, I watched a debate on the subject of the existence (or not) of ‘the female brain’. In her concluding remarks Gina Rippon (author of The Gendered Brain), after arguing for the motion that ‘there is no such thing as the female brain’, said ‘I think every brain is different…
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Health ✪ Part 3 Civil Rights and the Body Politic
Sarah L. Berry // “Racism is a public health threat,” declared Dr. Lisa Cooper in a recent webcast. Over just a few months, COVID-19 exposed racial disparities in health on a national stage, helped ignite organized national protest over police violence against Black Americans,[i] and illuminated a link between persistent economic inequality (i.e., essential workers…
Contagious Exhibits: Curating the Plague
Diana Novaceanu // The exhibit In Time of Plague: Five Centuries of Infectious Disease in the Visual Arts opened in January 1988 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It aimed to showcase both the “changing conventions” of illness representation and the ways in which artists dealt with “the gradual emergence of…
On physician advocacy
Michelle Munyikwa // One of the first pieces I ever wrote about the practice of medicine was about vulnerability. At the time, I was concerned with how understanding vulnerability as intrinsic to care might help us communicate more effectively with patients. We might imagine how, if physicians found it easier to embody vulnerability, they could…
The Concept of Debility
In her book The Right to Maim, Jasbir Puar introduces the concept “debility,” distinguished from disability. The former is a process of slow wearing out, while the latter centralizes the event of becoming disabled and the entitlement afterward. In the disability framework, disability is exceptional, a condition caused by an accident that may affect anyone…
ASMR: The Therapeutic Potential of the Under–researched Tingles
Botsa Katara // Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a neologism attributed to “a sensory phenomenon typically characterised by electrostatic-like tingling across the scalp, following the line of the spine downwards, extending to the arms and further depending on the intensity of the response” (1)[1].This sensation is triggered by certain auditory, tactile, visual and cognitive…
Pearl of Oyster, Tooth of Dog, and Sugar: Dental Hygiene in Renaissance Italy
Claire Litt // By the end of the 16th century sugar prices were within reach of the European middle class, and a dental crisis was upon them. The Portuguese colonized Brazil in 1516, establishing a sugar industry through the enslavement of African and Indigenous peoples. The effect was a dramatic fall in sugar prices in…
On Virality, Corona or Otherwise.
Travis Chi Wing Lau // About two weeks ago, I tweeted out about a troubling experience that happened while I was riding my apartment elevator after a long day of writing and teaching. Little did I know that it would circulate so widely, that it would go viral. In the ensuing days, replies to the…
