Tianyuan Huang // Reviewing recommendations on how to see a doctor from a women’s health journal in 1911, this essay explores physician-patient communication and what the distribution of responsibilities and powers tells us about a health culture in its fast evolving historical context.
Tag: narrative
Exit, pursued by a Shark: A Pandemic in Four or More Acts
Emily Waples // Following reports of the President’s coronavirus infection, Twitter was replete with a certain kind of comment, expressing consensus that something—the presidency, the country, the year 2020—had decidedly jumped the shark. A throng of commenters including Dr. Bob Wachter, Chair of the UCSF Department of Medicine—who has tweeted copiously about COVID-19 in an…
Parenting in Public, from Passivity to Peace
Mira Assaf Kafantaris and Alicia Andrzejewski Introduction Is the affective experience of public parenting a health concern, a concern for the medical humanities? Certainly, the constant surveillance of parents, mothers in particular, is born out of care and concern for the well-being of children. This surveillance and the interventions/invasions it inspires, however, result in a…
Reading into Diagnosis
Sarah Roth // The Genetics Department at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. displays hundreds of pamphlets in the waiting room, stacked at every corner table. Some of them I recognize, having revised them back in the office. The pamphlets have titles like: What is My Family Tree Telling Me? and PKU and You….
The Criminal Mind: Discourses of Mental Health and Crime, Part 2.
Enlarged Photograph from “Brains of Feebleminded and Criminalist Persons,” a display at the 1921 Second International Congress of Eugenics. Part of Myrtelle M. Canavan Papers, 1898-1945, GA 10.20 “Myrtell Used with permission from the Harvard Medical Library. Abigail Jane Mack I began Part 1 of this series with the image I reproduce here. Item number 1552…