New Books in Medicine

Building Better Scientific Teams through Team Science and TeamMAPPS

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Kay Colley, Kevin Wooten, Cynde Ferris) — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:23:16 +0000

This inaugural podcast for the Voices of Discovery podcast from the University of Houston Clear Lake features a discussion of Team MAPPS, a federally-funded program that is available online to help people increase collaboration within teams. The Team Methods to Advance Processes and Performance in Science (Team MAPPS) training program was specifically designed to help scientific teams develop and master the skills of Team Science so that collaboration is more effective as scientific teams tackle the complex challenges of our world today. Listen as Dr. Kevin Wooten, professor at UHCL, and Cynde Ferris, adjunct professor at UHCL and director of educational technology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, explain the origins of TeamMAPPS and how the science of Team Science can be helpful for teamwork.

Dr. Kay L. Colley is executive director of the Center for Faculty Development at the University of Houston Clear Lake and host of its Voices of Discovery podcast.

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Ben Westhoff ed.,"Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy" (Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

An account of the North American fentanyl crisis told through stories and photographs of its victims

Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy (Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026), edited by Ben Westhoff, author of Fentanyl, Inc., is a different kind of drug book. Part biography, part coffee-table photo collection, it seeks to put a human face on a public health crisis too often discussed in statistics and numbers. Westhoff's book profiles 80 people, 76 victims of fentanyl overdose and 4 survivors, and shows the fullness of their personalities, as well as their legacy in the work their mourning families carry on. Its purpose is to move public officials and health departments to emphasize recovery and treatment for those battling with this drug.

Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). Her new book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs, was released in 2026.

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Erin Maglaquel "Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body" (Astra House, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Erin Maglaque's new book Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body (Astra House, 2026), is a work of early modern history and an account of what it is like to study the past as an embodied person. Having been trained as to disregard the physical self when writing history, Maglaque's worldview completely shifted following the birth of her child. What might it mean to instead, "find a way to write that flowed from the body?" Presence is her answer. The book draws from a vast array of archival and printed sources to illustrate the realities of women's physical experiences in early modern Europe, from eating, pregnancy, abortion, birth, nursing, sleeping, working, and dying. Maglaque intersperses her historical narrative with personal accounts, demonstrating the ways in which studying the past can impact our lives today. For anyone interested in women's history, the history of labor, early modern health and medicine, or simply the purpose and potential of historical study, Presence is the book to read.

Erin Maglaque is a historian of early modern Europe and gender. She teaches at Durham University and writes for publications including the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Book Review.

Elspeth Currie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women’s intellectual history in early modern Europe. Learn more here

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Ketil Slagstad, "Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine (U Chicago Press, 2025) traces the emergence of trans medicine in Scandinavia in the twentieth century, exploring the construction and negotiation of medical expertise among medical professionals, patients, and activists in the media and government bureaucracy. The book combines the author’s analysis of medical records and other archival sources with oral history interviews with former patients, activists, doctors, psychologists, and civil servants. Physician-historian Ketil Slagstad uses the Scandinavian story of sex reassignment to anchor not only the role of the state but also bureaucracy and social rights. Scandinavian countries, he shows, played a foundational role in the emergence of trans medicine internationally. As a result, Standardizing Sex tells a transnational history of medicine that sheds light on a set of relations and problems that continue to impact discussions of trans medicine and trans rights around the world.
Slagstad’s sources offer a rare opportunity to explore the emergence of trans medicine in action in the clinic, laboratory, waiting room, and operating room, as well as in the bureaucrat’s office, on the psychologist’s couch, and in the publications and meetings of activist groups. Together, these sources allow for the analysis of the increasingly complex negotiations of nosological criteria, medical knowledge, and medical practices in a formative period for transgender medicine. More generally, the book offers a story about the reshaping of the normal and the pathological in modern societies.

Ketil Slagstad is a research fellow at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at Charité: Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

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Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer et al eds., "Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 6 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

What does medical anthropology look like in the twenty-first century?

That is the central question of Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century, a new edited volume by Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, Junko Kitanaka and Eugene Raikhel, published by Rutgers University Press in 2026.

Rather than simply offering an overview of the field, the book invites us to rethink where medical anthropology has been, where it is now, and where it might be going.

What makes the collaboration particularly interesting is that the editors work across different geographical and intellectual locations. Their perspectives come together in a book that itself crosses borders, disciplines and medical worlds.

The book is also particularly timely as medicine is being transformed by AI, genetic technologies, digital health, pharmaceuticals and climate change, while longstanding questions of inequality, race, colonialism and access to care remain.

In my New Books Network conversation with the editors, we explore these questions and also the story behind the collaboration itself: How did three scholars working across different intellectual and geographical contexts come together? Why map medical anthropology through keywords? What should the field retain, rethink and confront in the twenty-first century?

Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century does not offer a final map and invites us to keep redrawing the territory.

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Janaka Jayawickrama and Jerome Wright, "Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 6 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

What went wrong with global mental health?

Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) critically examines how the globalisation of mental health through the dominant medical model has created barriers to understanding and responding to distress with reference to cases from Malawi and Sri Lanka. Its authors argue that mental health must be understood within the overall health of an individual, and individual health is located within the social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental context in which they live. Their analyses demonstrate that supplanting locally developed responses to distress with a Western medicalised model of mental health inhibits a meaningful engagement with individuals and communities in need of care. Further, they argue that this ‘supplanting’ is analogous with a colonial endeavour, and one which diverts attention from the real problems of development. Across contexts the book highlights the difficulties that mental health professionals face in facilitating individuals’ capacities within structurally damaging socio-economic environments and increasingly commercially orientated health systems.

Janaka Jayawickrama is Professor of Social Anthropology and Director at the Research Centre for Health and Wellbeing at Shanghai University.

Jerome Wright is Associate Professor in the Department of Health Sciences, University of York.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

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Leah Kim, "Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 5 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Leah Kim about her powerful book, Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026).

A deeply personal examination of the dire state of our maternal and postpartum care for mothers.
For expecting and new parents, too often the care is so focused on a healthy baby that the mother's physical and mental needs are overlooked. Mothers face intense pressure to have the perfect birth plan, breastfeed with ease, and immediately bond with their baby. Unfortunately, these expectations can lead to anxiety, depression, and overwhelm. But it doesn't have to be that way. In Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood, Leah Kim explores her own pregnancy and early motherhood experience as a person of the global majority, the ways society fails new mothers, the mental health struggles of expecting and new mothers, the systemic neglect in care for mothers with marginalized identities, and how motherhood can be the inspiration for getting help and healing. Her story, enhanced with expert interviews, valuable resources, and the testimonies of other mothers, not only illuminates the impact of insufficient maternal care but also shows readers what can be done to improve care for mothers.Mom, Unfilteredis profoundly personal and brutally honest, yet it is ultimately deeply hopeful. It is about survival and growth, an invitation to move beyond our current social, cultural, and familial realities to support mothers in a meaningful way-physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Leah 수진 Kim is a storyteller, author, consultant, podcaster, and community organizer. She is a recovering yoga teacher and spent 10 years as Nike's Global Yoga Ambassador. Her first book "Mom, Unfiltered" will be published in April 2026.

About the host:

Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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Linguistic Unease in Healthcare

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick chats with Dr. Nicole Marinaro, a sociolinguist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hamburg. Her work explores how language policies shape people's experiences of accessing healthcare and other public services. Dr. Marinaro’s research focuses on linguistic justice, examining how communication barriers affect patients who speak a language other than the majority language and how these barriers can lead to unequal access to care. Today she and Brynn discuss her 2025 paper "Operationalising linguistic unease for the evaluation of language policies in healthcare".

In this paper, Dr. Marinaro expands on the concept of "linguistic unease" as a practical framework for evaluating whether healthcare language policies truly meet patients' communication needs. Through her research, Dr. Marinaro aims to help policymakers and healthcare organizations create more inclusive systems that ensure everyone can communicate confidently and receive equitable care.

References

Gazzola, M., & Marinaro, N. (2022). Sprachenpolitik und Integration in Ausländerbehörden und Krankenhäusern: Der Fall Berlin und Leipzig. Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik, 2022, 57–84.
Marinaro, N. (2025). Operationalising linguistic unease for the evaluation of language policies in healthcare. Revista de Llengua i Dret (84), 73–93. DOI here

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Encore - Shai Lavi, "Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Once upon a time, or so we’ve been told, medical ethics were confined to the patient-doctor relationship. As long as doctors were true to their Hippocratic oaths, as long as they acted with compassion and wisdom, then all expectations were met.

Life is more complicated today, and so is healthcare: an undertaking, like all others, that is influenced by social, political, legal and cultural factors.

Nothing is value-free.

In Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Professor Shai Lavi and his colleagues have produced a groundbreaking work that offers a novel understanding of Israeli bioethics. It is a milestone in the comparative literature of bioethics.

Bringing together a range of experts, the book's interdisciplinary structure employs a contemporary, sociopolitical-oriented approach to bioethics issues, with an emphasis on empirical analysis, that will appeal not only to scholars of bioethics, but also to students of law, medicine, humanities, and social sciences around the world. Its focus on the development of bioethics in Israel serves as a template for cross-cultural and transcultural research into the moral, ethical, political and social aspects of bioethics.

This episode originally aired on 8/12/2019 and was republished on 8/28/2026.

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Emile Chabal, "The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian" (Harvard UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was one of the foremost European intellectuals of the twentieth century. He published hundreds of articles on modern history and culture, and his books became canonical works and bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. His crystal-clear writing, vast erudition, and ability to make his Marxist analysis digestible to a wide audience brought him worldwide renown. Yet Hobsbawm was no academic hermit. Through his globetrotting journalism, he was embedded in an extraordinary web of politicians, activists, and fellow intellectuals across Europe, South Asia, and the Americas, including Manmohan Singh, Che Guevara, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Fernand Braudel, E. P. Thompson, Arno Mayer, and Salvador Allende.

In The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian (Harvard University Press, 2026), Emile Chabal traces the origins of Hobsbawm’s ideas and most famous writings by exploring his scholarly foundations, delving deep into the archives to uncover hidden links and unexpected conversations that shaped his pathbreaking work. Going well beyond the Ages series of modern history books for which Hobsbawm is best known, Chabal offers the first substantial interpretation of Hobsbawm’s entire body of writing. Indeed, The Age of Hobsbawm is also a trove of unique insights into the generations of Marxist writers with whom Hobsbawm was in conversation—authors whose work continues to shape political debates globally.

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Ting Hui Lau, "Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism" (Stanford UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A series of questions have been sparked by the indigenous urgency of the moment: What does it mean to live through a world coming undone? How do people carry on amid rupture, loss, and grief? Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism (Stanford University Press, 2026) explores these questions through the turbulent lives of Indigenous Lisu subsistence farmers in China’s Eastern Himalayas, bordering Myanmar and Tibet.

Like many of China’s Indigenous borderlands, this mountainous region has long borne the force of encroaching Chinese state power. Since the 1980s, the Chinese state has been compelling the Lisu to give up their subsistence lifeways, move into urban settlements, and send their children to government boarding schools. In exchange for the so-called gifts of development—healthcare, income, and education—they suffer environmental and social catastrophes such as mass landslides, strange new illnesses, and toxic food.

Drawing on over a decade of engagement with the Lisu, Ting Hui Lau takes readers into the world of ex-shamans, heart-pained mothers, restless spirits, and demon-mad migrants as they grapple with the fallout from state development, which Lau argues is the latest phase in a centuries-long project of settler colonialism along China's Southwest frontier. At once a portrayal of loss and an ethnography of hope, Lau chronicles Lisu worldmaking amid this destruction, centering their quiet resistance through everyday acts of communal caretaking. In a time of escalating geopolitical and ecological crisis, this book calls for a new decolonial politics rooted in the transformative power of endurance.

Ting Hui Lau (email address: lau.th@nus.edu.sg) is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. She studies sociocultural, psychological, and medical anthropology, development and environmental change, Indigeneity and colonialism, and the borderland areas of East and Southeast Asia.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Mark Solms, "The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing" (Pegasus, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Once dismissed as unscientific, psychoanalytic therapy is proving to be among our most effective medical treatments of any kind - outperforming psychiatric drugs and rivaling vaccines in its power to prevent and heal. Why does it work so well?
Perhaps because one of the most controversial figures in psychology was right all along. Neuroscience now confirms much of what Sigmund Freud conjectured over a century ago: our deepest struggles stem, not from chemical imbalances, but from buried memories and unconscious conflicts that no pill can touch.
Using enthralling case studies and cutting-edge brain science, pioneering neuroscientist Mark Solms makes the case that psychoanalysis should resume its position as our master theory of the mind. Yet modern research also reveals where Freud got important things wrong. Could correcting these errors make therapy even more effective?
As psychiatric diagnoses soar and standard treatments continue to fail many patients, The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing (Pegasus, 2026) offers a revolutionary hope: a real science of healing, rooted in the radical idea that our suffering arises from truths we haven't yet faced.

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The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine with Jonathan Fuller

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Jonathan Fuller’s The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a philosophical tour through scientific medicine, visiting its distinctive problems, particularly problems brought about by the twentieth century fusion of medicine with epidemiology. Drawing on the author’s training in philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and clinical medicine, the book examines the contours of the ‘epidemiological medicine’ that resulted from this fusion. It dissects several philosophical problems of the new modern medicine while exploring topics such as theories of contagion and cancer, concepts and theories of disease etiology, the nature of chronic diseases and mental disorders, concepts of medical risk, models of medical evidence and medical prediction, the problems of extrapolating from clinical research, therapeutic skepticism, and the future of modern medicine. Expansive, detailed, rigorous, insightful, and refreshingly penetrable, The New Modern Medicine is an ambitious contribution to the philosophy of medicine and to our understanding of scientific medicine. It is available online open access.

This episode is hosted by Alex Broadbent, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Durham University and Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He is Director of the Durham-Johannesburg Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Public Health, and co-leads the Measurement Lab in the Institute for Medical Humanities.

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Thomas F. Rzeznik, "A Monument of Charity: St. Vincent’s Hospital and Catholic Health Care in New York City" (NYU Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

St. Vincent's Hospital began with a simple, but radical mission: to care for all those in need regardless of race, creed, or financial means. For more than 160 years, the hospital carried out that work, serving notables and the nameless alike, from impoverished immigrants and those stricken by devastating nineteenth-century epidemics to AIDS patients and the victims of the attacks of 9/11.

A Monument of Charity: St. Vincent’s Hospital and Catholic Health Care in New York City (NYU Press, 2026) provides the first comprehensive history of this remarkable institution, from its humble beginnings in 1849 to its abrupt closure in 2010. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, St. Vincent's earned distinction not only for the quality of its medical programs, but also for its unwavering dedication to the poor. The hospital was a testament to the vision and labor of the Sisters of Charity, who founded, staffed, and administered the hospital with remarkable skill and devotion.

This captivating account documents St. Vincent's growth into one of the largest and most prominent Catholic medical centers in the United States, as well as its struggles to sustain its religious mission within the ever-changing and increasingly competitive medical marketplace. A Monument to Charity highlights the immense contributions of Catholic sisters to health care in the United States as well as the enduring legacy of all those who worked alongside them to care for the sick and alleviate suffering.

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Adam Barsouk, "Outsmarting Cancer: Risk Reduction and the Power of Prevention" (JHU Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 1 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Outsmarting Cancer: Risk Reduction and the Power of Prevention (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026) reframes one of the most pressing medical challenges of our time: how to prevent cancer.

In this timely and accessible book, physician and medical researcher Adam Barsouk, MD, presents a sweeping examination of cancer's true origins-biological, environmental, dietary, infectious, industrial, occupational, and behavioral-and makes a compelling case for why cancer prevention must become a central priority in public and personal health.

With personal stories from his clinical practice and the latest research, Dr. Barsouk explains why more people are getting diagnosed with cancer-and at younger ages-than ever before.

This book explores a wide range of overlooked and misunderstood risk factors, as well as how inequities in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention disproportionately impact underserved populations.

Unlike typical cancer books that focus narrowly on diet or organ-specific disease, Outsmarting Cancer takes a comprehensive, systems-level view, urging readers to look beyond the symptoms and target the root causes.

Dr. Barsouk explores the role of genetic predisposition to cancer alongside environmental, lifestyle, and public policy influences that may contribute to developing the disease.

With rigorous scientific insight, he offers real-world, evidence-based strategies to reduce cancer risk in practical, meaningful ways.

Honest, urgent, and empowering, Outsmarting Cancer challenges readers to rethink how we talk about cancer and how we can reduce its burden before it begins.

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Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Jews have been active participants in shaping the healing practices of the communities of Eastern Europe. Their approach largely combined the ideas of traditional Ashkenazi culture with the heritage of medieval and early modern medicine. Holy rabbis and faith healers, as well as Jewish barbers, innkeepers, and peddlers, all dispensed cures, purveyed folk remedies for different ailments, and gave hope to the sick and their families based on kabbalah, numerology, prayer, and magical Hebrew formulas. Nevertheless, as new sources of knowledge penetrated the traditional world, modern medical ideas gained widespread support. Jews became court physicians to the nobility, and when the universities were opened up to them, many also qualified as doctors. At every stage, medicine proved an important field for cross-cultural contacts.

In A Frog Under the Tongue: Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe (Liverpool UP, 2024), Marek Tuszewicki studies manuscripts, printed publications, and memoirs to tease out therapeutic advice, recipes, magical incantations, kabbalistic methods, and practical techniques, together with the ethical considerations that such approaches entailed. His research fills a gap in the study of folk medicine in Eastern Europe, shedding light on little-known aspects of Ashkenazi culture, and on how the need to treat sickness brought Jews and their neighbors together.

Join YIVO for a discussion with Tuszewicki about this book, led by cultural critic and playwright Rokhl Kafrissen.

Buy the book here

This book talk originally took place on November 11, 2024.

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Khiara Bridges, "Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans" (MIT Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care.
From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.
Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the United States, Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans (MIT Press, 2026) reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant black people are making in order to survive what has been called the “black maternal health crisis.”
Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism’s reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women’s experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status.

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Philippa Gander, "Life in Sync: The Science of Internal Clocks and How We’re Disrupting Them" (Princeton UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

All of life is profoundly shaped by the daily, monthly, and yearly cycles of our planet, and all creatures have internal timekeeping systems that rely on cues from the surrounding environment. With modern technology, we are changing our environments—and by proxy, the ecosystems around us—to override these innate rhythms of life. But at what cost? Life in Sync: The Science of Internal Clocks and How We're Disrupting Them (Princeton University Press, 2025) reveals how Earth’s rotations shape our biology, what human sleep cycles looked like before the advent of artificial light, and why technology can’t free us from the constraints of our circadian clocks.

Philippa Gander explores the science behind the biological rhythms that animate us and our world, blending captivating storytelling with illuminating examples ranging from migratory birds and hibernating squirrels to jet-lagged pilots and astronauts in space. She shows how genetic circadian clocks are an ancient evolutionary adaptation that we share with all life on the planet, and how our rapidly expanding use of artificial light at night disrupts the time cues for entire ecosystems. Gander explains why cutting back on sleep adversely affects our well-being, safety, and longevity, and how breakthroughs in sleep science offer solutions to bring our lives more in harmony with nature’s rhythms.

An astonishing journey of scientific discovery, Life in Sync unlocks the mysteries of biological time—and offers new perspectives for anyone who has ever given up a good night’s sleep for the sake of their hectic waking hours.

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Sara Farhan, "Medical Education and the Making of Iraqi Doctors, 1869–1959" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Medical Education and the Making of Iraqi Doctors, 1869–1959 (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) by Dr. Sara Farhan offers a rigorous social and cultural history of the formation of medical professionals in modern Iraq and their role in shaping public health institutions. Tracing developments from late Ottoman medical reforms to the establishment of the Medical College of Mosul, the book examines the institutionalization of medical education as a critical element of the social transformation of Iraq. It reveals how shifting imperial, colonial and national frameworks sought to cultivate a cadre of physicians who would serve state and society. These experts, however, often found themselves navigating competing ideological imperatives.

This extensively researched study highlights a wealth of rarely consulted sources gathered from 14 archives, family collections, medical journals, student newspapers, film and oral interviews. Drawing on these materials, it interrogates the contradictions inherent in state-driven efforts, wherein doctors functioned as agents of reform and subjects of bureaucratic oversight. Through this, Dr. Farhan reveals the nexus between medical pedagogy, professional authority, public health policy and the broader political transformations that continually redefined medicine in Iraq.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Nicholas Freudenberg, "Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since The 1960s" (Columbia UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Today I'm speaking with Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Health at the CUNY School of Public Health. We are discussing his book, Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since the 1960s (Columbia University Press, 2026). In March 2020, during one of the first major US outbreaks of Covid, New York became an epicenter of the spread. New York's connective tissue, like the walkable city streets, subways, and taxi cabs, became pathways of transmission. In places where ideas and cultures can spread, diseases can, too. As the hospitals began to fill, essential workers from doctors and nurses to ambulance drivers and social workers stepped up to help heal the city in a time of crisis. For a brief moment, health workers became highly visible in our public consciousness. For many, the pandemic came as a shock. It had been more than 100 years since the last pandemic of comparable magnitude hit the five boroughs. We soon discovered that there already existed a network of public health workers and activists waiting to spring into action to blunt the virus's spread. Many wished that this network had been more robust, better developed, and better funded. Fighting for New York looks at the long sweep of public health activism in New York City from the 1960s to now. Covid was not the first public health crisis the city faced, and it certainly won't be the last. Nicholas details various initiatives to mobilize support for public health projects in the city. How have activists identified problems in their communities? How have they gained institutional support in addressing these problems? And how do they discover and implement workable solutions to the identified problems? Though primarily a work of history, Fighting for New York also serves as a road map for public health workers and activists seeking to navigate contemporary issues.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Nyck Walsh, "Neurodivergent Somatics in Therapy: An Anti-Oppressive Model for Whole Person Care" (Norton, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A new paradigm that honors the wisdom and wholeness of neurodivergent clients. Focusing on autism and what is medically known as ADHD, neurodivergent author Nyck Walsh takes readers on an anti-oppressive, intersectional journey into a new standard of care for neurodivergent clients and their therapists. Whether new to or well-versed in the neurodiversity paradigm, readers will learn how to best support their neurodivergent clients in a way that prioritizes their well-being, honors their self-expertise, encourages their anti-ableist embodiment, and celebrates their joy. Bridging the theoretical with the practical, Walsh’s model offers a tangible framework that can be applied on its own or in tandem with other modalities. Neurodivergent Somatics in Therapy (Norton, 2026) is an intimate and engaging guide to providing accessible, liberatory, whole-person care that will benefit clients and therapists of all neurotypes.

Nyck Walsh, MA, LPC, (he/they) brings a whole person, anti-oppressive, intersectional, somatic lens to working with Autistic and KCS/VAST (what is commonly known as ADHD) folx. An Autistic and VAST counselor, Nyck is the director of Nyck Walsh Counseling & Training Center and creator of the Neurodivergent Somatics model. He curates reparative experiences for late identified Autistic and VAST folx to connect with their innate wisdom, dismantle ableism, be supported in their challenges, and unpack their lives through their unidentified and misunderstood Neurodivergent (ND) experience. His counselor education programs have created an international following, and both ND and neurotypical counselors alike report feeling deeply validated by his approach.

Registration for Public Programs event with Nyck at CIIS on July 16.

waHelena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies in the Somatic Psychology program. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).

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Elizabeth Cotton, "UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health" (Policy Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health (Policy Press, 2025) is the essential guide to the rise of digital therapy for anyone working in, researching or using mental health services.

This timely book explores the emerging uberization of therapy through algorithmic control, datafication of despair and attrition by design. Analysing the deployment of e-commerce business models, this book makes a compelling case that the rise of 'therapeutic Tinder' allows would-be clients to sidestep the deep, uncomfortable work of therapy. UberTherapy offers a defence for the irreplaceable value of human therapists and a roadmap for preserving the legacies of real therapy in the digital world.

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Hilary R. Buxton, "Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body in First World War Britain" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body in First World War Britain (U Chicago Press, 2026) examines how imperial precedents and racial ideologies shaped the medical treatments that the British state offered to several million Black and brown servicemen during World War I. In recovering the voices and experiences of these soldiers, Hilary R. Buxton illustrates how they navigated the institutional culture of the imperial military and how they helped to shape health and welfare systems well beyond the interwar period.

The Great War was the first time that troops and volunteers from nearly all reaches of the Empire participated in the war effort side-by-side. Despite official attempts at segregation, colonial troops met in trenches, mobile camps, casualty clearing stations, hospital ships, and convalescent homes. Just as importantly, those organizing treatment encountered men of different ethnicities, religions, and cultures from across and beyond the British Empire. For British officials, this moment offered an opportunity to remake colonial efficiency and medical knowledge. Yet, as Buxton shows, colonial servicemen were not passive subjects in a wartime laboratory: they were vocal participants who demanded a say in the therapies prescribed to them, the rations they required, the psychiatric care they received, and the prosthetics with which they were fitted. Together, these encounters profoundly remade colonial relations, reshaping imperial science, administration, and colonial understandings of subjecthood.
Disabled Empire pushes literature on the war and medicine outside its national, Eurocentric focus to confront the colonial logic of global health inequity.

Hilary R. Buxton is assistant professor of history at Kenyon College.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

YouTube Channel: here

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Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

A woman miscarries and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administers and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia and spend nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work and is sentenced to 126 years. These cases are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a system that punishes women and queer people not for what they have done, but for who they are. In the United States, nearly three-quarters of all wrongly convicted women were convicted of crimes that never occurred at all.

Valena Beety, co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project and award-winning legal scholar cited by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reveals how ordinary tragedies—a child’s sudden death, a husband who dies in his sleep—are transformed by prosecutors into murders that never happened. These “no crime” convictions disproportionately target women and queer people, whose identities are recast as evidence of guilt through bias, junk science, and entrenched stereotypes. Drawing on devastating real-life cases, Professor Beety exposes how prosecutorial overreach, flawed forensic science, and cultural panic converge—and how fetal personhood laws, the fall of Roe v. Wade, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation have dramatically expanded the reach of criminal law. What emerges is a chilling portrait of a legal system that increasingly criminalizes pregnancy outcomes, motherhood, and queer identity itself.

Guest: A wrongful convictions litigator and former federal prosecutor, Valena Beety is the McKinney Professor of Law at Indiana University-Bloomington Maurer School of Law and a co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project. Her coursebook The Wrongful Convictions Reader is used in classrooms nationwide to teach about wrongful convictions.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She uses her Ph.D. in history to explore which stories we tell, and what happens to those we never tell. She is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Robert W. Snyder, "When the City Stopped: Stories from New York's Essential Workers" (Cornell UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The COVID-19 pandemic delivered its first and most devastating strike in the United States in New York City in the Spring of 2020. Closely connected to the world by air travel, with a virus able to circle the globe in a single flight, and with a population always living life largely in public spaces, sickness swept through the city, with the daily death toll reaching, at its worst point in April 2020, almost 800 persons per day.

In When the City Stopped: Stories from New York’s Essential Workers (Cornell UP, 2026) author Robert W. Snyder offers readers the voices of 45 New Yorkers, recorded in real time during the pandemic, people whose names we would likely not know or recognize. Snyder centers the “oral histories” of these 45 -- transit workers, ambulance drivers, grocery store clerks, firefighters, police officers, “deliveristas” of take-out food, nurses, and doctors. These 45 also speak for thousands of others, the people we came to know as “essential workers.” They could not work from home. They showed up to do their jobs every day during the most dangerous weeks of early Spring 2020, and beyond. Their dedication cost some of them their lives, but their courage, perseverance, and endurance ensured that the city and its people would be saved, in the author’s words, “from the bottom up.”

This interview was conducted by James Melchiorre, a journalist, documentary producer, and teacher of English as a Second Language. Melchiorre lives in New York City.

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Geraldine Fela, "Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia's AIDS Crisis" (UNSW Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 3 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The claim that real change is enabled by grassroots, community-based movements might seem a distant ideal, but Dr Geraldine Fela shows such assertions are far from hypothetical. Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia's AIDS Crisis (UNSW Press, 2024) shows that grassroots movements were what made Australia’s response to the AIDS epidemic better than elsewhere.

HIV and AIDS devastated communities across Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. In the midst of this profound health crisis, nurses provided crucial care to those living with and dying from the virus. They negotiated homophobia and complex family dynamics as well as defending the rights of their patients. Bringing together stories from across the country, historian Geraldine Fela documents the extraordinary care, compassion and solidarity shown by HIV and AIDS nurses. Critical Care unearths the important and unexamined history of nurses and nursing unions as caregivers and political agents who helped shape Australia's response to HIV and AIDS.

In addition to this NBN interview Geraldine Fela has a podcast episode on the ABC Rewind series, 'Blood Prejudice and Nursing'

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Gloria Sibson Ayob, "The Concept of Emotional Disorder" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Concept of Emotional Disorder (Oxford University Press, 2025) is a philosophical and academic exploration of how society determines whether emotions are considered normal human experiences or emotional disorders. The book examines the concern that some ordinary emotions may be “over pathologized,” meaning they are increasingly treated as medical or psychiatric problems rather than understandable human responses to life circumstances.

Drawing from philosophy, psychology, and mental health theory, Dr. Ayob explores how people evaluate emotions and how those evaluations shape our understanding of emotional disorder.

In the author’s framing, the concept of “emotional disorder” is not simple or straightforward. It is built upon many smaller judgments we make about emotions, including whether emotions are reasonable, excessive, disruptive, socially acceptable, or connected to a person’s lived experience.

Key Ideas:

The book examines how emotional disorders are conceptually defined.
Explores whether modern society sometimes medicalizes ordinary emotional experiences too quickly.
Lived experience, personal meaning, and context all influence how emotions are understood.
Encourages deeper reflection about the assumptions society makes when labeling emotions as healthy or pathological.
Emotional awareness and reasoning are connected.
Understanding our emotions can help us better understand ourselves and the world around us.

One of the strongest ideas from the discussion was that human beings process emotions through their own lived reality and personal experiences. What may feel distressing or emotionally overwhelming does not automatically mean it is a disorder. Sometimes emotional pain is part of being human, especially during difficult life experiences, loss, uncertainty, stress, or change.

The conversation also emphasized the importance of emotional self-awareness and reasoning. Being informed about our emotions may help us better understand our reactions rather than immediately viewing every difficult emotional experience through a strictly medical lens.

Angela Marie Hutchinson is the author of “Create Your Yes! When You Keep Hearing No,” named a Forbes No. 4 book to advance your career. She is a podcast host for New Books Network, where she leads conversations for the neuroscience and Christianity channels. Hutchinson is also a talent and intellectual property executive, former social media professor and BBC commentator. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

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Matthew L. Reznicek, "Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale" (Liverpool UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale (Liverpool UP, 2026) is about the way the Romantic National Tale exercises power and defines the boundaries of citizenship through the categories of health, illness, and disability. When we see these categories at work in these novels, we understand how socio-political belonging is premised on the conception of the healthy body, to the exclusion of bodies deemed otherwise. Employing the medical humanities and, especially, the social determinants of health, this book shows that the National Tale achieves its consolidation of the nation through its enforcement of a rigorous politics of health that polices its characters' and citizens' bodies. Focusing on novels from Sydney Owenson, Maria Edgeworth, Germaine de Staël, Walter Scott, and Jane Austen allows this argument to show that the imbricated concerns of health and citizenship extend well beyond the immediate anxiety roused by the implementation of the 1800 Act of Union. This book argues that, by prioritizing the categories of health, illness, and disability, we better understand how power and citizenship function in this widely influential early nineteenth-century genre of Romantic fiction and, thus, how we continue to envision citizenship as an extension of bodily characteristics.

Matthew L. Reznicek is Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where he uses eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and Irish literature to explore the impact of social, historical, and cultural factors in the experience of medicine
and health.

Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th- and 21st-century Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies.

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Kristin LaFollette, "Rehumanizing People of the Past: Bioarchaeology, Medical Museums and Archives, and the Human Remains Trade" (SUNY Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Rehumanizing People of the Past: Bioarchaeology, Medical Museums and Archives, and the Human Remains Trade (SUNY Press, 2026) argues that much of the technical communication used to reference human remains--including reports in bioarchaeology, labels and descriptions in medical museums and archives, and web content in the human remains trade--does not adequately recognize the humanity of the individuals represented by those remains. The book presents "rehumanizing language" as a solution to this dehumanization problem, framing it as advocacy and social justice work in technical communication. Building from concepts and ethical standards in bioarchaeology, medical museums and archives, and the human remains trade along with technical communication and rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM), each chapter presents a framework for developing rehumanizing language in various contexts to better honor, dignify, and respect the people represented by human remains. These frameworks are also applied to several original studies, which explore existing technical communication and the ways it uses rehumanizing language or could be adapted to be more rehumanizing. Overall, this book is a tool for both technical communicators and practitioners in numerous fields, offering practical guidance for emphasizing the humanity of the dead.

Kristin LaFollette is Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Indiana. She is the author of Hematology, a full-length collection of poetry, and coeditor of Queer Approaches: Emotion, Expression, and Communication in the Classroom.

Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies.

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Tara Mulder, "A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome" (U California Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In the well-trod history of the Roman Empire, a pivotal moment has long gone unnoticed: It was in ancient Rome that medical men first set their sights on childbirth, the traditional domain of female midwives.
Taking us to the dawn of Western obstetrics, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome (U California Press, 2026) by Dr. Tara Mulder offers a feminist account of how, against a long tradition of midwifery, male doctors began claiming authority in reproductive matters, with an emphasis on theoretical rather than practical knowledge. Their intrusion paved the way for the later criminalization of midwives and the cloaking of childbirth in secrecy and shame.
Yet communities of Roman women continued to help each other through the journey from preconception to postpartum, guided by their own experience and the expertise of midwives. Tara Mulder recovers stories of ancient women living and resisting as they sought autonomy over their bodies and their health. Recounting their experiences in vivid, intimate detail, she reveals how old our modern conflicts about birth truly are.

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Kira Ganga Kieffer, "Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Kira Ganga Kieffer (Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Wesleyan University; PhD, Boston University, 2023) studies contemporary American spiritualities, health, gender, and marketing. Her first book, a history of religion and vaccine skepticism, Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America (Princeton UP, 2026), is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. She is the author of “Smelling Things: Essential Oils and Essentialism in Contemporary American Spirituality,” in Religion & American Culture (2021) and “Manifesting Millions: How Women’s Spiritual Entrepreneurship Genders Capitalism,” in Nova Religio (2020), which received the Thomas Robbins Award for Article of the Year. She has written for Religion & Politics, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Religion for Breakfast.

Kieffer uses textual analysis of spiritual marketing materials to discover how consumer culture creates religious concepts within a secular context. Focused on spiritual items and practices that are marketed to women, Kieffer compares the usage of essential oils by three very different groups of spiritual practitioners: contemporary yogis, evangelical Christians, and witches. Although the usage of essential oils is consumerized, Kieffer argues, the beliefs and practices created by “oilers” are nonetheless meaningful responses to the spiritual yearning. Essential oil practices blur the lines between religious traditions, sharpen individual spirituality, and work to create new collective identities.

Order "Unvaccinated Under God" here: here

Visit Sacred Writes here: here

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Katie Batza, "AIDS in the Heartland: How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics" (UNC Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Katie Batza on their recently published book, AIDS in the Heartland: How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics. Published by the University of North Carolina Press, AIDS in the Heartland demonstrates the unique collaborations of crop duster pilots, church van drivers, nuns, tribal leaders, and synagogue ladies in places such as decommissioned convents, backyard barbecues, high school gyms, and city parks that fostered loud, radical queer politics and homonormative strategies alike. As a result, Batza contends with the respectability of the heart of the nation and how it prevails as core values in national LBGTQ political strategies today.

Histories of AIDS in the United States typically regard San Francisco and New York to be the epicenters of the crisis. The Midwest, if considered at all, appears as a footnote to the social, medical, and political struggles of coastal queer communities and communities of color. But the US heartland cultivated its own distinct strategies for survival that became the surprising and lasting blueprint for LGBTQ politics today. Though AIDS cases were relatively low compared to the coasts, the conservative political and religious landscape, lack of medical infrastructure, and diffuse gay communities brought Midwesterners together in unexpected ways. Unearthing this complex story, health activism expert Katie Batza masterfully illustrates the diversity, resilience, innovation, and influence of the Midwest’s responses to the AIDS epidemic.

Katie Batza is chair of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas and the author of Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s. Their research explores the intersection of sexuality, health, and politics in the late 20th-century United States.

Donna Doan Anderson is a research assistant professor in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Maile Aihua Young is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas-Medical Branch.

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Empathy Takes Action: An Autistic Therapist on the Radical Work of Connection

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Mainstream psychology has long accepted that some people (like those with autism) are naturally more logical and unemotional, while others (like so-called empaths) intuitively experience the feelings of those around them as deeply as their own. But this is wrong. Aimee Cliff, an autistic psychotherapist who empathizes for a living, knows this firsthand. We are all are capable of empathy, because empathy is something you do, not something you are—meaning you can get better at it if you choose to practice.

Drawing on scientific research, clinical experience, and interviews with neurodivergent people, Aimee Cliff examines how empathy works in the brain and body and lays out the five pillars of true empathy: Empathy is humble, empathy is embodied, empathy is amoral, empathy is radical, and empathy is work. At the heart of this expansive new definition is the promise that every one of us can learn to improve our relationships with our fellow humans. We just have to be willing to do the work to close the space between us.

Empathy Takes Action shows us the way to build more loving, kind, and supportive communities and to make room for every kind of mind.

Our guest is: Aimee Cliff, who is a writer and therapist based in London. As a freelance writer, she has bylines in The Guardian, Pitchfork, The Independent, Vice, and more. She currently works for a disability charity. She is the author of Empathy Takes Action.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You help support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

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William R. Brody, "Uncommon Sense: Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Today I’m speaking with William R. Brody about his book, Uncommon Sense: Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026). Bill is an interventional radiologist who served as the President of Johns Hopkins University, from 1996 to 2009, and President of the Salk Institute from 2009 to 2015. When he became president of Johns Hopkins University, Bill set out to teach a course to juniors and seniors that would serve as a crash course for dealing with the messy realities of life. Through stories and anecdotes, Bill explores a variety of important concepts that regularly manifest in all aspects of life: from survivorship bias to why career-planning doesn’t often go as planned. Uncommon Sense is one of those books that one can only write after a lifetime of learning, teaching, and doing.

Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Masud Husain, "Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain" (Canongate, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

What makes us who we are?
Through the stories of seven of his patients, acclaimed Oxford University neurologist Masud Husain shows us how our brains create, change and can even restore our identity. Husain introduces us to a man who ran out of words, a woman who lost all inhibitions and another who believed she was having an affair with the man who was really her husband.
These compelling human dramas reveal how our identities are created by different functions within the brain. It will ignite new ideas about who we really are – and why we act in the ways we do.

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David Blumenthal and James A. Morone, "Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science" (Yale UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

For nearly a century, every Democratic president—and many Republicans—entered office promising to restructure America’s health care system. Barack Obama finally broke through but, in the process, opened a tumultuous decade in which battles over health care dominated American politics. In Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science (Yale University Press, 2026), Dr. David Blumenthal and Dr. James A. Morone go behind the scenes to describe how three very different presidents—pursuing very different goals—maneuvered through the fraught politics of health care.
President Obama ended the century-long quest for reform but ignited a screaming culture war that blazed into the Trump administration and blew up during the COVID epidemic. President Trump, facing the greatest health crisis in a century, denied and dithered. Then he directed a medical triumph in Operation Warp Speed. He and President Biden, facing the pandemic’s devastation, mounted the most successful anti-poverty program in eighty years. But in the tumult, Trump launched a shattering new political war, not over coverage but over science itself.
Authoritative and gripping, this book describes the remarkable achievements of these years while also showing how respect for science clashed with scorn toward the deep state and left the nation unprepared for the next health crisis.

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Jim Downs, "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine" (Harvard UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Jim Downs’ most recent book is Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine. Professor Downs is the Gilder Lehrman-National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Civil War Era Studies and History at Gettysburg College.

The book offers a new history of epidemiology by shifting focus to the people behind the data points—people who were enslaved, imprisoned, or in some circles overlooked by conventional histories of epidemiology. The book shifts across locations and empires from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century because it wants to show how the confluence of war, imperialism, and slavery really made modern epidemiology.

This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and students at Vanderbilt University in the course, “American Medicine & the World.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom. Read Laura's article, "Can New Media Save the Book?"

email: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu

Jim Downs is the Gilder Lehrman-National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Civil War Era Studies and History at Gettysburg College.

Laura Stark is Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society.

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Matthew P. Romaniello, "Europe's Laboratory: Climate and Health in Eighteenth-Century Russia" (Cornell UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Europe's Laboratory: Climate and Health in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cornell UP, 2025) is a history of eighteenth-century naturalists and physicians who were involved in the creation of a classification system for the people of the Russian Empire. These Enlightened scholars traveled through Russia describing its people, landscape, and customs. In an era when climate was seen as a significant factor affecting health and bodies, these men wondered: How did the Russians, a "cold" people—phlegmatic or melancholic, according to humoral theory—manage an empire?

The experiences and observations of doctors and scholars working within the Russian Empire contributed to advances in understanding and/or treating diseases like scurvy, smallpox, and more. Key insights were embedded in the travel writings and correspondences of colorful eighteenth-century figures who Romaniello brings to life with vibrant biographies. Medical knowledge was entangled with stories of culture and imperial politics as well. In Europe's Laboratory, Romaniello’s deft contextualization helps make sense of these intextricable branches of eighteenth-century taxonomies as he demonstrates that the Russian Empire was a part of global knowledge networks.

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Karen O'Brien-Kop and Suzanne Newcombe eds., "Religion, Spirituality and Public Health" (British Academy, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Religion, Spirituality and Public Health: Competing and Complementary Epistemes (British Academy, 2025) focuses on exploring the role of different 'ways of knowing' or arriving at truth, i.e. epistemes, particularly those found in religious and alternative health milieus. While biomedical solutions offer a dominant narrative, these are articulated differently in global contexts. Moreover, individuals often draw upon alternative framings that are sometimes oppositional to and at other times engaged with directives from medical and governmental authorities. The focus of this volume is worldviews and epistemes that are often marginalised or rejected in dominant discourses -- from shamanism in Korea to African Pentecostalism in Britain, and from global online 'AntiVax' narratives to traditional Siddha medicine in South India. Detailed case studies explore the contested, competing and strategically aligned relationships between mainstream and marginal epistemes; between religious healing, spirituality and biomedicine; and between politics and belief. These explorations promote greater insight into how marginalised religious epistemes are employed. Which beliefs and practices are drawn upon to create meaningful and effective responses? And how can we better understand the depth and breadth of these reactions to design more successful public health strategies for future global health crises?

Links

Inform: here

Book: here

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Culturally Safe Healthcare: Addressing Racism and Rebuilding Trust with guest Dr Shingisai Chando

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 9 Apr 2026 05:00:00 +0000

For this episode, we are joined by Dr Shingisai Chando, a published academic and Research Fellow of the POCHE Indigenous Health Centre at the University of Sydney to unpack the question: what does it mean for healthcare systems to be culturally safe? A big question, but one Shingisai tackles with detail and depth. Dr Chando talks to us about how cultural competence changes in different health contexts and across different communities but emphasises the underlying issues of racism in the workplace, as well as the importance of trust, belonging, and true community engagement to build trust.

Produced by: Adubi Plange, Dr Amy McHugh, Sarah Mashman

Podcast Artwork: Zein Arif

Resources:

Below are some of Shingisai’s academic works related to this episode of the Cultural Competence Collective:

Mental Health Support Services:

For University of Sydney staff: CONVERGE

Converge offers multiple dedicated helplines for specialist services:

All staff: 1300 687 327
First Nations helpline: 1300 287 432
LGBTQIA+ Helpline: 1300 542 874
Domestic and Family Violence Helpline: 1300 338 465
Aged Care Helpline: 1300 035 337
Disability and Carers Helpline: 1300 243 543
Youth and Student Helpline: 1300 687 399
Spiritual and Pastoral Care Helpline: 1300 772 435
www.convergeinternational.com.au

Wellmob – social, emotional and cultural wellbeing resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

https://wellmob.org.au/

24-hour crisis hotlines

13 Yarn
Beyond Blue
LifeLine:
NSW Mental Health Line

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Lindsay Rae Smith Privette, "The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Between May 1 and May 22, 1863, Union soldiers marched nearly 200 miles through the hot, humid countryside to assault and capture the fortified city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Upon its arrival, the army laid siege to the city for a grueling forty-seven days. Disease and combat casualties threatened to undermine the army’s fighting strength, leaving medical officers to grapple with the battlefield conditions necessary to sustain soldiers' bodies. Medical innovations were vital to the Union victory. When Vicksburg fell on July 4, triumph would have been fleeting if not for the US Army Medical Department and its personnel.
By centering soldiers' health and medical care in the Union army’s fight to take Vicksburg, in The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War (UNC Press, 2025), Dr. Lindsay Rae Smith Privette offers a fresh perspective on the environmental threats, logistical challenges, and interpersonal conflicts that shaped the campaign and siege. In doing so, Privette shines new light on the development of the army’s medical systems as officers learned to adapt to their circumstances and prove themselves responsible stewards of soldiers' bodies.

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Katherine Harvey, "The Medieval Guide to Healthy Living" (Reaktion, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 1 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

We often think of medieval medicine as strange, unhygienic and unscientific, but The Medieval Guide to Healthy Living (Reaktion, 2026) by Dr. Katherine Harvey reveals a far richer story. Long before modern wellness trends, people in the Middle Ages were actively thinking about how to live well. They followed detailed health regimens, balanced diet with exercise, considered the effects of emotions and sought to avoid illness through environmental awareness and routine care. This book sheds light on the practical and surprisingly relatable ways medieval individuals cared for body and mind. Drawing from historical sources that echo today’s wellness concerns, it offers a fresh, thoughtful view of a misunderstood era. In understanding their world, we might see our own in a new, more connected light.

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Steffan Blayney, "Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body" (Activist Studies of Science, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Our guest today is Steffan Blayney, the author of Health & Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body. In Health & Efficiency, Blayney explores a new model of health that emerged in Britain between 1870 and 1939. Centered on the working body, organized around the concept of efficiency, and grounded in scientific understandings of human labor, scientists, politicians, and capitalists of the era believed that national economic productivity could be maximized by transforming the body of the worker into a machine. At the core of this approach was the conviction that worker productivity was intimately connected to worker health. Under this new "science of work," fatigue was seen as the ultimate pathology of the working-class body, reducing workers' capacity to perform continued physical or mental labor. As Steffan Blayney shows, the equation between health and efficiency did not go unchallenged. While biomedical and psychological experts sought to render the body measurable, governable, and intelligible, ordinary men and women found ways to resist the logics of productivity and efficiency imposed on them, and to articulate alternative perspectives on work, health, and the body.

Steffan Blayney is a former Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, where his work focused on the relations between health, the body, and society, and on histories of political activism in modern and contemporary Britain. He has taught at Birkbeck, Kent, and Sussex, was previously a member of the editorial team at History Workshop Online, and was a co-founder and organizer of History Acts - a radical history workshop and network connecting activists and historians. He also authored the book Long Live Southbank, which celebrates the history and culture of the Undercroft area of the South Bank - the oldest recognized and still existing skateboarding space in the world - and the community that has evolved there over the years. Today, he no longer works within the walls of academia; instead, he is out in the field as a labor organizer, utilizing his talents, knowledge, and expertise in his work with EQUITY, a performing arts and entertainment trade union based in London.

My co-producer today is Drew Marczewski a student in the MA Program in Communication at Oakland University.

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Steffan Blayney, "Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body" (Activist Studies of Science, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

My co-producer today is Drew Marczewski a student in the MA Program in Communication at Oakland University.

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John Oakes, "The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without" (Avid Reader, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

With fasting at an all-time high in popularity, here is an enlightening exploration into the history, science, and philosophy behind the practice—essential to many religions and wellness routines. Whether for philosophical, political, or health-related reasons, fasting marks a departure from daily routine. Based on extensive historical, scientific, and cultural research and reporting, John Oakes The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and the Promise of Doing Without (Avid Reader Press, 2024) illuminates the numerous facets of this act of self-deprivation. John interviews doctors, spiritual leaders, activists, and others who guide him through this practice—and embarks on fasts of his own—to deliver a book that supplies anyone curious about fasting with profound new understanding, appreciation, and inspiration. In recent years, fasting has become increasingly popular for a variety of reasons—from weight loss to detoxing, to the faithful who fast in prayer, to seekers pursuing mindfulness, to activists using hunger strikes as protest. Notable fasters include Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Gandhi, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Cesar Chavez, and a long list of others who have drawn on its power over the ages and across borders and cultures. The Fast looks at the complex science behind the jaw-dropping biological changes that occur inside the body when we fast. Metabolic switching can prompt repair and renewal down to the molecular level, providing benefits for those suffering from obesity and diabetes, cancer, epilepsy, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and more. Longer fasts can both reinvigorate the immune system and protect it against damage. Beyond the physical experience, fasting can be a great collective unifier, and it has been adopted by religions and political movements all over the world for millennia. Fasting is central to holy seasons and days such as Lent (Christianity), Ramadan (Islam), Yom Kippur (Judaism), Uposatha (Buddhism), and Ekadashi (Hinduism). On an individual level, devout ascetics who master self-deprivation to an extreme are believed to be closer to the divine, ascending to enlightenment or even sainthood. Fasting reminds us of the virtues of holding back, of not consuming all that we can. “Broad in scope and rich in insight” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), this book shows us that fasting is about much more than food: it is about taking control of your life in new and empowering ways and reconsidering your place in the world.

John Oakes is the publisher of The Evergreen Review and the editor at large of OR Books. The Fast is his first book.

Saman Nasser holds an M.A. in World History from James Madison University, where he currently works as an administrative staff.

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Susannah B. Mintz, "Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story" (Reaktion, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story (Reaktion, 2026) proposes a bold reimagining of a frequently dismissed condition. Dr. Susannah B. Mintz reframes health anxiety not as a pathology but as a site of creative potential – exploring hypochondria as a form of communication, a reorientation to time, a convergence of personal and communal identity, a declaration of bodymind needs and an embrace of ageing’s transformations. Far-ranging in its attention to historical periods, national literatures, philosophical thought and medical discourse, the book challenges the containment of suffering within narratives of professional authority. In doing so, it seeks to dispel shame and stigma, opening space for new forms of connection and understanding through a deeper attentiveness to the experience of illness.

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Maud Anne Bracke, "Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980 (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The introduction of the principle of women's reproductive liberty in France, tentatively by the family planning movement after 1960 and explicitly by the women's liberation movement after 1970, marked a deep shift, transforming public discourses. Yet this principle remained fiercely contested, and moderate and conservative actors responded by foregrounding notions of 'reproductive responsibility', or the expectation that individuals perform the 'right' sexual and family-making behaviour, benefiting not only themselves and their families, but the nation at large. Such responsibilisation underpinned the legal reforms of the 1960s-70s, framing a notion of reproductive citizenship based on a tension between individual rights and social norms. Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980 (Oxford UP, 2025) breaks new ground by taking an intersectional approach to the defining moments of this period: the legalisation of contraception (the laws of 1967 and 1974) and the liberalisation of abortion (1975, 1979). Drawing on a wide range of sources and actors - including feminist and family planning movements, government actors, demographers, medical-professional organisations, disability rights groups, and key actors in the overseas departments - Maud Bracke demonstrates how the discourse of responsibilisation allowed actors to distinguish between citizens 'worthy' of reproductive rights and those seen as less worthy. Bracke analyses the distinct regulations regarding contraception in the overseas departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique, framed by racialised anti-natalism. The book also demonstrates that disability rights organisations contributed to the discrediting of the notion of 'eugenic abortion', used among experts and policy-makers until the early 1970s. Furthermore, Bracke goes on to highlight the silence in the feminist movement around both disability rights and race as part of its universalisation of women's conditions of oppression, and analyses the emergence of Black Feminism in late-1970s France. In so doing, the book offers a major contribution to the history of sex, gender, family life, healthcare, demography, and political debate in post-war France, and more generally.

Guest Dr. Maud Bracke is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Glasgow, and is also the author of Which Socialism? Whose Detente? West European Communism and the Czechoslovak Crisis of 1968 in 2007 and Women and the Reinvention of the Political: Feminism in Italy (1968-1983) in 2014, as well as the co-editor of Translating Feminism: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Text, Place and Agency in 2021. In addition to authoring numerous journal articles and book chapters and co-editing several special issues of academic journalsb she is also an editor at the Journal of Modern European History and sits on various other editorial boards.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript in progress on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement.

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Helen Redmond, "Liquid Handcuffs: Policing and Punishment in Methadone Clinics and the Future of Opioid Addiction Treatment" (North Atlantic Books, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

A hard-hitting exposé of how methadone clinics fail people in recovery—and an urgent, unapologetic case for their abolition.

Methadone is a life-saving medication. But the current system for obtaining it—the opioid treatment program, commonly known as the methadone clinic—is punitive, unjust, and often humiliating. In this eye-opening book Liquid Handcuffs: Policing and Punishment in Methadone Clinics and the Future of Opioid Addiction Treatment (North Atlantic Books, 2026), social worker and journalist Helen Redmond takes readers inside the hidden world of methadone clinics, exposing the “culture of cruelty” that polices, punishes, and profits from those they’re meant to serve. Through patient stories and extensive interviews with methadone users and clinic workers, Redmond weaves a compelling argument against the current clinic system. She provides a detailed history of how methadone was first developed and why the current system for dispensing methadone arose in the U.S., tracing its entanglement with the carceral system and the “War on Drugs” as well as private equity firms and tech companies. She details the numerous barriers to enter and remain and treatment, as well as standard practices that shame and discriminate against patients, such as restrictions on take-home doses; daily attendance requirements; regular urine testing; and threats of cutting off medication for any infraction of clinic rules. She also explores the nuances of resistance to methadone clinics within communities of color, unpacking the political, racial, and cultural circumstances behind the opposition to methadone. Redmond persuasively makes the case for removing police agencies like the DEA from clinic administration, and shows how a transition to provider-prescribed pharmacy pickup, along with other tools of harm reduction such as safe-supply and peer-support services, would restore dignity to patients struggling with addiction—and save thousands of lives.

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Alan J. McComas, "Consciousness: The Road to Reductionism" (American Scientist, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Neuroscientific evidence increasingly shows that consciousness is a remarkable but explainable function of a machinelike brain. Alan J. McComas' discusses his article for the American Scientist.

Alan J. McComas is an emeritus professor of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.

Greg is the Executive Director and Founder of the World War II Discussion Forum (wwiidf.org). He also has a strong interest in literature, culture, religion, science and philosophy (translation: he's an eclectic reader who is constantly missing deadlines for book reviews).

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Kola Tytler: Sneakerhead, Entrepreneur, and Medical Doctor

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 05:00:00 +0000

In this conversation we hear about Kola’s journey as self-taught coder, business school, learning by doing, and how he is self-funding one person AI company for doctors: Kola Tytler’s parallel journey as an NHS Doctor while building pioneering and potentially world changing business is inspiring.

Listen in on a remarkable conversation between host Richard Lucas and Kola Tytler, now a qualified doctor who taught himself to code.

We explore

the roots of his entrepreneurial activity, despite knowing he wanted to be a doctor from a young age.

the influence and opportunities of being an immigrant from a different background as he went to medical school in London.

his first venture selling event tickets via a Facebook platform, scaling a fashion blog with millions of followers, and launching and exiting the successful Dropout retail business in Milan

Lessons of having investors who were not always aligned

How he dealt with realising that he might have a bigger financial opportunity through dropping out of his studies.

The benefits and limitations of bootstrapping when you have the resources to put together a great team

The impact of both his formal business school education and self tuition via online resources like Y Combinator, and prominent SV figures like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

The ambition and vision for his self funded AI platform for doctors iatroX which provides clinical guidance to over 20,000 users.

Kola's journey is a masterclass in calculated risk and relentless drive, Kola shares the critical lessons he has learned from his triumphs and challenges. Through insightful questions, Richard draws out the key takeaways on finding balance, the importance of a strong team, understanding domain expertise, and the necessity of continuous business education. This episode is packed with inspiration for anyone looking to bridge diverse passions and build a high-impact venture.

About Kola

Dr Kola Tytler – Doctor/MBA & full-stack developer

MBBS @ King’s College London

Certificates in Law & Business (LSE & Imperial)

MBA (with merit) @ University of Birmingham

MSt Entrepreneurship @ University of Cambridge ‘26

Forbes 30 under 30 Europe, Forbes 100 under 30 Italy

IBM-certified AI Engineer & MENSA member

Founder of YEEZY Mafia, dropout, & HypeAnalyzer

Links

iatroX is a UKCA-marked, MHRA-registered medical device. It acts as an AI‑driven assistant that centralizes clinical guidelines offering: 1 quick Q&A, 2 structured brainstorming, and 3 an adaptive quiz engine for medical students.

Kola Tytler's Linkedin

Kola Tytler's personal website
Drop Out Milano
Hype Analyzer

CAMentrepreneurs

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Hanna Pickard, "What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing But Cocaine?: A Philosophy of Addiction" (Princeton UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Dr. Hanna Pickard has written a revolutionary new paradigm for understanding addiction.

Why do people with addiction use drugs self-destructively? Why don’t they quit out of self-concern? Why does the rat in the experiment, alone in a cage, press the lever again and again for cocaine—to the point of death? In this pathbreaking book What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing But Cocaine?: A Philosophy of Addiction (Princeton UP, 2026), Johns Hopkins University professor Pickard proposes a new paradigm for understanding the puzzle of addiction. For too long, our thinking has been hostage to a false dichotomy: either addiction is a brain disease, or it is a moral failing. Pickard argues that it is neither, and that both models stifle addiction research and fail people who need help.

Drawing on her expertise as an academic philosopher and her clinical work in a therapeutic community, Pickard explores the meaning of drugs for people with addiction and the diverse factors that keep them using despite the costs. People use drugs to cope with suffering—but also to self-harm, or even to die. Some identify as “addicts," while others are in denial or struggle with cravings and self-control. Social, cultural, and economic circumstances are crucial to explaining addiction—but brain pathology may also matter. By integrating addiction science with philosophy, clinical practice, and the psychology and voices of people with addiction themselves, Pickard shows why there is no one-size-fits-all theory or ethics of addiction. The result is a heterogeneous and humanistic paradigm for understanding and treating addiction, and a fresh way of thinking about responsibility, blame, and relationships with people who use drugs.

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Ashely Alker, "99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them" (St. Martin's Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In 99 Ways to Die: And How To Avoid Them (St. Martins Press, 2026) emergency medicine doctor Ashley Alker presents an illuminating, hilarious, and practical guide to 99 of the most terrifying ways to die and how to avoid them. Dr. Alker is a self-described death escapologist—or, in more familiar terms, an emergency medicine doctor. She has seen it all, from flesh-eating bacteria to the work of a serial killer to the more mundane but no less deadly, and her work outwitting the end has uniquely prepared her to write this book. Dr. Alker manages to shock readers while making them laugh, educating them on how to outsmart a wide range of deadly situations and conditions. Many of the chapters include stories from her experiences in life and medicine, at times heartwarming, others heartbreaking. Sections include explorations of sex, poison, drugs, biological warfare, disease, animals, crime, the elements, and much more. An Anthony Bourdain-style greatest hits tour of death, 99 Ways to Die is entertaining while it informs. Full of valuable advice and wild stories, this riveting read might just save your life.

Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.

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Anne Mendelson, "Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Why is cows' milk, which few nonwhite people can digest, promoted as a science-backed dietary necessity in countries where the majority of the population is lactose-intolerant? Why are gigantic new dairy farms permitted to deplete the sparse water resources of desert ecosystems? Why do thousands of U.S. dairy farmers every year give up after struggling to recoup production costs against plummeting wholesale prices?

Exploring these questions and many more, Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood (Columbia UP, 2023) is an unflinching and meticulous critique of the glorification of fluid milk and its alleged universal benefits. Anne Mendelson's groundbreaking book chronicles the story of milk from the Stone Age peoples who first domesticated cows, goats, and sheep to today's troubled dairy industry. Spoiled shows that drinking fresh milk was rare until Western scientific experts who were unaware of genetic differences in the ability to digest lactose deemed it superior to traditional fermented dairy products. Their flawed beliefs fueled the growth of a massive and environmentally devastating industry that turned milk into a cheap, ubiquitous commodity.

Mendelson's wide-ranging account also examines the consequences of homogenization and refrigeration technologies, the toll that modern farming takes on dairy cows, and changing perceptions of raw milk since the advent of pasteurization. Unraveling the myths and misconceptions that prop up the dairy industry, Spoiled calls for more sustainable, healthful futures in our relationship with milk and the animals that provide it.

Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.

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Vanessa Rampton, "Making Medical Progress: History of a Contested Idea" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Answers to the question 'what is medical progress?' have always been contested, and any one response is always bound up with contextual ideas of personhood, society, and health. However, the widely held enthusiasm for medical progress escapes more general critiques of progress as a conceptual category.

From the intersection of intellectual history, philosophy, and the medical humanities, in Making Medical Progress: History of a Contested Idea (Cambridge UP, 2025) Dr. Vanessa Rampton sheds light on the politics of medical progress and how they have downplayed the tensions between individual and social goods. She examines how a shared consensus about its value gives medical progress vast political and economic capital, revealing who benefits, who is left out, and who is harmed by this narrative. From ancient Greece to artificial intelligence, exploring the origins and ethics of different visions of progress offers valuable insight into how we can make them more meaningful in future. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

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Howard Alan Israel, "Nazi Anatomy Lessons: A Dissection of Evil" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

What if the tools that shaped your life’s work were rooted in unimaginable evil?

In this haunting episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Dr. Howard Alan Israel to discuss Nazi Anatomy Lessons: A Dissection of Evil, a book born from a single, shattering moment in an operating room. For over twenty years, Dr. Israel had prepared for surgeries using the same anatomy atlas—methodically studying each illustration, planning for every variation, and building a career marked by innovation, research, and the training of future surgeons. Then a colleague changed everything with one sentence: the atlas had been created by Nazi doctors.

That revelation launched a thirty-year journey into the moral abyss—an investigation into who these anatomists were, who their “subjects” had been, and how healers became murderers. Dr. Israel began to confront terrifying questions: Was his career built, in part, on the suffering of victims? How could such knowledge remain hidden in plain sight for decades? And how does a profession devoted to healing become an instrument of genocide?

Together, Rabbi Katz and Dr. Israel explore not only the historical horror of Nazi medicine, but the urgent bioethical questions it raises today. As genocide remains a recurring human reality, this conversation asks what must change in our moral frameworks, institutions, and education to prevent the transformation of healers into agents of destruction—and how we might instead build a society committed to healing rather than harm.

Rabbi Marc Katz is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life.

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Andreas Killen, "Nervous Systems: Brain Science in the Early Cold War" (Harper, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In this eye-opening chronicle of scientific research on the brain in the early Cold War era, the acclaimed historian Andreas Killen traces the complex circumstances surrounding the genesis of our present-day fascination with this organ.

The 1950s were a transformative, even revolutionary decade in the history of brain science. Using new techniques for probing brain activity and function, researchers in neurosurgery, psychiatry, and psychology achieved dramatic breakthroughs in the treatment of illnesses like epilepsy and schizophrenia, as well as the understanding of such faculties as memory and perception. Memory was the site of particularly startling discoveries. As one researcher wrote to another in the middle of that decade, “Memory was the sleeping beauty of the brain—and now she is awake.” Collectively, these advances prefigured the emergence of the field of neuroscience at the end of the twentieth century.

But the 1950s also marked the beginning of the Cold War and a period of transformative social change across Western society. These developments resulted in unease and paranoia. Mysterious new afflictions—none more mystifying than “brainwashing”—also appeared at this time. Faced with the discovery that, as one leading psychiatrist put it, “the human personality is not as stable as we often assume,” many researchers in the sciences of brain and behavior joined the effort to understand these conditions. They devised ingenious and sometimes transgressive experimental methods for studying and proposing countermeasures to the problem of Communist mind control. Some of these procedures took on a strange life of their own, escaping the confines of the research lab to become part of 1960s counterculture. Much later, in the early 2000s, they resurfaced in the War on Terror.

These stories, often told separately, are brought together by the historian Andreas Killen in this chronicle of the brain’s mid-twentieth-century emergence as both a new research frontier and an organ whose integrity and capacities—especially that of memory—were imagined as uniquely imperiled in the 1950s. Nervous Systems: Brain Science in the Early Cold War (Harper, 2023) explores the anxious context in which the mid-century sciences of the brain took shape and reveals the deeply ambivalent history that lies behind our contemporary understanding of this organ.

Paul Lerner is Professor of History at the University of Southern California where he directs the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. He can be reached at plerner@usc.edu and @PFLerner.

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Stephen Bezruchka, "Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

How healthy you are is dependent on where you live. Americans suffer more cancers, heart disease, mental illness, and other chronic diseases than those who live in other wealthy nations, despite having the most expensive healthcare system in the world. Why? Embark on a journey to unravel the profound impact of public policies on American health from before birth in Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation (Cambridge UP, 2026). Delve into the intricate web where economic inequality weaves a tapestry of sickness stemming from a highly stressed society. This compelling read illuminates the need for transformative change in social safety nets and public policies to uplift national health and well-being. Through vivid storytelling, the book unveils the symptoms, diagnosis, and 'medicine' required to steer the nation toward a healthier future. Join the movement for a healthier America by embracing the insightful revelations and empowering calls to action presented within the pages of this eye-opening book. Contact the author at: sabez@uw.edu

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Olivia Weisser, "The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, venereal disease, or the 'pox,' was a dreaded diagnosis throughout Europe. Its ghastly marks, along with their inexorable link to sex, were so stigmatizing that it was commonly called 'the secret disease.' How do we capture everyday experiences of a disease that so few people admitted having? In The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London (Cambridge UP, 2026), Dr. Olivia Weisser presents a remarkable history that invites readers into the teeming, vibrant pox-riddled streets of early modern London. She uncovers the lives of the poxed elite as well as of the maidservants and prostitutes who left few words behind, showing how marks of the disease offered a language for expressing acts that were otherwise unutterable. This new history of sex, stigma, and daily urban life takes readers down alleys where healers peddled their tinctures, enters kitchens and gardens where ordinary sufferers made cures, and listens in on intimate exchanges between patients and healers in homes and in taverns.

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Jonathan Gleason, "Field Guide to Falling Ill" (Yale UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Jonathan Gleason spent ten years writing the ten essays in his debut collection, Field Guide to Falling Ill (Yale UP, 2026). In them, Gleason braids together strands from a variety of sources – from his experience with a potentially-lethal blood clot, to his imprisoned uncle, to his journey to access medication to prevent HIV – to analyze America’s healthcare system and the humiliating, confusing, and depersonalizing effects it can often have. The essays approach medicine from a variety of viewpoints, from Jonathan’s perspective as a gay man analyzing the development of HIV medications like AZT and Truvada, to his experience as a Spanish language medical interpreter at a free clinic in Iowa City. But each essay also reminds readers of the importance of understanding the history of our healthcare institutions, and the necessity of feeling less alone when confronted by their myriad failures. Lyrical, poignant, and deeply human, Field Guide to Falling Ill is a poetic approach to understanding medicine in America.

For more information on Jonathan and his writing, visit:

Jonathan’s website: here

Jonathan’s Substack, Histories of Present Illness: here
Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). Her new book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs, will be released in April 2026.

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Lesly-Marie Buer, "RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky" (Haymarket, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Using the narratives of women who use(d) drugs, this account challenges popular understandings of Appalachia spread by such pundits as JD Vance by documenting how women, families, and communities cope with generational systems of oppression. Prescription opioids are associated with rising rates of overdose deaths and hepatitis C and HIV infection in the US, including in rural Central Appalachia. Yet there is a dearth of studies examining rural opioid use.

RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky (Haymarket, 2020) explores the gendered inequalities that situate women’s encounters with substance abuse treatment as well as additional state interventions targeted at women who use drugs in one of the most impoverished regions in the US.

Lesly-Marie Buer is a harm reductionist and medical anthropologist in Knoxville, TN.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health behavior in historical context.

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How Do We Treat Opioid Addiction?

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Mark Parrino has been involved with the delivery of health care and treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) since 1974. As the president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, Inc. (AATOD), he works with treatment providers across the country to develop and improve treatment protocols.

In December 2022, AATOD worked with the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD) to initiate a first-of-its-kind census of all patients currently receiving treatment from government-certified opioid treatment programs (OTPs). Their findings, based on responses from over 1,500 OTPs nationwide, show the breadth and distribution of addiction treatment in America, and are the product of almost fifty years of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) in the United States.

I spoke with Mark about his census results, as well as the history of MAT, and specifically methadone, treatment in America. You can see the full report here.

Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). A drug historian and writer, her second book, on the development of the opioid addiction medication industry, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press.

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Elizabeth Kelly Gray, "Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Elizabeth Kelly Gray's book Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914 (Oxford UP, 2023) traces the history of unregulated drug use and dependency before 1914, when the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act limited sales of opiates and cocaine under US law. Many Americans used opiates and other drugs medically and became addicted. Some tried ‘Hasheesh Candy’, injected morphine, or visited opium dens, but neither use nor addiction was linked to crime, due to the dearth of restrictive laws. After the Civil War, American presses published extensively about domestic addiction. Later in the nineteenth century, many people used cocaine and heroin as medicine.

As addiction became a major public health issue, commentators typically sympathized with white, middle-class drug users, while criticizing such use by poor or working-class people and people of color. When habituation was associated with middle-class morphine users, few advocated for restricted drug access. By the 1910s, as use was increasingly associated with poor young men, support for regulations increased. In outlawing users' access to habit-forming drugs at the national level, a public health problem became a larger legal and social problem, one with an enduring influence on American drug laws and their enforcement.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. She was chair of the doctoral program in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at Pacific College of Health and Science in San Diego before moving to the UK.

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Bruno J. Strasser and Thomas Schlich, "The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air" (Yale UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air (Yale UP, 2025) by Dr. Bruno J. Strasser and Dr. Thomas Schlich presents a history of masks protecting against bad air—in cities, factories, hospitals, and war trenches—exploring how our identities and beliefs shape the decision to wear a mask.

For centuries, humans have sought to protect themselves from harmful air, whether from smoke, dust, vapors, or germs. This book offers the first history of respiratory masks—ranging from simple pieces of cloth to elaborate gas masks—and explores why they have sparked both hope and fear.

Dr. Strasser and Dr. Schlich captivate readers with stories of individuals—from renowned doctors and political leaders to forgotten inventors and anonymous factory workers—who passionately debated the value of masks. In Renaissance Italy and Meiji Japan, in Victorian Britain and Cold War America, the way societies have engaged with face coverings reveals their deepest cultural and political fractures. The Mask challenges us to reconsider how we care for one another and the kind of environment we aspire to inhabit.

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Clare Griffin, "Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Clare Griffin's book Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022) introduces the reader to the dynamic and complex world of early modern Russian medical drugs, from the enthusiasm for newly imported American botanicals to the disgust at Western European medicines made from human corpses.

Based on a unique set of previously unused sources, this book is the first study of how the Russian Empire took part in the early modern global trade in medical drugs. The extensive and detailed records kept by the Moscow court show how ingredients produced elsewhere and passed through the massive, long-distance trade network of the early modern world were finally consumed. Looking at medicine as materia medica gives us a different perspective than when looking at practitioners, texts, and ideas.

Erika Monahan is the author of The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell UP, 2016) and a 2023-2024 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow

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Linda Eckert, "Enough: Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Cervical cancer kills almost 350,000 women each year. What's more horrifying, is that millions have died of this disease that's nearly 100% preventable. It's no secret that healthcare is full of inequities, with a severe lack of accessible screening programs. But women's health care is also impeded by cultural, gender, and political barriers, issues that have combined to create devastating consequences.

In Enough: Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer (Cambridge UP, 2024), Dr Linda Eckert takes her years of experience and weaves it together with the voices of the courageous women who use their own experience of cervical cancer to advocate for change. This heart-breaking, yet hopeful, book takes you through the world of cervical cancer with evidence-based information, personal stories and actionable outcomes. Society flourishes when women have access to safe and affordable healthcare. Together we can make this need a reality and eliminate the world's most preventable cancer.

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Alison Bashford, "Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Why did Isaac Newton read books on chiromancy, the occult science of hand reading that revealed the secrets of the soul? Why did Charles Darwin claim that the hand gave humans dominion over all other species? Why did psychoanalyst Charlotte Wolff climb into the primate cages of the London Zoo, taking hundreds of delicate palm prints? Why did Francis Galton, the father of fingerprinting, take palm prints too? And why did world-leading geneticists study the geometry of palm lines in their search for the secrets of chromosomal syndromes?

Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic (University of Chicago, 2025) is an astounding history of magic, medicine, and science, of an enduring search for how our bodily surfaces might reveal an inner self—a soul, a character, an identity. From sixteenth-century occult physicians influenced by the Kabbalah to twentieth-century geneticists, and from criminologists to eugenicists, award-winning historian Dr. Alison Bashford takes us on a remarkable journey into the strange world of hand readers, revealing how signs on the hand—its shape, lines, marks, and patterns—have been elaborately decoded over the centuries. Sometimes learned, sometimes outrageously deceptive, sometimes earnest, and, more often than we ever expected, medically and scientifically trained, these palm readers of the past prove to be essential links in the human quest to peer into bodies, souls, minds, and selves. Not only for fortune-telling palmists were the future and the past, health, and character laid bare in the hand, but for other experts in bodies and minds as well: anatomists, psychiatrists, embryologists, primatologists, evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and more.

Drawing telling parallels between the divination promised by palmistry and the appeal to self-knowledge offered by modern genetic testing, Decoding the Hand also makes clear that palm-reading is far from a relic or simple charlatanism. Dr. Bashford’s sagacious history of human hands touching and connecting opens wide the essential human pursuit of what lies within and beyond.

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Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Mike Jay's Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind (Yale UP, 2023) is a provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists and philosophers who took drugs to explore the hidden regions of the mind.

Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy. Accounts in journals and literary fiction inspired a fascinated public to make their own experiments--in scientific demonstrations, on exotic travels, at literary salons, and in occult rituals. But after 1900 drugs were increasingly viewed as a social problem, and the long tradition of self-experimentation began to disappear. From Sigmund Freud's experiments with cocaine to William James's epiphany on nitrous oxide, Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism. Today, as we embrace novel cognitive enhancers and psychedelics, the experiments of the original psychonauts reveal the deep influence of mind-altering drugs on Western science, philosophy, and culture.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Kate Clancy, "Period: The Real Story of Menstruation" (Princeton UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Menstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood. Scientists once thought of an individual's period as useless, and some doctors still believe it's unsafe for a menstruating person to swim in the ocean wearing a tampon. Period: The Real Story of Menstruation (Princeton UP, 2023) counters the false theories that have long defined the study of the uterus, exposing the eugenic history of gynecology while providing an intersectional feminist perspective on menstruation science.

Blending interviews and personal experience with engaging stories from her own pioneering research, Kate Clancy challenges a host of myths and false assumptions. There is no such a thing as a "normal" menstrual cycle. In fact, menstrual cycles are incredibly variable and highly responsive to environmental and psychological stressors. Clancy takes up a host of timely issues surrounding menstruation, from bodily autonomy, menstrual hygiene, and the COVID-19 vaccine to the ways racism, sexism, and medical betrayal warp public perceptions of menstruation and erase it from public life.

Offering a revelatory new perspective on one of the most captivating biological processes in the human body, Period will change the way you think about the past, present, and future of periods.

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Donna J. Drucker, "Fertility Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

A concise overview of fertility technology—its history, practical applications, and ethical and social implications around the world. In the late 1850s, a physician in New York City used a syringe and glass tube to inject half a drop of sperm into a woman’s uterus, marking the first recorded instance of artificial insemination. From that day forward, doctors and scientists have turned to technology in ever more innovative ways to facilitate conception. Fertility Technology (MIT Press, 2023) surveys this history in all its medical, practical, and ethical complexity, and offers a look at state-of-the-art fertility technology in various social and political contexts around the world. Donna J. Drucker’s concise and eminently readable account introduces the five principal types of fertility technologies used in human reproduction—artificial insemination; ovulation timing; sperm, egg, and embryo freezing; in vitro fertilization; and IVF in uterine transplants—discussing the development, manufacture, dispersion, and use of each. Geographically, it focuses on countries where innovations have emerged and countries where these technologies most profoundly affect individuals and population policies. Drucker’s wide-ranging perspective reveals how these technologies, used for birth control as well as conception in many cases, have been critical in shaping the moral, practical, and political meaning of human life, kinship, and family in different nations and cultures since the mid-nineteenth century.

Donna J. Drucker is Assistant Director of Scholarship and Research Development at the Columbia University School of Nursing.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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Mark Deuze, "Well-Being and Creative Careers: What Makes You Happy Can Also Make You Sick" (Intellect Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The media and creative industries thrive on passion, but that passion often comes at a cost. Behind the glamour of journalism, filmmaking, games, music, advertising, and online content creation lies a growing crisis-one of burnout, anxiety, substance abuse, and exhaustion. Why do so many creative professionals report feeling both deeply fulfilled and profoundly unwell?

Mark Deuze investigates the systemic issues that make creative work both exhilarating and unsustainable. Drawing on extensive research and in-depth interviews with media professionals, he notes the hidden downsides of doing what you love and offers a candid analysis of how workplace structures, high workloads, and perceived injustices contribute to mental and physical distress.

But this book is not just about what's broken; it's about what can be done. Deuze provides a roadmap for rethinking the culture of creative industries and offers strategies for balancing passion with sustainability. A practical resource for media scholars and those navigating the highs and lows of a creative career, this work challenges us to imagine a healthier future for our labour of love.

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Joseph L Graves, "Why Black People Die Sooner: What Medicine Gets Wrong about Race and How to Fix It" (Columbia UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Why Black People Die Sooner is a powerful and rigorous examination of the ways racism shapes health and disease. Joseph L. Graves Jr. demonstrates that the medical profession still fails to grasp basic facts about race, tracing how deep-rooted falsehoods have perpetuated the disparity between Black and white lifespans. He equips readers with the tools to dispel the fallacies and errors of racialized medicine, including an understanding of evolutionary biology and human biological variation. Graves also debunks common misconceptions about race and health on topics such as high blood pressure, sickle cell disease, the microbiome, infectious diseases, and cancer. Why Black People Die Sooner closes by offering a sweeping vision for dismantling medical racism, from professional training to clinical practice through biomedical research. Timely and bracing, this book reveals why medicine keeps misunderstanding race—and how we can make it change.

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The Nursing Clio Editorial Collective, "The Nursing Clio Reader: Histories of Sex, Reproduction, and Justice" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The Nursing Clio Reader: Histories of Sex, Reproduction, and Justice (Rutgers UP, 2025) brings together essays that examine reproductive health through historical research and personal experience. Featuring both new and classic pieces from the Nursing Clio blog, leading historians of reproductive health, librarians, archivists, public health professionals and midwives provide insights that connect past struggles with today’s ongoing battles over bodies, reproductive rights, and health care. This collection offers intimate, urgent scholarship that speaks to the present moment.

In this episode two representatives of the Nursing Clio Editorial Staff and one essay contributor discuss The Nursing Clio Reader. Sarah Handley-Cousins (University of Buffalo), Laura Ansley (American Historical Association), and Ayah Nuriddin (Yale School of Medicine) join Leah Cargin (University of Oklahoma and Journal of Women’s History) to talk about the recent publication, the origins of Nursing Clio, writing for public audiences, and the peer support fostered by the Nursing Clio feminist community.

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Daniel Skinner et al., "The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 4 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The City and the Hospital (Chicago 2023) focuses on an urban paradox: American hospitals are imagined as sites of healing and care, and yet the people who live and work in nearby neighborhoods have some of the worst health outcomes in the nation. One part urban sociology and one part policy analysis, this book reports insights from a collaborative research team that investigated three sites (Hartford, Cleveland, Aurora, CO) and conducted more than two hundred interviews for this study. The book explores how collective memory operates, how “anchor institutions” connect with the people living in their midst, and the very meaning of “community” itself. Theoretically rich and empirically insightful, the book will be of interest to scholars, scientists, advocates, and administrators in medical setting and in any powerful organization (universities, museums) that may inadvertently cause harm to those nearest to them in their efforts to do good.

email: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu.

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Jonathan S. Jones, "Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis" (UNC Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

During the Civil War, the utility and widespread availability of opium and morphine made opiates essential to wartime medicine. After the war ended, thousands of ailing soldiers became addicted, or “enslaved,” as nineteenth-century Americans phrased it. Veterans, their families, and communities struggled to cope with addiction’s health and social consequences. Medical and government authorities compounded veterans' suffering and imbued the epidemic with cultural meaning by branding addiction as a matter of moral weakness, unmanliness, or mental infirmity. Framing addiction as “opium slavery” limited the efficacy of care and left many veterans to suffer needlessly for decades after the war ended.

Drawing from veterans' firsthand accounts as well as mental asylum and hospital records, government and medical reports, newspaper coverage of addiction, and advertisements, in Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis (UNC Press, 2025) Dr. Jonathan S. Jones unearths the poorly understood stories of opiate-addicted Civil War veterans in unflinching detail, illuminating the war’s traumatic legacies. In doing so, Jones provides critical historical context for the modern opioid crisis, which bears tragic resemblance to that of the post–Civil War era.

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Taylor McCall, "The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Taylor McCall's The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe (Reaktion, 2023) is the first history of medieval European anatomical images. Richly illustrated, The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe explores the many ways in which medieval surgeons, doctors, monks, and artists understood and depicted human anatomy. Taylor McCall refutes the common misconception that Renaissance artists and anatomists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Andreas Vesalius were the fathers of anatomy who performed the first human dissections. On the contrary, she argues that these Renaissance figures drew upon centuries of visual and written tradition in their works.

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

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Deborah Carr, "Aging in America" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah Carr provides a lively, nuanced, and timely portrait of aging in the United States. The US population is older than ever before, raising new challenges for families, caregivers, health care systems, and social programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Organized in seven chapters, Aging in America (U California Press, 2023) covers these topics:

the history of aging and the development of theoretical approaches
how cultural changes shape our views on aging
the demographic characteristics of older adults today
older adults' family lives and social relationships
the health of older adults and social disparities in who gets sick
how public policies affect the well-being of older adults and their families
how baby boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials will experience old age

Drawing on state-of-the-art data, current events, and pop culture, this portrait of an aging population challenges outdated myths and vividly shows how future cohorts of older adults will differ from the generations before them.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England.

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Karen Weingarten, "Pregnancy Test" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In the 1970s, the invention of the home pregnancy test changed what it means to be pregnant. For the first time, women could use a technology in the privacy of their own homes that gave them a yes or no answer. That answer had the power to change the course of their reproductive lives, and it chipped away at a paternalistic culture that gave gynecologists-the majority of whom were men-control over information about women's bodies.

However, while science so often promises clear-cut answers, the reality of pregnancy is often much messier. Pregnancy Test (Bloomsbury, 2023) explores how the pregnancy test has not always lived up to the fantasy that more information equals more knowledge. Karen Weingarten examines the history and cultural representation of the pregnancy test to show how this object radically changed sex and pregnancy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Jana Byars is an independent scholar located in Amsterdam.

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David Kieran, "Signature Wounds: The Untold Story of the Military's Mental Health Crisis" (NYU Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The surprising story of the Army's efforts to combat PTSD and traumatic brain injury

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a tremendous toll on the mental health of our troops. In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama took to the Senate floor to tell his colleagues that "many of our injured soldiers are returning from Iraq with traumatic brain injury," which doctors were calling the "signature wound" of the Iraq War. Alarming stories of veterans taking their own lives raised a host of vital questions: Why hadn't the military been better prepared to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI)? Why were troops being denied care and sent back to Iraq? Why weren't the Army and the VA doing more to address these issues?

Drawing on previously unreleased documents and oral histories, David Kieran tells the broad and nuanced story of the Army's efforts to understand and address these issues, challenging the popular media view that the Iraq War was mismanaged by a callous military unwilling to address the human toll of the wars. The story of mental health during this war is the story of how different groups--soldiers, veterans and their families, anti-war politicians, researchers and clinicians, and military leaders--approached these issues from different perspectives and with different agendas. It is the story of how the advancement of medical knowledge moves at a different pace than the needs of an Army at war, and it is the story of how medical conditions intersect with larger political questions about militarism and foreign policy.

Signature Wounds: The Untold Story of the Military's Mental Health Crisis (NYU Press, 2019) shows how PTSD, TBI, and suicide became the signature wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how they prompted change within the Army itself, and how mental health became a factor in the debates about the impact of these conflicts on US culture.

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Vania Smith-Oka, "Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals (Rutgers University Press, 2021), Vania Smith-Oka follows a cohort of interns throughout their year of medical training in hospitals to understand how medical students become medical doctors. She ethnographically tracks their engagements with one another, interactions with patients, experiences with doctors, and presentations of cases to show how medical students undergo a nuanced process of accumulating knowledge and practical experience in shaping their medical selves. Smith-Oka illuminates the gendered aspects of this process, whereby the medical interns’ gender informs the kind of treatment they receive from other doctors and the kinds of possibilities they imagine for their careers and areas of medical practice. She documents the lives of the interns during which time they develop their medical selves and come to understand the tacit values of medical practice. The book is full of descriptive vignettes and ethnographic details that make it accessible to undergraduate students. It would be of interest to those in medical anthropology, hospital ethnography, medical education as well as people interested in how expertise is acquired and developed. The book examines medical interns’ transformations through ordinary and extraordinary moments, through active and passive learning where they not only acquire new knowledge but also new ways of being.

Vania Smith-Oka is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. She is the Director of the Health, Humanities, and Society Program at the John J. Reilly Center.

Reighan Gillam is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California.

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Andrea Kitta, "The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore" (Utah State UP, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Disease is a social issue and not just a medical one. This is the central tenet underlying The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore (Utah State University Press 2019) by Andrea Kitta, Associate Professor in the English department at East Carolina University, examines the discourses and metaphors of contagion and contamination in vernacular beliefs and practices across a number of media and forms. Using ethnographic, media, and narrative analysis, chapters discuss the changing representations of vampires and zombies in popular culture, the online discussions of Slenderman in relation to adolescent experiences of bullying, the misogyny embedded in legends about kisses that kill, and the racialized nature of patient-zero narratives that surrounding the spread of things like ebola, and the ways in which the HPV vaccine to homophobia. Issues like tellability and the stigmatized vernacular loom large throughout. Although folklorists will already recognize the social importance of vernacular narrative and belief, The Kiss of Death also shows how medical professionals have often failed to take vernacular forms into account. Through attention to narrative and vernacular belief, folklorists can model new forms of engaging with public health professionals and local communities.

Timothy Thurston is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds. His research examines language at the nexus of tradition and modernity in China’s Tibet.

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Carol Mason, "From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 5 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Antiabortion stories, images, and policies have primed Americans to embrace attitudes and politics once deemed extreme. Abroad, US antiabortion tactics, personnel, and funds have contributed to a global rise of the Right.
From the Clinics to the Capitol: How Opposing Abortion Became Insurrectionary (University of California Press, 2025) is a scholar’s story of why and how abortion foes join other militants in waging war against the federal government. Reflecting on her thirty years of analyzing the intersections of race, reproduction, and right-wing movements, Carol Mason examines primary antiabortion sources that influenced political currents of the last fifty years. From Cold War conspiracism and apocalyptic fundamentalism to anti-statist terrorism, Tea Party populism, and MAGA insurrection, opposing abortion has come to imperil democracy worldwide.

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Muhammad H. Zaman, "Infected: How Power, Politics, and Privilege Use Science Against the World’s Most Vulnerable" (The New Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In Infected: How Power, Politics, and Privilege Use Science Against the World’s Most Vulnerable (The New Press, 2025), Professor Muhammad H. Zaman reveals the troubling history of how science and public health have been manipulated to serve the interests of power. Moving from the U.S.–Mexico border to Pakistan, from the Tuskegee syphilis trials to COVID-19 vaccine disinformation campaigns, the book traces a pattern in which infection becomes a weapon of exclusion, exploitation, and control. With clarity and urgency, Zaman demonstrates that the problem lies not in science itself, but in the ways it can be co-opted to marginalize, stigmatize, and even endanger the very people it is meant to protect. At once historical and contemporary, Infected is a searing call to recognize the ethical stakes of global health, and to build systems that resist the misuse of knowledge against those who can least afford its betrayal.

In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy sat down with Professor Muhammad H. Zaman to discuss how power, politics, and privilege use science against the world’s most vulnerable.
Ibrahim Fawzy is a literary translator and writer. His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, disability studies, and migration literature.

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Nora Kenworthy, "Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare (MIT Press, 2024), Dr. Nora Kenworthy presents an eye-opening investigation into charitable crowdfunding for healthcare in the United States—and the consequences of allowing healthcare access to be decided by the digital crowd.

Over the past decade, charitable crowdfunding has exploded in popularity across the globe. Sites such as GoFundMe, which now boasts a “global community of over 100 million” users, have transformed the ways we seek and offer help. When faced with crises—especially medical ones—Americans are turning to online platforms that promise to connect them to the charity of the crowd. What does this new phenomenon reveal about the changing ways we seek and provide healthcare? In Crowded Out, Dr. Kenworthy examines how charitable crowdfunding so quickly overtook public life, where it is taking us, and who gets left behind by this new platformed economy.
Although crowdfunding has become ubiquitous in our lives, it is often misunderstood: rather than a friendly free market “powered by the kindness” of strangers, crowdfunding is powerfully reinforcing inequalities and changing the way Americans think about and access healthcare. Drawing on extensive research and rich storytelling, Crowded Out demonstrates how crowdfunding for health is fueled by—and further reinforces—financial and moral “toxicities” in market-based healthcare systems. It offers a unique and distressing look beneath the surface of some of the most popular charitable platforms and helps to foster thoughtful discussions of how we can better respond to healthcare crises both small and large.

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Eram Alam, "The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare" (JHU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

For more than 60 years, the United States has trained fewer physicians than it needs, relying instead on the economically expedient option of soliciting immigrant physicians trained at the expense of other countries. The passage of the Hart–Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 expedited the entry of foreign medical graduates (FMGs) from postcolonial South Asia and sent them to provide care in shortage areas throughout the United States. Although this arrangement was conceived as temporary, over the decades it has become a permanent fixture of the medical system, with FMGs comprising at least a quarter of the physician labor force since the act became law.

This cohort of practitioners has not been extensively studied, rendering the impacts of immigration and foreign policy on the everyday mechanics of US health care obscure. In The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare, Dr. Alam foregrounds global dynamics embedded in the medical system to ask how and why Asian physicians—and especially practitioners from South Asia—have become integral to US medical practice and ubiquitous in the US public imaginary. Drawing on transcripts of congressional hearings; medical, scientific, and social scientific literature; ethnographies; oral histories; and popular media, Dr. Alam explores the enduring consequences of postcolonial physician migration. Combining theoretical and methodological insights from a range of disciplines, this book analyzes both the care provided by immigrant physicians as well as the care extended to them as foreigners.

Our guest is: Dr. Eram Alam, who specializes in the history of medicine, with a particular emphasis on globalization, race, migration, and health during the twentieth century. She is an assistant professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. She received her PhD in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and holds a BA and BS from Northwestern University and a MA from the University of Chicago.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a developmental editor, and the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She writes the show’s newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.com

Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by sharing episodes, or by donating here. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 275+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Anthony Valerio, "Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor" (Zantedeschi Books, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Though his advice has saved the lives of millions of people, the name Ignaz Semmelweis is not one commonly known today. In his book Anthony Valerio’s Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor (Zantedeschi Books, 2019). Valerio details the many struggles Semmelweis faced in winning acceptance for his advice on antiseptic procedures. The son of a Buda spice merchant, Semmelweis started his studies in law before a chance attendance at a medical lecture sparked his interest in becoming a doctor. After earning his degree he decided to specialize in obstetrics, a choice that soon brought him to confront the problem of childbed fever. Deducing that exposure to cadavers was a factor, Semmelweis devised a regimen of hand washing that dramatically reduced the morality rate at the maternity clinic where he worked. Though Semmelweis’s treatment was simple, his ideas faced considerable resistance from leading figures in the Western medical community, with the stress from his campaigns to promote his ideas contributing to the institutionalization that led to his death in 1865.

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Kalle Kananoja, "Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa (Cambridge UP, 2021), Kalle Kananoja tells the story of how pre-colonial communities throughout the west coast of Africa employed a wide range of medical and spiritual strategies to treat all kinds of diseases. In the sixteenth century, the arrival of European traders and colonists initiated an exchange of healing knowledge that moved across the Atlantic for the next three-hundred years. The initial links in this chain of exchanges were established by European settlers or visitors who, given the limited number of European doctors and medications available, sought the services of African healers whose methods were often seen as more suited and efficacious in the local environments. Missionaries, travelers and botanists also added to these exchanges by collecting and systematizing some of the knowledge they acquired from African informants.

By documenting the richness and mobility of African healing knowledge, Kananoja points that even though plants, remedies and practices from the Americas and Asia have been more widely studied, African contributions were equally significant. Africans also sought to learn from the practices, institutions and remedies that travelers brought back from Europe and other parts of the Atlantic world, and incorporated them into what was an already rich and diverse body of healing knowledge. Ultimately the prevalence of these exchanges illustrates not just the differences that existed between European and African understandings of disease and the human body, but also how much common ground there was between them. Kananoja compellingly argues that African healing knowledge should be seen as a rich and dynamic system, which was central to the emergence of an Atlantic world.

Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia is an associate professor of history at Montclair State University.

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Julia Ross Cummiskey, "Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global" (Ohio UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global (Ohio UP, 2024) presents the stories of scientists at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), a biomedical center founded in 1936. The book analyzes the strategies and conditions that allowed the institute to endure and thrive through successive political and scientific regimes of the interwar period, the postwar period, the transition to independence, the conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s, and the Museveni presidency. Julia Ross Cummiskey combines methods and themes from the history of medicine and public health, science and technology studies, and African studies to show that the story of the UVRI and the people who worked there transforms our understanding of the nature of local and international expertise and the evolution of global health research over the course of the twentieth century.

Global health is one of the chief areas in which African and foreign institutions interact today. Billions of dollars are invested in global health projects on the continent, many involving strategically selected “local partners.” In the discourse of these projects, local and global are often framed as complementary but distinct categories of people, institutions, traditions, and practices. But the history of biomedical research at the UVRI shows that these distinctions are unstable and mutable and that people and institutions have mobilized both categories to attract funding, professional prestige, and research opportunities. The book complicates the local/global binary that is implicit (and sometimes explicit) in many studies of colonial, international, and global health and medical research, especially in Africa. Moreover, it challenges assumptions about global health as an enterprise dominated by researchers based in the Global North and recenters the history of biomedicine in Africa.

Julia Ross Cummiskey is an assistant professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the history of global health research, policy, and practice in Africa. Dr. Cummiskey interrogates the history of “global health”—what it is, how it came to be, its limitations, and its potential. She pursues projects that she believes will shed light on the broader history of East Africa and its connections to other parts of the world as well as projects that offer opportunities to inform the practice of global health research and interventions.

Dr. Cummiskey’s current project explores the changing ideas about health communication in modern East Africa, from top-down organized campaigns to commercial product promotion and informal channels for spreading information and misinformation. Tentatively titled Selling Health, this book will explore the different forms of communication that have been used to shape the Africans’ behaviors and consumption of products intended to (or purporting to) improve health in the 20th and 21st centuries.

You can learn more about her work here.

Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in Ghana.

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Walter Scott Peterson, "[M]y ‘case’ to work up’: William Carlos Williams’s Paterson" (William Carlos Williams Review, Vol 41, No. 2, 2024),

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In “[M]y ‘case’ to work up’: William Carlos Williams’s Paterson” (William Carlos Williams Review, Volume 41, Number 2, 2024), Walter Scott Peterson argues that as a physician-poet Dr. Williams approaches his poetic material very much as he approaches his patients, and that the form of Paterson in particular is intentionally and actually reminiscent of the various forms taken by the medical case narrative, or “work-up.”

This episode concerns the poet and physician William Carlos Williams, whose mother, Raquel Hélène Rose Hoheb Williams, was born and raised in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. This conversation is part of the STEM to STEAM initiative, sponsored by the Teagle Foundation, that links medicine, science, technology and engineering to the sensibilities honed in the humanities—rethinking ways to blend and combine studies in literature, poetry, history, philosophy, and the arts as more central dimensions of technical preparation.

The discussion explores the profound connection between medical humanities and poetry, highlighting how their combination enriches our understanding of patient care, fosters empathy, and humanizes the medical experience. Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field combining arts, literature, philosophy and cultural approaches to the human condition—considering each of these as insights into the emotional and ethical dimensions of healthcare. Poetry can serve as a powerful tool for expressing the complex feelings and narratives that often go unspoken in clinical settings. Blending poetry and the science of healthcare reminds us that medicine is not just a science but also an art, emphasizing compassion, understanding, and the shared human experience at the heart of healing.

In this episode are:

Walter Scott Peterson is a retired ophthalmologist and William Carlos Williams scholar; he is the author of the first book-length study of William Carlos Williams’s epic poem Paterson, titled An Approach to Paterson (Yale, 1967).
Vamsi Koneru is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.
Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, Professor of Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez.

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Meghan Crnic, "The Beach Cure: A History of Healing on Northeastern Shores" (U Washington Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

For centuries, the ocean was seen as a place of danger and work, but by the late nineteenth century, northeastern shores of the United States became therapeutic destinations for the sick and weary. Doctors in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and other cities began prescribing time at the beach as a remedy for ailments such as tuberculosis, rickets, and exhaustion. In the decades that followed, seaside towns became health havens complete with hospitals that served urban families and children.
Dr. Meghan Crnic’s The Beach Cure: A History of Healing on Northeastern Shores (U Washington Press, 2025) explores how physicians, tourists, and families transformed the coastline into a medical and cultural landscape. Dr. Crnic traces how beliefs in “marine medication”—the healing power of the sun, sea air, and saltwater—shaped the development of northeastern coastal tourist destinations and health institutions in Atlantic City, Coney Island, and beyond. Despite advances in germ theory and the rise of laboratory science, the conviction that nature can restore health and well-being persisted and continues to resonate with beachgoers today.
This book uncovers the profound ways in which Americans tied health to place, showing how the underlying belief in nature’s therapeutic powers brought people to the seashore as a precursor to the beach becoming a destination for leisure and recreation. The Beach Cure offers fresh insight into the history of environmental health, urging readers to reflect on how landscapes shape well-being.

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Katherine J. Parkin, "The Abortion Market: Buying and Selling Access in the Era Before Roe" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The abortion market was a powerful economic force in American life. Before legalization lowered the cost, one million women each year collectively paid upward of $750 million for abortions. In The Abortion Market: Buying and Selling Access in the Era Before Roe (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), Dr. Katherine Parkin reveals the strength of a massive consumer market that involved loans, advertising, and travel, as well as the costs associated with the procedure itself.

Laying the foundation for the emergence of a public market that facilitated the buying and selling of abortions, wealthy population control ideologues encouraged positive public discourse on abortion, funded medical studies, and waged legal battles. White, middle- and upper-class women sought out abortions and paid exorbitantly for them. Male entrepreneurs emerged to capitalize on the booming market and profit from the incredible demand. Advertising on billboards and in college newspapers, men profited by providing the phone number, getting kickbacks for delivering patients, and arranging for women’s travel to Mexico, Puerto Rico, England, and Japan. Students demanded abortion access and organized when it came at a steep cost, especially to the poorest among them. Abortion providers in Kansas, California, and Washington, D.C. attracted out-of-state consumers, with some women aided by their universities or by medical insurance. Between 1970 and 1973, entrepreneurs, providers, and hundreds of thousands of women seeking to buy abortions headed to New York City, heralded by some as the “abortion capital of the world.”

While we may have imagined that securing an abortion was best understood as a hidden, woman-only experience, The Abortion Market reveals the extent to which businesses and businessmen openly selling abortion access shaped the experience of buying abortions for millions of women.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Katie Herzog, "Drink Your Way Sober: The Science-Based Method to Break Free from Alcohol" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

After 20 years of fighting and failing to get sober using abstinence-based methods, journalist Katie Herzog found a simple, inexpensive, and effective way to take control over alcohol. Part memoir, part guidebook, Drink Your Way Sober: The Science-Based Method to Break Free from Alcohol (Simon and Schuster, 2025) shares Herzog’s recovery journey as well her keen observations of drinking and life. She dives into the science and history of addiction treatment to discover why we treat alcohol use disorder the way we do—and why abstinence-based programs like Alcohol Anonymous don’t always work. Through candid first-person reporting, Herzog outlines a simple guide for others to: use an evidence-based protocol to take control of their drinking and break free from cravings, explore alternatives to AA and other abstinence-based programs, gain support from family and friends, and reap the benefits of a low-alcohol or sober lifestyle, including improved health, relationships, and mental well-being. Blending humor, heartbreak, and refreshing honesty, Drink Your Way Sober offers a relatable and exhaustively researched account of a transformative approach to recovery with tips on how you can drink yourself sober too.

Find Katie's podcast at Blocked and Reported, and more on her new book here.

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Jack Hartnell, "Wound Man: The Many Lives of a Surgical Image" (Princeton UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Wound Man—a medical diagram depicting a figure fantastically pierced by weapons and ravaged by injuries and diseases—was reproduced widely across the medieval and early modern globe. In Wound Man: The Many Lives of a Surgical Image (Princeton University Press, 2025), Dr. Jack Hartnell charts the emergence and endurance of this striking image, used as a visual guide to the treatment of many ailments. Taking readers on a remarkable journey from medieval Europe to eighteenth-century Japan, Dr. Hartnell explains the historic popularity of this gruesome image and why the Wound Man continues to intrigue us today.
Drawing on a wealth of original research, Dr. Hartnell traces the many lives of the Wound Man, from its origins in late medieval Bohemia to its vivid reincarnations in hundreds of manuscripts and printed books over more than three hundred years. Transporting readers beyond the specifics of bodily injury, Dr. Hartnell demonstrates how the Wound Man’s body was at once an encyclopedic repository of surgical knowledge, a fantastic literary and religious muse, a catalyst for shifting media landscapes, and a cross-cultural artistic feat that reached diverse audiences around the world. The Wound Man, we discover, held profound importance not only for healers and patients but also for scribes, students, nuns, monks, printmakers, and poets.
Marvelously illustrated, Wound Man sheds light on the entwined histories of art and medicine, showing how premodern medical diagrams represent a unique site of contact between sickness, cure, painting, and print.

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Breanne Pleggenkuhle and Joseph A. Schafer, "Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Responses and Adaptations in the US Criminal Justice System" (Southern Illinois UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

While COVID-19 lockdowns affected nearly everyone worldwide, feelings of anxiety and fear were exacerbated for those already entangled in the criminal justice system. Scholars recognized the unique opportunity to study crime and the justice system’s response during this period, though they soon realized that determining the pandemic’s effects would be a complicated, nuanced process.
Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Responses and Adaptations in the US Criminal Justice System (Southern Illinois University Press 2025) features analyses and findings from more than thirty contributors in eleven essays. The collection examines the multifaceted social, economic, cultural, legislative, and policy responses to COVID-19 and their impacts on crime and justice. It also explores how professionals across the criminal justice system—police officers, campus police officers, attorneys, judges, correctional staff, and community supervision agents—adapted to unprecedented challenges.
Through diverse perspectives and empirical approaches ranging from advanced statistical analysis to qualitative interviews, Crime, Corrections, and the COVID-19 Pandemic offers a comprehensive exploration of the complexities that affect research results. It showcases the resilience and innovation within the criminal justice field and details the challenges professionals in this area tackled during a universally trying time, presenting valuable lessons for future crises.

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Dan Roche, "Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 5 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing (MIT Press, 2025) is a book about artificial eyes—about the artisans and artists who make them, and about the life-changing and sometimes life-saving experience of wearing them, as author Dan Roche has done for 15 years. Eye making is done by hand, for one person at a time, by a very small number of ocularists (fewer than 200 in the US); it is a slow, intricate, and unusually intimate process of molding, fitting, and painting that brings ocularist and patient together for many hours or even days.
In Eyes by Hand, Dr. Roche describes the craft that goes into the making of an eye that looks uncannily real, as well as the psychological and emotional healing that such service brings to someone who has suffered the very visible trauma of eye loss—a loss that can go to the heart of self-identity.
In an engaging, frankly fascinating fashion, Roche captures the intricacies of a profession whose techniques and culture have been remarkably consistent for 200 years. He explores, too, how that profession may now be facing a digital transformation in the form of scan-print-mail possibilities. Such a change might make prosthetic eyes more easily and cheaply available, though it may also risk the aesthetic qualities and intimate connection fundamental to the process of healing.

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Helen C. Epstein, "Why Live: An Anatomy of Suicide Epidemics" (Columbia Global Reports, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 3 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What causes suicide epidemics—and how can we prevent them?

Many suicides are caused by biological mental illness, but sometimes the suicide rate of a particular group jumps—two-, three-, or even ten-fold—in a short time, behaving like an epidemic. Suicide epidemics unfold more slowly than microbial plagues like flu or malaria, but they happen far too quickly to result from genetic changes and affect far too many people to be explained away as spontaneous cases of brain injury.

These epidemics have occurred in America’s rustbelt towns, Russia’s cities, and indigenous communities from the Arctic to the Pacific Islands. They tend not to be associated with wars, poverty, or environmental disasters but with a rupture in the social environment so profound that people come to question their most intimate attachments. The mental pain that drives suicide has been likened to the flipside of love, but if so, how does love suddenly disappear—or seem to—from the lives of thousands of people at once? In Why Live: How Suicide Becomes an Epidemic (Columbia Global Reports, 2025), public health researcher Dr. Helen C. Epstein sets out to find the answer.

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Agnes Arnold-Forster, "The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Agnes Arnold-Forster's book The Cancer Problem: Malignancy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford UP, 2021) offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in nineteenth-century Britain. It begins by looking at a community of doctors and patients who lived and worked in the streets surrounding the Middlesex Hospital in London. It follows in their footsteps as they walked the labyrinthine lanes and passages that branched off Tottenham Court Road; then, through seven chapters, its focus expands to successively include the rivers, lakes, and forests of England, the mountains, poverty, and hunger of the four nations of the British Isles, the reluctant and resistant inhabitants of the British Empire, and the networks of scientists and doctors spread across Europe and North America.

The Cancer Problem argues that it was in the nineteenth century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

Rachel Pagones is chair of the doctoral program in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at Pacific College of Health and Science in San Diego and a licensed acupuncturist.

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Susan C. Boyd, "Heroin: An Illustrated History" (Fernwood, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Susan Boyd is a scholar/activist and Distinguished Professor emerita at the University of Victoria. Her research examines a variety of topics related to the history of drug prohibition and resistance to it, drug law and policy, including maternal drug use, maternal/state conflicts, film and culture, radio and print media, heroin assisted-treatment, community-based research and qualitative research methodology.

Her latest book, Heroin: An Illustrated History (Fernwood, 2022), is an illustrated history of two centuries of Canadian heroin regulation that reveals the deep roots of our current failure to address the overdose death epidemic caused by criminalizing and pathologizing drug users and resisting harm-reduction policies. From its discovery in 1898, heroin was prescribed for therapeutic use in Canada. With little evidence of the harm of heroin, its prohibition has been tied up with colonization and systemic racism as well as class and gender injustice. Using documentary evidence and the experiences of people who use/used heroin, drug user unions and harm-reduction advocates, Boyd argues that in order to create a more just future, prohibition and punitive policies that drive the illegal overdose crisis must end.

Today’s host is Jay Shifman. Jay Shifman is a vulnerable storyteller, stigma-destroying speaker, podcaster, and event host. The survivor of two suicide attempts and an overdose, Jay holds a BA in Psychology from Northern Kentucky University and has put in numerous hours of independent learning acquiring certifications in mental health, substance misuse and addiction, and drug policy.

Jay founded his company, Choose Your Struggle, in 2015 with two distinct goals: ending stigma and promoting honest and fact-based education around the topics of Mental Health, Substance Misuse & Recovery, and Drug Use & Policy.

For more information, visit: https://jay.campsite.bio/ or find him on social media.

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Christopher Kemp, "Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation" (Norton, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Inside our heads we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have―older than language. In Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation (Norton, 2022), Christopher Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do.

Fueled by his own spatial shortcomings, Kemp describes the brain regions that orient us in space and the specialized neurons that do it. Place cells. Grid cells. He examines how the brain plans routes, recognizes landmarks, and makes sure we leave a room through a door instead of trying to leave through a painting. From the secrets of supernavigators like the indigenous hunters of the Bolivian rainforest to the confusing environments inhabited by people with place blindness, Kemp charts the myriad ways in which we find our way and explains the cutting-edge neuroscience behind them.

How did Neanderthals navigate? Why do even seasoned hikers stray from the trail? What spatial skills do we inherit from our parents? How can smartphones and our reliance on GPS devices impact our brains? In engaging, engrossing language, Kemp unravels the mysteries of navigating and links the brain’s complex functions to the effects that diseases like Alzheimer’s, types of amnesia, and traumatic brain injuries have on our perception of the world around us.

A book for anyone who has ever felt compelled to venture off the beaten path, Dark and Magical Places is a stirring reminder of the beauty in losing yourself to your surroundings. And the beauty in understanding how our brains can guide us home.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Christopher Kemp, "Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation" (Norton, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Stacia Kalinoski, "Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The book, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025), is a memoir and an educational resource, which tells the story of an Emmy Award-winning TV news Journalist, Stacia Kalinoski. The author's aim is beyond giving an account of her experience of epilepsy, her goal is to sensitize readers and inspire epileptic patients and other people battling with ailments that carry social stigma, emphasizing the importance of taking control of one's health. In the book, Stacia Kalinoski recounts her experience of visual distortions and feelings of déjà vu and jamais vujamais vu, which are auras that often precede more severe seizures. She discusses the physical injuries and memory loss resulting from her condition, particularly from temporal lobe seizures.

Stacia's narrative underscores the complexities of living with epilepsy and the potential for personal growth and empowerment through adversity. She highlights the effects of frequent episodes of seizure on maintenance of social relationships and the ability to reminisce about the past. Relating her experience, Stacia dwells on the importance of confronting the reality of living with epilepsy, she emphasizes the significance of understanding seizures to combat the stigma and fear surrounding the condition, and how surgery can improve memory loss and allow People Living with Epilepsy reconnect with their past.

Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam’s greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is accessible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ (22) Olugbodi Mariam | LinkedIn, Mariam Olugbodi (0000-0001-5027-6644) - ORCID and User:Margob28 - Meta

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Manuel Barcia, "The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade" (Yale UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 9 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

As we now know, epidemics and pandemics are not new phenomena. In her new book The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the 19th-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale University Press, 2020), Manuel Barcia offers a striking rendition of the diseases that swept through the illegal slave trade Atlantic World. In fact, Barcia argues that the history of disease and the story of continuing traffic in enslaved people despite the abolition of the slave trade are processes that must be understood together. Barcia demonstrates that in the 19th century Atlantic, quarantines were politicized, sworn enemies were forced to work together to combat disease, and the medical expertise of enslaved people often prevailed despite efforts to silence or ignore it.

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Lewis A. Grossman, "Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America" (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 9 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Throughout American history, lawmakers have limited the range of treatments available to patients, often with the backing of the medical establishment. The country's history is also, however, brimming with social movements that have condemned such restrictions as violations of fundamental American liberties. This fierce conflict is one of the defining features of the social history of medicine in the United States.

In Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America (Oxford UP, 2021), Lewis A. Grossman presents a compelling look at how persistent but evolving notions of a right to therapeutic choice have affected American health policy, law, and regulation from the Revolution through the Trump Era. Grossman grounds his analysis in historical examples ranging from unschooled supporters of botanical medicine in the early nineteenth century to sophisticated cancer patient advocacy groups in the twenty-first. He vividly describes how activists and lawyers have resisted a wide variety of legal constraints on therapeutic choice, including medical licensing statutes, FDA limitations on unapproved drugs and alternative remedies, abortion restrictions, and prohibitions against medical marijuana and physician-assisted suicide. Grossman also considers the relationship between these campaigns for desired treatments and widespread opposition to state-compelled health measures such as vaccines and face masks. From the streets of San Francisco to the US Supreme Court, Choose Your Medicine examines an underexplored theme of American history, politics, and law that is more relevant today than ever.

Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.

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Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in each of China’s twenty-two provinces, the biggest of which screen some three thousand to four thousand potential donors each year. Given the estimated one to two million azoospermic men--those who are unable to produce their own sperm--the demand remains insatiable. China’s twenty-two sperm banks cannot keep up, spurring sperm bank directors to publicly lament chronic shortages and even warn of a national ‘sperm crisis’ (jingzi weiji).

Ayo Wahlberg book Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China (U California Press, 2018) explores the issues behind the crisis, including declining sperm quality in the country due to environmental pollution, as well as a chronic national shortage of donors. In doing so, Wahlberg outlines the specific style of Chinese sperm banking that has emerged, shaped by the particular cultural, juridical, economic and social configurations that make up China’s restrictive reproductive complex. Good Quality shows how this high-throughput style shapes the ways in which men experience donation and how sperm is made available to couples who can afford it.

Victoria Oana Lupascu is a PhD candidate in dual-title doctoral program in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of interest include 20th and 21st Chinese literature and visual art, medical humanities and Global South studies.

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Athena Aktipis, "The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer" (Princeton UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

When we think of the forces driving cancer, we don’t necessarily think of evolution. But evolution and cancer are closely linked because the historical processes that created life also created cancer. The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer (Princeton UP, 2020) delves into this extraordinary relationship, and shows that by understanding cancer’s evolutionary origins, researchers can come up with more effective, revolutionary treatments.

Athena Aktipis goes back billions of years to explore when unicellular forms became multicellular organisms. Within these bodies of cooperating cells, cheating ones arose, overusing resources and replicating out of control, giving rise to cancer. Aktipis illustrates how evolution has paved the way for cancer’s ubiquity, and why it will exist as long as multicellular life does. Even so, she argues, this doesn’t mean we should give up on treating cancer—in fact, evolutionary approaches offer new and promising options for the disease’s prevention and treatments that aim at long-term management rather than simple eradication. Looking across species—from sponges and cacti to dogs and elephants—we are discovering new mechanisms of tumor suppression and the many ways that multicellular life-forms have evolved to keep cancer under control. By accepting that cancer is a part of our biological past, present, and future—and that we cannot win a war against evolution—treatments can become smarter, more strategic, and more humane.

Unifying the latest research from biology, ecology, medicine, and social science, The Cheating Cell challenges us to rethink cancer’s fundamental nature and our relationship to it.

Hussein Mohsen is a PhD/MA Candidate in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics/History of Science and Medicine at Yale University. His research interests include machine learning, cancer genomics, and the history of human genetics. For more about his work, visit http://www.husseinmohsen.com.

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Melody Glenn, "Mother of Methadone: A Doctor's Quest, a Forgotten History, and a Modern-Day Crisis" (Beacon Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Melody Glenn was a burned-out emergency physician who had grown to resent the large population of opioid dependent patients passing through her ER. While working at a methadone clinic, she realized how effective harm reduction treatments could be and set out to discover why they weren’t used more broadly. That’s when she found Dr. Marie Nyswander.
In the 1960s, Nyswander defied the DEA and medical establishment to co-develop methadone maintenance as a treatment for heroin addiction. According to some addiction specialists, its discovery could be considered as monumental as the discovery of penicillin. Yet, it still carries a stigma today.
Deftly weaving together interviews, media coverage, and historical documents, Glenn recovers Nyswander’s important legacy and reveals how the forces of racism, fearmongering politicians, and misinformation colluded to set us back decades in our understandings of opioids.
With Nyswander as her guide, Glenn also shares her journey through addiction medicine as she confronts her own personal and philosophical quandaries around bias, ambition, and saviorism in the medical field.
As the US continues to struggle with opioid and fentanyl use in communities, Mother of Methadone is a powerful reminder of the ways biases have prevented doctors from saving countless lives.

Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). Her second book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America’s Forgotten War on Drugs, will be released in 2026.

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Judith Grisel, "Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction" (Doubleday, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Not a lot of authors go from spending their early twenties homeless and addicted to cocaine to becoming one of the world’s leading researchers on the neuroscience of addiction. But Dr. Judith Grisel, in her new book Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction (Doubleday, 2019), uses her personal story to illuminate the ways in which the brain, in collusion with social and biological factors, makes addiction possible. In our discussion, Grisel outlines the effects of different drugs, explains the “three laws of psychopharmacology,” and wonders if we’ll ever find medicine’s “holy grail” – a cure for addiction.

Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). A drug historian and writer, she edits Points, the blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society.

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Rehearsals for Dying

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Deena stepped out of the shower and opened her towel in the steam. “Does my breast look weird?” These words irrevocably change the lives of writer Ariel Gore and her wife. As they descend into a world of doctors and tests, medications and insurance, sickness and treatments and hope and pain and more, they discover just how little they truly knew—despite the awareness campaigns and hyper-visible pink ribbons—about the reality of breast cancer. Over the four years following Deena’s terminal diagnosis, Ariel Gore does what she always does, no matter how difficult or personal the subject: she writes about it.

Written with keen insights, empathy, and humor, Rehearsals for Dying braids together the story of Deena’s experience, her own role as a caretaker, narratives from others living with breast cancer, literary reflections on illness, and reportage on the history of breast cancer and the $200 billion industry that capitalizes on and profits from breast cancer screenings and treatments. Rehearsals for Dying investigates and challenges everything we think we know about breast cancer. It goes beyond awareness to knowledge, presenting a rich, nuanced, heartbreaking, and hopeful portrait of what it is to be diagnosed with, treat, and live with breast cancer in the twenty-first century.

Our guest is: Ariel Gore, who is the founding editor and publisher of the Alternative Press Award–winning magazine Hip Mama and the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, including Rehearsals for Dying. She teaches writing online at Ariel Gore’s School for Wayward Writers at the Literary Kitchen.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a writing coach and developmental editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Memoir playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Joseph Gfroerer, "War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Joseph Gfroerer spent nearly 40 years working as a statistician for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Starting in 1988, when the American drug war was taking its current shape, he led the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), one of the federal government’s largest and most important ongoing health surveys that tracks Americans’ use of illegal drugs, prescription drugs, alcohol and tobacco. War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (Cambridge UP, 2018), written after he retired, shows where the survey came from, details how it gathers information, and tracks the impact that the shifting cultural and political climate surrounding drug use played on how these statistics were understood. Gfroerer provides necessary insight on what drug use statistics have meant, how they’ve been used (and misused), and what this means for our understanding of drug use in America today.

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Childhood malnutrition and pneumonia in Timor-Leste

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Dr Nick Fancourt is a Horizon Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Sydney Medical School. He also works as a paediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead. Nick researches childhood pneumonia, particularly in low and middle income countries. He lived in Timor-Leste from 2018-2020, working with local partners on intitiatives to strengthen communicable disease surveillance. As this episodes guest he will discuss child health issues and outcomes in Timor-Leste.

Timor-Leste has made significant progress in child survival, with deaths among young children reduced by 50% in the 20+ years since independence. Further progress is needed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal targets and meet strategic health priorities of the Timor-Leste government. Prevention and treatment of pneumonia and malnutrition are essential to these efforts, given the high burden of these conditions. Novel approaches will be needed, especially to reach high-risk groups, and will have global significance.

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Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, Brian T. Nguyen eds., "Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics" (NYU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics, Rene Almeling, Lisa Campo-Engelstein, and Brian T. Nguyen come together across disciplines to offer a kaleidoscopic view of the relationship between sperm, health, and the intersecting politics of gender, race, and reproduction. Always insightful and often provocative, the essays in this unprecedented collection cover a broad range of issues related to male reproductive and sexual health—including the latest technological developments for creating sperm; the specter of eugenics in contemporary medical markets; emerging approaches to male contraceptive methods, male infertility, and trans healthcare; controversies surrounding sperm donors and sperm banking; disparities in sexual health education for teens—all the while attending to the enormous variation in how individuals and societies understand, embody, and experience sperm.

At a time when the most basic rights of reproductive autonomy are under severe threat, contributors to this volume argue this is precisely the moment to rethink and reimagine sperm from a variety of medical, political, and cultural perspectives. Ultimately, this volume aims to contribute to a more reproductively just society and broaden conversations around bodies, health and equity in the United States.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is at the intersection of space, behavior, and identity. He is currently conducting research about: escape rooms, the use of urban design in downtown historical neighborhoods of rural communities, and a study on belongingness in college and university. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his personal website, Google Scholar, Bluesky (@professorjohnst.bsky.social), Twitter (@ProfessorJohnst), or by email (johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu)

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Ela Przybylo, "Ungendering Menstruation" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Ungendering Menstruation by Ela Przybyło discusses why and how menstrual pain needs to be incorporated into discussions of gender, embodiment, and disability. Honing a "cranky" approach to being a menstruating body expected to accept and embrace trauma, Ungendering Menstruation examines menstrual suppression, toxicity, and the cooptation of menstrual positivity rhetoric. Drawing on their own experiences as a toxic shock survivor and a menstrual pain and period dysphoria sufferer, Ela Przybyło questions why, on what terms, and for whom menstruation has been fixed around experiences of pain. Instead, they present a vision for menstrual justice that refuses the womaning of bleeding and the further erasure, dismissal, and denial of menstrual pain as real pain. If menstruating is framed as somatechnically elective, Przybyło contends, it provides avenues for both celebrating and appreciating cultures of bleeding as well as for remaining critical of the ways in which bleeding has been used as a transphobic and sexist tool to fix gender in place.

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Ben Westhoff, "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic" (Grove Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative journalist whose best-selling 2019 book Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic (Grove Press, 2019), was one of the first to take fentanyl seriously as both a social phenomenon and a national threat. Since its release, Westhoff has become a policy expert, advising top government officials on the fentanyl crisis, and continuing to follow the story on his Substack account. The author of two previous nonfiction books and numerous articles in outlets like the Atlantic, The Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal, Westhoff’s fourth book, Little Brother: Love, Tragedy, and My Search for the Truth comes out this spring.

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Ben Westhoff, "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic" (Grove Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

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Richard Scheib, "A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic: Depictions of Plague and Pandemic on Film and TV" (Headpress, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Richard Scheib's A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic (Headpress, 2025) is a film book like no other. It opens with the author's first-hand account of the Covid-19 pandemic and life in lockdown. His sense of dread, and anxiety about his state of health, were experiences shared with millions of others across the world. For author Richard Scheib, already committed to writing a book about plagues and pandemics in popular culture, Covid-19 felt like a perverse twist of fate. Media depictions of deadly contagions had, to this point, been speculative and often off the mark; his book takes an in-depth look at what filmmakers imagined would happen and contrasts it with the reality. International in scope, A Viewing Guide to the Pandemic examines films in a wide variety of genres, from the silent era to the present day. Black Death, Ebola, Mad Cow Disease, Bird Flu -- it explores fictionalized accounts of plague and pestilence such as box-office hit Outbreak (1995), as well as documentary treatments of real-life incidents. Whether the threats depicted have a basis in reality -- the biowarfare of the Cold War era, for instance -- or are, like zombies and vampires, more fantastical, Scheib demonstrates how the fear of contagion has provided a wealth of inspiration for the big and small screen. In addition to his work on the pandemic, Scheib runs Moria Reviews where he posts reviews for horror, science fiction, and fantasy films.

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Dayna Bowen Matthew, "Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America" (NYU Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the United States, systemic racism is embedded in policies and practices, thereby structuring American society to perpetuate inequality and all of the symptoms and results of that inequality. Racial, social, and class inequities and the public health crises in the United States are deeply intertwined, their roots and manifestations continually pressuring each other. This has been both illuminated and exacerbated since 2020, with the Movement for Black Lives (BLM) and the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on historically disadvantaged groups within the U.S. Dr. Dayna Bowen Matthew, Dean of the George Washington University Law School, explores and unpacks the public health crisis that is racism in her new book Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America (NYU Press, 2022). She describes how structural inequality undermines the interests of a thriving nation and the steps we can take to undo the pervasive nature of inequality to create more equitable and just systems.

Dr. Bowen Matthew describes her personal relationship with the concepts of structural inequality and racism in the public health system, opening with a heart-wrenching ode to her father’s experience with poverty and prejudice, which ultimately led to his premature death. Through her family’s story, she explains how structural inequality is perpetuated on a large-enough scale and with a powerful-enough scope so as to virtually guarantee social outcomes that reflect predetermined hierarchies based on race and/or class, hierarchies that remain consistent across generations. These disproportionate outcomes are often dismissed as due to comorbidities without the attention paid to social factors are the primary cause of comorbidities, because oppression in its many forms blocks equitable access to the social determinants of health. These social determinants include, but are not limited to, clean and safe housing, adequate education, nutritious food and fresh water, access to recreational spaces, and mental health services. Individuals who lack these, through no fault of their own, are then obligated to accept disproportionate care, illness, and disturbingly shorter life spans then are the norm for many Americans and are much closer to life spans in impoverished countries. Dr. Bowen Matthew presents evidence of discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system, detailing how law has played a central role in erecting disproportionate access to the social determinants of health, and therefore is a requisite tool for dismantling it. She provides a clear path to undoing structural racism and providing an equitable society to all, encouraging health providers, law makers, and citizens all to fight to dismantle the hurdles that many patients face because of the zip code in which they live.

Emma R. Handschke assisted in the production of this podcast.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj.

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Andréa Becker, "Get It Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy" (NYU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

At least one hysterectomy is performed every minute of the year, making it the most common gynecological surgery worldwide. By the age of sixty-five, one out of five people born with a uterus will have it removed. So, why do we seldom talk about this surgery? Highly performed yet overlooked, examining the paradox of hysterectomy begins to unravel the various problems with how we medically treat uteruses and the people who have them.
Get It Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy (NYU Press, 2025) by Dr. Andréa Becker weaves centuries of medical history with rich qualitative data from 100 women, trans men, and nonbinary people who had, want, or are considering hysterectomy. In compelling detail, Dr. Becker reveals how America’s healthcare system routinely deprives people of the ability to control their own bodies along race and gender lines. When people ask for a hysterectomy, they are often met with pushback: Are you sick enough? Old enough? Have you had enough babies? Will you regret this? How will your future husband feel about this? Yet this pushback is not equally experienced. While some people are barred access, others are ushered toward a hysterectomy. These contradictory recommendations reveal the persistent biases entrenched within healthcare.
Get It Out interrogates how little choice people with uteruses ultimately have over their reproductive health, and explores what these “choices” signify amid interlocking systems of inequality.

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Kevin J. Tracey, "The Great Nerve: The New Science of the Vagus Nerve and How to Harness Its Healing Reflexes" (Penguin, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The vagus nerve is fundamental to our health and vitality, coordinating critical functions from the precise heartbeat we need to exercise or rest to the balance of appetite and digestion. Made up of 200,000 fibers, the vagus nerve sends thousands of electrical signals every second between your brain and your most important organs. Yet despite its essential role in life, important vagus nerve functions have eluded centuries of scientific investigation. Now neurosurgeon and researcher Dr. Kevin Tracey has discovered the previously unknown power of the vagus nerve to reverse inflammation, balance the immune system, treat chronic illness, and keep our organs humming together in harmony.
In The Great Nerve: The New Science of the Vagus Nerve and How to Harness Its Healing Reflexes (Penguin, 2025), Dr. Tracey shows us how stimulating the vagus nerve with a tiny electrical implant has the potential to reverse life-altering diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, lupus, MS, diabetes, obesity, stroke, depression, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. If this sounds too good to believe, Dr. Tracey shares stories of patients who have gone from being nearly bedridden to running and dancing, along with the science that makes possible these recoveries. He also explains the evidence for lifestyle strategies like ice baths, meditation, exercise, and breathwork that can maintain and improve vagus nerve function.
By opening the door to the new field of neuroimmunology, The Great Nerve  not only revolutionizes how we understand and treat disease, it gives us unprecedented hope for our health. This is the story of your body’s ability to heal itself.

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Brent Z. Kaup and Kelly F. Austin, "The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease" (U of California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Pathogens of Finance: How Capitalism Breeds Vector-Borne Disease (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Brent Z. Kaup & Dr. Kelly F. Austin is an exploration of how the rising power and profits of Wall Street underpin the contemporary increases in and inadequate responses to vector-borne disease. Over the past fifty years, insects have transmitted infectious diseases to humans with greater frequency and in more unexpected places. To examine this phenomenon, Dr. Kaup and Dr. Austin take readers to the exurban homes of northern Virginia; the burgeoning agricultural outposts of Mato Grosso, Brazil; and the smallholder coffee farms of the Bududa District of eastern Uganda. Through these case studies, the authors illuminate how the broader financialization of society is intimately intertwined with both the creation of landscapes more conducive to vector-borne disease and the failure to prevent and cure such diseases throughout the world.

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Sarah Bull, "Selling Sexual Knowledge: Medical Publishing and Obscenity in Victorian Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What is the relationship between medicine and commerce? In Selling Sexual Knowledge: Medical Publishing and Obscenity in Victorian Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Sarah Bull, an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University, explores the relationships between doctors, sexual reform campaigners, publishers and pornography in the Victorian era. The book charts the struggle to differentiate and define medicine from ‘quackery’, in the context of the rise of commercial forms of publishing and demands for access to contraception. The book uses richly detailed materials, including books and newspapers, court cases, and case studies of the key players who defined the era, and the years that would follow. Challenging myths of sex and Victorian society, and offering a compelling picture of conflicts over key issues such as free speech, contraception, and professional identity, the book will be of wide interest across the arts and humanities, as well as for medicine and science, and is available open access here

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Manchester.

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Stacy Horn, "Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York" (Algonquin Books, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Conceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world had ever seen, New York's Blackwell's Island, site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals, quickly became, in the words of a visiting Charles Dickens, "a lounging, listless madhouse." Digging through city records, newspaper articles, and archival reports, Stacy Horn tells a gripping narrative through the voices of the island's inhabitants. We also hear from the era's officials, reformers, and journalists, including the celebrated undercover reporter Nellie Bly. And we follow the extraordinary Reverend William Glenney French as he ministers to Blackwell's residents, battles the bureaucratic mazes of the Department of Correction and a corrupt City Hall, testifies at salacious trials, and in his diary wonders about man's inhumanity to his fellow man. Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad and Criminal in 19th Century New York (Algonquin Books, 2019) shows how far we've come in caring for the least fortunate among us--and reminds us how much work still remains.

Stacy Horn shows that in setting up institutions for the humane treatment of social outcasts, New York City was so quickly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers confined to the Insane Asylum, Workhouse, Almshouse, Penitentiary and Hospital, that what emerged was a veritable gulag on Blackwell’s (now Roosevelt) Island. Based on a careful reading of both remarkably candid official documents detailing widespread suffering and accounts by the intrepid undercover reporter Nellie Bly and the socially prominent Josephine Shaw Lowell, we come to appreciate the long shadow of history cast over the city’s remaining island of the damned—Rikers.

James Wunsch is Emeritus Professor of Historical and Educational Studies at SUNY Empire State.

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Improving Quality of Care for Patients with Limited English

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Leah Karliner. Dr. Karliner is Professor in Residence in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco in the United States. She is Director of the Center for Aging in Diverse Communities and Director of the Multiethnic Health Equity Research Center. She is both a practicing general internist and a health services researcher, with expertise in practice-based and communication research. An important aspect of her scholarly work centres on improving quality of care for patients with limited English proficiency, and the goal of her research agenda is aimed at achieving health equity through improved communication and clinical outcomes.

In this episode, Brynn and Leah discuss a 2024 paper that Leah co-authored entitled “Language Access Systems Improvement initiative: impact on professional interpreter utilisation, a natural experiment”. The paper details a study that investigated two ways of improving the quality of clinical care for limited English proficiency (LEP) patients in English-dominant healthcare contexts, by:

Certifying bilingual clinicians to use their non-English language skills directly with patients; and

Simultaneously increasing easy access to professional interpreters by instituting on-demand remote video interpretation.

Brynn and Leah talk about the results of this study and what they mean for improved communication with LEP patients in healthcare.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Judith Weisenfeld, "Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake" (NYU Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the decades after the end of slavery, African Americans were committed to southern state mental hospitals at higher rates as white psychiatrists listed “religious excitement” among the most frequent causes of insanity for Black patients. At the same time, American popular culture and political discourse framed African American modes of spiritual power as fetishism and superstition, cast embodied worship as excessive or fanatical, and labeled new religious movements “cults,” unworthy of respect. As Judith Weisenfeld argues in Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake (NYU Press, 2025), psychiatrists’ notions of race and religion became inextricably intertwined in the decades after the end of slavery and into the twentieth century, and had profound impacts on the diagnosis, care, and treatment of Black patients. This book charts how racialized medical understandings of mental normalcy pathologized a range of Black religious beliefs, spiritual sensibilities, practices, and social organizations and framed them as manifestations of innate racial traits. Importantly, these characterizations were marshaled to help to limit the possibilities for Black self-determination, with white psychiatrists’ theories about African American religion and mental health being used to promote claims of Black people’s unfitness for freedom. Drawing on extensive archival research, Black Religion in the Madhouse is the first book to expose how racist views of Black religion in slavery’s wake shaped the rise of psychiatry as an established and powerful profession.

Judith Weisenfeld is the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion and associated faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies.

This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com

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Ewa Herbst, "Visionaries from Lviv: The Story of a Jewish Hospital" (Academic Studies Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Year 2023 marked 120 years of the Lazarus Jewish Hospital in Lviv (Lwów/Lemberg). This richly illustrated book is a tribute to its place in the once-vibrant Jewish community of the city and in the society at large during the period 1903-1939. Visionaries from Lviv: The Story of a Jewish Hospital (Academic Studies Press, 2024) presents the hospital’s history and its fascinating architecture, its doctors, and its founder, a prominent local Jewish philanthropist Maurycy Lazarus, with the background of the Jewish life in Lviv.

The volume also details the history of medicine and medical education in Habsburg Galicia prior to the hospital’s founding, Jewish access to the medical profession, and the impact of Jewish doctors on the path to modernity. It also shows the struggle of women to become doctors. A moving and timely book with contributions from leading historians, scholars, and medical professionals, Visionaries from Lviv is an ode to the once thriving Jewish community in Lviv and a testament to how one person’s dream and commitment can impact the lives of so many.

This publication was made possible with support from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund and Gesher Galicia.

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Marc Sapir, "I'll Fly Away: Stories About Amazing Disabled Elders" (2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

We all hope to grow old with dignity and some joyfulness. The intimate narratives of 40 extraordinary elders shared in I'll Fly Away: Stories About Amazing Disabled Elders explore both the challenges of aging and the joys and vibrancy that often persist in the twilight years. Poignant observations of the patients and families by a team of health professionals intersecting daily at the Center for Elders' Independence in Oakland, California, reveal the complexities of aging, identity, amid the assertive persistence of the human spirit.

From a couple's summer drive across the Arizona desert to a family's struggle with mental illness to patients' romantic escapades, each tale offers a unique glimpse into the resilience of individuals facing profound transitions and prompts questions about our collective responsibility to our elders.

Though this book is valuable for medical and public health professionals, it especially offers families kinship, support, and inspiration. For patients and readers in general, I'll Fly Away champions the idea that every one of us is a unique person with needs, wants, and a voice that is discoverable and deserves to be heard. It embodies the notion that every life is a story, and every voice matters.

Marc Sapir, a retired primary care, geriatric and public health physician, is an essayist and political activist. He was first Medical Director of the Center for Elders' Independence for disabled elders for 9 years. He is author of five plays, and also writes fiction, poetry, and music. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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Laura Frances Goffman, "Disorder and Diagnosis: Health and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Arabia" (Stanford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Disorder and Diagnosis: Health and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Arabia (Stanford UP, 2024) offers a social and political history of medicine, disease, and public health in the Persian Gulf from the late nineteenth century until the 1973 oil boom. Foregrounding the everyday practices of Gulf residents--hospital patients, quarantined passengers, women migrant nurses, and others too often excluded from histories of this region--Laura Frances Goffman demonstrates how the Gulf and its Arabian hinterland served as a buffer zone between "diseased" India and white Europe, as a space of scientific translation, and, ultimately, as an object of development. In placing health at the center of political and social change, this book weaves the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula into global circulations of commodities and movements of people. As a collection of institutions and infrastructures, pursuits of health created shifting boundaries of rule between imperial officials, indigenous elites, and local populations. As a set of practices seeking to manipulate the natural world, health policies compelled scientists and administrators to categorize fluid populations and ambiguous territorialities. And, as a discourse, health facilitated notions of racial difference, opposing native uncleanliness to white purity and hygiene, and indigenous medicine to modern science. Disorder and Diagnosis examines how Gulf residents, through their engagements with health, fiercely contested and actively shaped state and societal interactions.

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Carolyn Wolf-Gould et al., "A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States" (SUNY Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States (SUNY Press, 2025) takes an empathic approach to an embattled subject. Sweeping in scope and deeply personal in nature, this groundbreaking volume traces the development of transgender medicine across three centuries-centering the voices of transgender individuals, debunking myths about gender-affirming care, and empowering readers to grasp the complexities of this evolving field. More than forty contributors-including patients, advocates, physicians, psychologists, and scholars-weave an illuminating, sometimes surprising narrative of collaboration and conflict between trans people and the scientists who have studied and worked with them. An indispensable guide to understanding the current tumult surrounding trans health-care access in the United States, the volume underscores a crucial message: gender diversity is not a new phenomenon but an integral part of our shared human history.

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Jenn Hobbs, "Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics and Security" (Bristol University Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In recent years, security actors have become increasingly concerned with health issues. Bodily Fluids, Fluid Bodies and International Politics: Feminist Technoscience, Biopolitics and Security (Bristol University Press, 2024) by Dr. Jenn Hobbs reveals how understandings of race, sexuality and gender are produced/reproduced through healthcare policy.

Analysing the plasma of paid Mexicana/o donors in the US, airport vomit in Ebola epidemics and the semen of soldiers with genitourinary injuries, this book shows how security practices focus upon governing bodily fluids. Using a variety of critical scholarship – feminist technoscience, queer studies and critical race studies – this book uses fluids to reveal unequal distributions of life and death.

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Kathleen Miller, ed., "Doctrine and Disease in the British and Spanish Colonial World" (Penn State UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Kathleen Miller talks about her new edited volume, Doctrine and Disease in British and Spanish Colonial World (Penn State University Press, 2025). In the sixteenth century, unprecedented migration caused diseases to take hold in new locales, turning illness and the human body into battlegrounds for competing religious beliefs as well as the colonial agendas they were often ensnared in.This interdisciplinary volume follows the contours of illness, epidemics, and cures in the early modern British and Spanish Empires as these were understood in religious terms. Each chapter of this volume centers on a key moment during this period of remarkable upheaval, including Jesuit co-optation of Indigenous knowledge in Peru, the Catholic Church's dissemination of the smallpox vaccine across the Spanish Empire, Puritan collective fasting during smallpox outbreaks, and the practice of eating dirt as Obeah resistance among enslaved people in Jamaica. Throughout, the contributors explore how the porous geographical borders of the transatlantic world meant medicine and religion were translated through and against each other, over and over again. Residing at the nexus between two largely discrete areas of inquiry, this collection provides significant insight into the numerous points of juncture between medicine and religion in the Atlantic world. In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include Matthew James Crawford, Rana A. Hogarth, Crawford Gribben, Philippa Koch, Allyson M. Poska, Catherine Reedy, and Rebecca Totaro.

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Carol A. Heimer, "Governing the Global Clinic: HIV and the Legal Transformation of Medicine" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

HIV emerged in the world at a time when medicine and healthcare were undergoing two major transformations: globalization and a turn toward legally inflected, rule-based ways of doing things. It accelerated both trends. While pestilence and disease are generally considered the domain of biological sciences and medicine, social arrangements—and law in particular—are also crucial.

Drawing on years of research in HIV clinics in the United States, Thailand, South Africa, and Uganda, Governing the Global Clinic: HIV and the Legal Transformation of Medicine (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Carol Heimer examines how growing norms of legalized accountability have altered the work of healthcare systems and how the effects of legalization vary across different national contexts. A key feature of legalism is universalistic language, but, in practice, rules are usually imported from richer countries (especially the United States) to poorer ones that have less adequate infrastructure and fewer resources with which to implement them. Challenging readers to reconsider the impulse to use law to organize and govern social life, Governing the Global Clinic poses difficult questions: When do rules solve problems, and when do they create new problems? When do rules become decoupled from ethics, and when do they lead to deeper moral commitments? When do rules reduce inequality? And when do they reflect, reproduce, and even amplify inequality?

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Lina Pinto-García, "Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 31 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Maraña: War and Disease in the Jungles of Colombia (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Lina Pinto-García delves into the relationship between war and disease, focusing on Colombian armed conflict and the skin disease known as cutaneous leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is transmitted through the bite of female sandflies. The most common manifestation, cutaneous leishmaniasis, is neither deadly nor contagious: it affects the skin by producing lesions of varying size and shape. In Colombia, the insect vector of the disease is native to the same forested environments that have served as the main stage for one of the longest and most violent civil wars in Latin American history. As a result, the populations most affected by leishmaniasis in Colombia are members of the state army and non-state armed groups.

Pinto-García explores how leishmaniasis and the armed conflict are inextricably connected and mutually reinforcing. Her title, Maraña, means "tangle" in Spanish but is also commonly used in Colombia to name the entangled greenery, braided lianas, and dense foliage that characterize the tropical forests where leishmaniasis typically occurs. Pinto-García argues that leishmaniasis and the war are not merely linked, but enmarañadas to each other through narratives, technologies, and practices produced by the state, medicine, biomedical research, and the armed conflict itself. She also uses the concept of desenmarañados (disentangled) to discuss how other attachments between leishmaniasis and society could be formed through different scientific programs, technological designs, healthcare practices, regulations, and social and cultural processes capable of challenging violence, suffering, and inequality. All told, Maraña is a passionate study of how war has shaped the production of scientific knowledge about leishmaniasis and access to its treatments in Colombia.

This episode is hosted by Elena Sobrino, a lecturer in the Science and Technology Studies Program at Tufts University. Her research explores volunteer work, union histories, and environmentalism in the Flint water crisis. She is currently writing about the politics of fatigue and crisis, and teaching courses on science and technology studies, ethnographies of crisis, and global racisms. You can read more about her work at elenasobrino.site.

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Jaap de Roode, "Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves" (Princeton UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Ages before the dawn of modern medicine, wild animals were harnessing the power of nature's pharmacy to heal themselves. Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves (Princeton University Press, 2025) reveals what researchers are now learning about the medical wonders of the animal world. In this visionary book, Jaap de Roode argues that we have underestimated the healing potential of nature for too long and shows how the study of self-medicating animals could impact the practice of human medicine.

Drawing on illuminating interviews with leading scientists from around the globe as well as his own pioneering research on monarch butterflies, de Roode demonstrates how animals of all kinds--from ants to apes, from bees to bears, and from cats to caterpillars--use various forms of medicine to treat their own ailments and those of their relatives. We meet apes that swallow leaves to dislodge worms, sparrows that use cigarette butts to repel parasites, and bees that incorporate sticky resin into their hives to combat pathogens. De Roode asks whether these astonishing behaviors are learned or innate and explains why, now more than ever, we need to apply the lessons from medicating animals--it can pave the way for healthier livestock, more sustainable habitats for wild pollinators, and a host of other benefits.

Doctors by Nature takes readers into a realm often thought to be the exclusive domain of humans, exploring how scientists are turning to the medical knowledge of the animal kingdom to improve agriculture, create better lives for our pets, and develop new pharmaceutical drugs.

Jaap de Roode is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology at Emory University, where he is director of the Infectious Diseases across Scales Training Program, which trains graduate students in interdisciplinary science to study and control infectious disease.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

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Gina Leola Woolsey, "Fifteen Thousand Pieces" (Guernica Editions, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 27 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author Gina Leola Woolsey about her stunning biography, Fifteen Thousand Pieces (Guernica Editions, 2023).

On Wednesday, September 2nd, 1998, an international flight carrying 229 souls crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia. There were no survivors. By Friday, Sept 4th, thousands of dismembered body parts had come through Dr. John Butt's makeshift morgue in Hangar B at the Shearwater military base. The Chief Medical Examiner faced the most challenging and grisly task of his career. Five years prior to the plane crash, John had lost his prestigious job as Alberta’s Chief Medical Examiner. After 14 years of marriage, John began to think of himself as gay, but remained closeted professionally. Then, after serving a handful of years as Nova Scotia's Chief Medical Examiner, the devastating crash in Nova Scotia cracked his carefully constructed façade. Fifteen Thousand Pieces explores one man's journey to accept his true nature and find his place in the world. Chapters alternate between the fast-paced story of the crash, and the history of the man in the making. It is both fast-paced and introspective; gruesome and touching. Ultimately, it is the story of how death teaches us to live.

About Gina Leola Woolsey:

CBC Award-winning author Gina Leola Woolsey tugs at your heartstrings with written portraits of people striving to find love, self-acceptance, and belonging in an ever-changing world. She left her corporate career mid-life to pursue an education in creative writing, earning a BFA from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from the University of King’s College. She lives wherever the narrative takes her. Currently, her time is split between small-town Alberta, downtown Montreal, and her hometown of Vancouver.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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Nicole C. Nelson, "Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders" (U Chicago Press, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 16 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Mice are used as model organisms across a wide range of fields in science today--but it is far from obvious how studying a mouse in a maze can help us understand human problems like alcoholism or anxiety. How do scientists convince funders, fellow scientists, the general public, and even themselves that animal experiments are a good way of producing knowledge about the genetics of human behavior? In Model Behavior: Animal Experiments, Complexity, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders (U Chicago Press, 2018), Nicole C. Nelson takes us inside an animal behavior genetics laboratory to examine how scientists create and manage the foundational knowledge of their field.

Behavior genetics is a particularly challenging field for making a clear-cut case that mouse experiments work, because researchers believe that both the phenomena they are studying and the animal models they are using are complex. These assumptions of complexity change the nature of what laboratory work produces. Whereas historical and ethnographic studies traditionally portray the laboratory as a place where scientists control, simplify, and stabilize nature in the service of producing durable facts, the laboratory that emerges from Nelson's extensive interviews and fieldwork is a place where stable findings are always just out of reach. The ongoing work of managing precarious experimental systems means that researchers learn as much--if not more--about the impact of the environment on behavior as they do about genetics. Model Behavior offers a compelling portrait of life in a twenty-first-century laboratory, where partial, provisional answers to complex scientific questions are increasingly the norm.

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Edward L. Jones III, "Medication, Mental Illness, and Murder: What Really Killed the Crespi Twins?" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

While Kim Crespi was getting a haircut, her husband David murdered their five-year-old twin daughters during a game of hide and seek. In the aftermath, family, friends, and even David have more questions than answers.

In 2005, Kim Crespi had what she later described as "the perfect life." She and her husband, David--a gentle giant of a man, devoutly religious, a loving father, and a proven star in the world of finance--had five healthy, happy children. No one, least of all Kim, ever suspected that the life the Crespis had lovingly woven together could be destroyed in less than forty minutes.
In Medication, Mental Illness, and Murder, author Edward L. Jones III chronicles David Crespi's struggles with insomnia and depression, the role SSRI antidepressants may have played in the killings, and Kim's unimaginable journey of trauma, suffering, and eventual forgiveness as documented by her journal entries.
Using letters and other forms of personal communications with David, plus excerpts from scholarly articles and more, Jones takes readers on a journey into the dark heart of psychosis, of North Carolina's penal and mental health systems, and of Big Pharma.

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Caitlin Killian, "Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In today's post-Roe v. Wade world, U.S. maternal mortality is on the rise and laws regarding contraception, involuntary sterilization, access to reproductive health services, and criminalization of people who are gestating are changing by the minute. Today I’m joined by Dr. Caitlin Killian, the editor of and one of the contributors to a new book from Bloomsbury Academic, Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts: A Reader. I’m also pleased to host two of the chapter authors, Drs. Nancy Hiemstra and Jaya Keaney.

Using a reproductive justice framework, Understanding Reproduction in Social Contexts walks students through the social landscape around reproduction through the life course. Chapters by cutting-edge reproductive scholars, practitioners, and advocates address the social control of fertility and pregnancy, the promises and perils of assisted reproductive technologies, experiences of pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, and birth, and how individuals make sense of and respond to the cultural, social, and political forces that condition their reproductive lives. The book takes an intersectional approach and considers how gender, sexuality, fatness, disability, class, race, and immigration status impact both an individual's health and the healthcare they receive. The reader includes timely topics such as increased legal limitations on abortion, transpeople and reproduction, and new developments in assisted reproduction and family formation. The book can support undergraduate and graduate courses on families, gender, public health, reproduction, and sexuality – and I’m pleased to have contributed a chapter.

Dr. Caitlin Killian is a Professor of Sociology at Drew University specializing in gender, families, reproduction, and immigration. We featured her book, Failing Moms: Social Condemnation and Criminalization of Mothers (Polity 2023) previously on New Books Network. Her articles have appeared in Contexts magazine and The Conversation, as well as numerous academic journals, and she has done work for the United Nations on sexual and reproductive health and rights and on Syrian refugee women

Dr. Nancy Hiemstra is a political, cultural, and feminist geographer and Associate Professor in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. Her scholarship focuses on how border and immigration policies shape patterns and consequences of human mobility. Her 2019 book Detain and Deport: The Chaotic U.S. Immigration Enforcement Regime examined the U.S. detention and deportation system, and her forthcoming book (with Deirdre Conlon) Immigration Detention Inc: The Big Business of Locking Up Migrants scrutinizes how profit making goals drive the expanding use of detention.

Dr Jaya Keaney is Lecturer in Gender Studies in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She writes, researches, and teaches in the fields of feminist technoscience, queer and feminist theory, and cultural studies. Her research across these fields explores reproduction, racism, and queer feminist practices of embodiment and inheritance. Jaya is the author of Making Gaybies: Queer Reproduction and Multiracial Feeling (Duke University Press, 2023), which was a finalist for the 2024 Rachel Carson Prize. Her writing has also appeared in journals such as Body and Society, Science Technology & Human Values, and the Duke University Press edited collection Long Term: Essays on Queer Commitment (2021).

Mentioned:

Susan’s interview with Caitlin on Failing Moms: The Social Condemnation and Criminalization of Mothers (Polity, 2024).

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Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2018) guides readers through the history of eunuchs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the techniques of visualization that helped establish the conditions that produced sex as an object of empirical knowledge, the rise of sexology in the 1920s, the discourse of “sex change” in the press from the 1920s to the 1940s, and a famous case of the “first” Chinese transsexual in 1950s Taiwan. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of sexuality in China, and will be of special interest for readers who are interested in bringing Foucault-inspired analyses to the craft of history.

Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here.

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Daniel A. Rodriguez, "The Right to Live in Health: Medical Politics in Postindependence Havana" (U North Carolina Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Daniel A. Rodriguez's history of a newly independent Cuba shaking off the U.S. occupation, The Right to Live in Health: Medical Politics in Postindependence Havana (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), focuses on the intersection of public health and politics in Havana.

While medical policies were often used to further American colonial power, in Cuba, Rodriguez argues, they evolved into important expressions of anticolonial nationalism as Cuba struggled to establish itself as a modern state.

A younger generation of Cuban medical reformers, including physicians, patients, and officials, imagined disease as a kind of remnant of colonial rule. These new medical nationalists, as Rodriguez calls them, looked to medical science to guide Cuba toward what they envisioned as a healthy and independent future. Rodriguez describes how medicine and new public health projects infused republican Cuba's statecraft, powerfully shaping the lives of Havana's residents. He underscores how various stakeholders, including women and people of color, demanded robust government investment in quality medical care for all Cubans, a central national value that continues today.

On a broader level, Rodriguez proposes that Latin America, at least as much as the United States and Europe, was an engine for the articulation of citizens' rights, including the right to health care, in the twentieth century.

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Tiffany D. Joseph, "Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Despite progressive policy strides in health care reform, immigrant communities continue to experience stark disparities across the United States. In Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025), Tiffany D. Joseph exposes the insidious contradiction of Massachusetts' advanced health care system and the exclusionary experiences of its immigrant communities.

Joseph illustrates how patients' race, ethnicity, and legal status determine their access to health coverage and care services, revealing a disturbing paradox where policy advances and individual experiences drastically diverge. Examining Boston's Brazilian, Dominican, and Salvadoran communities, this book provides an exhaustive analysis spanning nearly a decade to highlight the profound impacts of the Affordable Care Act and subsequent policy shifts on these marginalized groups.

Not All In is a critical examination of the systemic barriers that perpetuate health care disparities. Joseph challenges readers to confront the uncomfortable truths about racialized legal status and its profound implications on health care access. This essential book illuminates the complexities of policy implementation and advocates for more inclusive reforms that genuinely cater to all. Urging policymakers, health care providers, and activists to rethink strategies that bridge the gap between legislation and life, this book reminds us that in the realm of health care, being progressive is not synonymous with inclusivity.

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Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women's Health

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Black people, and especially Black women, suffer and die from diseases at much higher rates than their white counterparts. The vast majority of these health disparities are not attributed to behavioral differences or biology, but to the pervasive devaluation of Black bodies. Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women’s Health (NYU Press, 2025), by Dr. Wylin D. Wilson, addresses this crisis from a bioethical standpoint. It offers a critique of mainstream bioethics as having embraced the perspective of its mainly white, male progenitors, limiting the extent to which it is positioned to engage the issues that particularly affect vulnerable populations. This book makes the provocative but essential case that because African American women—across almost every health indicator—fare worse than others, we must not only include, but center, Black women’s experiences and voices in bioethics discourse and practice.

Womanist Bioethics develops the first specifically womanist form of bioethics, focused on the diverse vulnerabilities and multiple oppressions that women of color face. This innovative womanist bioethics is grounded in the Black Christian prophetic tradition, based on the ideas that God does not condone oppression and that it is imperative to defend those who are vulnerable. It also draws on womanist theology and Black liberation theology, which take similar stances. At its core, the volume offers a new, broad-based approach to bioethics that is meant as a corrective to mainstream bioethics’ privileging of white, particularly male, experiences, and it outlines ways in which hospitals, churches, and the larger community can better respond to the healthcare needs of Black women.

Our guest is: Dr. Wylin D. Wilson, who is associate professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School. Her work lies at the intersection of religion, gender, and bioethics. Her academic interests also include rural bioethics and Black church studies. Prior to joining Duke Divinity School in 2020, she was a teaching faculty member at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. She is the theologian-in-residence for the Children's Defense Fund and is a member of the American Academy of Religion’s Bioethics and Religion Program Unit Steering Committee. Among her publications is her book, Economic Ethics and the Black Church.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator and producer of the Academic

Life podcast.

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Sally King, "Menstrual Myth Busting: The Case of the Hormonal Female" (Policy Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Menstrual Myth Busting: The Case of the Hormonal Female (Policy Press, 2025), Dr. Sally King interrogates the diagnostic label of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) to expose and challenge sexist assumptions within medical research and practice. She powerfully demonstrates how the concept of the ‘hormonal’ premenstrual woman is merely the latest iteration of the ‘hysterical’ female myth. By blaming the healthy reproductive body (first our wombs, now our hormones) for the female-prevalence of emotional distress and physical pain, gender myths appear to have trumped all empirical evidence to the contrary.

The book also provides a primer on menstrual physiology beyond hormones, and a short history of how hormonal metaphors came to dominate medical and popular discourses. The author calls for clinicians, researchers, educators and activists to help improve women’s health without unintentionally reproducing damaging stereotypes.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s episodes on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Alisha Ali et al., "Mad Studies Reader: Interdisciplinary Innovations in Mental Health" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The last few years have brought increased writings from activists, artists, scholars, and concerned clinicians that cast a critical and constructive eye on psychiatry, mental health care, and the cultural relations of mental difference. With particular focus on accounts of lived experience and readings that cover issues of epistemic and social injustice in mental health discourse, the Mad Studies Reader: Interdisciplinary Innovations in Mental Health (Routledge, 2024) brings together voices that advance anti-sanist approaches to scholarship, practice, art, and activism in this realm. Beyond offering a theoretical and historical overview of mad studies, this Reader draws on the perspectives, voices, and experiences of artists, mad pride activists, humanities and social science scholars, and critical clinicians to explore the complexity of mental life and mental difference.

Voices from these groups confront and challenge standard approaches to mental difference. They advance new structures of meaning and practice that are inclusive of those who have been systematically subjugated and promote anti-sanist approaches to counter inequalities, prejudices, and discrimination. Confronting modes of psychological oppression and the power of a few to interpret and define difference for so many, the Mad Studies Reader asks the critical question of how these approaches may be reconsidered, resisted, and reclaimed. This collection will be of interest to mental health clinicians; students and scholars of the arts, humanities and social sciences; and anyone who has been affected by mental difference, directly or indirectly, who is curious to explore new perspectives.

Bradley Lewis is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist with a background in the arts and humanities. He is Associate Professor at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and he is on the editorial board of the Journal of Medical Humanities. His books include Moving Beyond Prozac, DSM, and the New Psychiatry: The Birth of Postpsychiatry; Narrative Psychiatry: How Stories Can Shape Clinical Encounters; and Experiencing Epiphanies in Literature, Cinema, and Everyday Life (forthcoming).

Alisha Ali is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. Her research focuses on the mental health effects of oppression, including violence, racism, discrimination, and trauma. She is the co-editor of the book Silencing the Self Across Cultures (Oxford University Press) as well as the co-editor of The Crisis of Connection (NYU Press).

Jazmine Russell is the co-founder of the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (IDHA), a transformative mental health training institute, and host of Depth Work: A Holistic Mental Health Podcast. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of mad studies, critical psychology, and neuroscience, with experience working both within and outside the mental health system.

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Amy Adamczyk, "Fetal Positions: Understanding Cross-National Public Opinion about Abortion" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Most people think about abortion in the context of the country they live in. In the U.S., abortion fuels debate, elections, and legislation. In China, abortion is often treated as a settled issue. Why and how do abortion attitudes vary across the world?

In her new book, Fetal Positions: Understanding Cross-National Public Opinion about Abortion (Oxford UP, 2025), Dr. Amy Adamczyk examines the factors influencing cross-national abortion opinion, rates and individual abortion decisions. She investigates the relationship between attitudes and laws, and explores how personal and national characteristics shape views on abortion. Using large-scale public opinion surveys, interviews from two case study countries, and an analysis of newspaper articles from over 40 countries, she argues that cross-national differences in public opinion can largely be explained based on overall levels of religious belief, economic and educational development, type of government and government history, and gender inequality. The book distinguishes beliefs from behaviors and macro factors from personal characteristics to analyze the forces shaping cross-national abortion rates and personal abortion decisions.

Dr. Amy Adamczyk is a sociology professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Her work unravels the religious, cultural and social forces shaping public opinion on controversial issues like abortion, same-sex relations, premarital sex, and marijuana and terrorism. Her many earlier books include, Cross-National Public Opinion about Homosexuality: Examining Attitudes across the Globe (University of California Press 2017).

Mentioned:

World Values Study (free database)
Amy Adamczyk, Brittany Suh, and Lindsay Lerner, “Analysis of the Relationship between Religion, Abortion, and Assisted Reproductive Technology: Insights into Cross-National Public Opinion” (2024) (free access to article)
Ronald Inglehart and Wayne E. Baker, “Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values” (2000) (free access to article)

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John Trowsdale, "What the Body Knows: A Guide to the New Science of Our Immune System" (Yale UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

What is our immune system, and how does it work? A vast array of cells, proteins and chemicals spring into action whenever our bodies are damaged, but immunity is not something you can see, touch, or feel. It can fight off malicious bacteria and viruses, locate cancerous growths, and even rewire our brains--but sometimes our own tissues can get caught in its crossfire, with catastrophic consequences.

Humans may be the most disease-ridden animals on the planet. John Trowsdale shows how the immune system protects us, and how our bodies invest huge resources to keep it running. Immunity influences how we age and controls how we learn to fight off recurring diseases, and how our bodies respond to chronic conditions such as heart disease and dementia. But, in the case of allergies and autoimmune conditions, it can also easily get things wrong.

What the Body Knows: A Guide to the New Science of Our Immune System (Yale UP, 2024) is a hugely readable account of a fascinating phenomenon--one which, for good or for ill, impacts every aspect of our lives.

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Zhiying Ma, "Between Families and Institutions: Mental Health and Biopolitical Paternalism in Contemporary China" (Duke UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In contemporary China, people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses have long been placed under the guardianship of close relatives who decide on their hospitalization and treatment. Despite attempts at reforms to ensure patient rights, the 2013 Mental Health Law reinforced the family's rights and responsibilities.

In Between Families and Institutions, Zhiying Ma examines how ideological, institutional, and technological processes shape families' complicated involvement in psychiatric care. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in psychiatric hospitals, community mental health teams, social work centers, and family support groups as well as interviews with policymakers and activists, Ma maps the workings of what she calls "biopolitical paternalism"--a mode of governance that sees vulnerable individuals as sources of risk, frames risk management as the state's paternalistic intervention, and shifts responsibilities for care and management onto families. Ma outlines the ethical tensions, intimate vulnerabilities in households, and health disparities across the population that biopolitical paternalism produces. By exploring these implications, Ma demonstrates the myriad ways biopower enables, inhibits, and transforms medical care in China.

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Nima Bassiri, "Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Uncovers a powerful relationship between pathology and money: beginning in the nineteenth century, the severity of mental illness was measured against a patient’s economic productivity.

Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value (U Chicago Press, 2024) reveals the economic norms embedded within psychiatric thinking about mental illness in the North Atlantic world. Over the course of the nineteenth century, various forms of madness were subjected to a style of psychiatric reasoning that was preoccupied with money. Psychiatrists across Western Europe and the United States attributed financial and even moral value to an array of pathological conditions, such that some mental disorders were seen as financial assets and others as economic liabilities. By turning to economic conduct and asking whether potential patients appeared capable of managing their financial affairs or even generating wealth, psychiatrists could often bypass diagnostic uncertainties about a person’s mental state.

Through an exploration of the intertwined histories of psychiatry and economic thought, Nima Bassiri shows how this relationship transformed the very idea of value in the modern North Atlantic, as the most common forms of social valuation—moral value, medical value, and economic value—were rendered equivalent and interchangeable. If what was good and what was healthy were increasingly conflated with what was remunerative (and vice versa), then a conceptual space opened through which madness itself could be converted into an economic form and subsequently redeemed—and even revered.

Nima Bassiri is assistant professor of literature at Duke University, where he is also the codirector of the Institute for Critical Theory.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

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Lina-Maria Murillo, "Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands" (UNC Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 9 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The first birth control clinic in El Paso, Texas, opened in 1937. Since then, Mexican-origin women living in the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez have confronted various interest groups determined to control their reproductive lives, including a heavily funded international population control campaign led by Planned Parenthood Federation of America as well as the Catholic Church and Mexican American activists. Uncovering nearly one hundred years of struggle, Lina-Maria Murillo reveals how Mexican-origin women on both sides of the border fought to reclaim autonomy and care for themselves and their communities.

Faced with a family planning movement steeped in eugenic ideology, working-class Mexican-origin women strategically demanded additional health services and then formed their own clinics to provide care on their own terms. Along the way, they developed what Murillo calls reproductive care— quotidian acts of community solidarity—as activists organized for better housing, education, wages, as well as access to birth control, abortion, and more. In Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands (UNC Press, 2025), Murillo lays bare Mexican-origin women's long battle for human dignity and power in the borderlands as reproductive freedom in Texas once again hangs in the balance.

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Jorge Goldstein, "Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology" (Georgetown UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Jorge Goldstein, the author of Patenting Life: The Commercialization of Biology, delves into the critical junction where biotechnology meets patent law. With a background as a molecular biologist turned patent attorney, Goldstein offers unique insights into how commercial biology has evolved and its profound effects on patent regulations. The discussion takes listeners on a journey from the early days of recombinant DNA technology to the cutting-edge advancements of CRISPR. Goldstein articulates how the commercialization of biological research influences scientific inquiry and reshapes patent law, highlighting key legal cases that have set the boundaries for patenting living organisms while addressing the complex ethical considerations that accompany these developments.

A significant theme in the conversation is the ongoing tension between academic research and commercial interests. Goldstein explains how this dynamic has molded patent policies and research agendas, emphasizing the concept of “enabling life” through patents. He also touches on emerging challenges posed by technologies like AI in biotechnology, raising questions about ownership and consent regarding biological materials and genetic data. Reflecting on broader ethical implications, Goldstein discusses the responsibilities that come with innovation in biotechnology and patent law while considering the future challenges for intellectual property frameworks, particularly in light of advancements in CRISPR and synthetic biology.

This episode provides a comprehensive overview of how the patenting of life has transformed not only biology and medicine but also the legal landscape, prompting listeners to think critically about the implications of these changes for society.

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Christos Lynteris, "Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 2 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

How epidemic photography during a global pandemic of bubonic plague contributed to the development of modern epidemiology and our concept of the “pandemic.”

In Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography (MIT Press, 2022), Christos Lynteris examines the emergence of epidemic photography during the third plague pandemic (1894–1959), a global pandemic of bubonic plague that led to over twelve million deaths. Unlike medical photography, epidemic photography was not exclusively, or even primarily, concerned with exposing the patient's body or medical examinations and operations. Instead, it played a key role in reconceptualizing infectious diseases by visualizing the “pandemic” as a new concept and structure of experience—one that frames and responds to the smallest local outbreak of an infectious disease as an event of global importance and consequence.

As the third plague pandemic struck more and more countries, the international circulation of plague photographs in the press generated an unprecedented spectacle of imminent global threat. Nothing contributed to this sense of global interconnectedness, anticipation, and fear more than photography. Exploring the impact of epidemic photography at the time of its emergence, Lynteris highlights its entanglement with colonial politics, epistemologies, and aesthetics, as well as with major shifts in epidemiological thinking and public health practice. He explores the characteristics, uses, and impact of epidemic photography and how it differs from the general corpus of medical photography. The new photography was used not simply to visualize or illustrate a pandemic, but to articulate, respond to, and unsettle key questions of epidemiology and epidemic control, as well as to foster the notion of the “pandemic,” which continues to affect our lives today.

Christos Lynteris is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on the anthropological and historical examination of epidemics with a particular focus on zoonotic diseases, epidemiological epistemology, visual medical culture, and colonial medicine. His regional expertise includes China and Inner Asia.

Professor Lynteris holds the first chair in medical anthropology at the University of St Andrews. Focusing on diseases that spread between animals and humans, his research has been foundational in the establishment of the anthropological study of zoonosis. Combining archival and ethnographic research together with visual methods and critical approaches to medical and epidemiological epistemologies, Professor Lynteris's research seeks to understand how specific zoonotic diseases (SARS, COVID-19, plague) and the broader question of zoonosis shape social and multispecies worlds and are in turn shaped by them.

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Steven Lesk, "Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness" (Prometheus, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Of all the mental illnesses, schizophrenia eludes us the most. No matter the strides scientists have made in neurological research nor doctors have made in psychiatric treatment, schizophrenia remains misunderstood, almost complacently mythologized. Without a reason for the illness, patients feel even more alienated than they already do, families are left hopeless, and doctors struggle to provide accurate care. Steven Lesk, though, after a medical career dedicated to those affected by schizophrenia and a determination to find the answer to its existence, presents a groundbreaking theory that will forever change the lives of the mentally ill.

In Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Madness (Prometheus, 2023), Lesk threads evolutionary evidence with neurological evidence, turning the mysteries of our minds into a tapestry of logic. With his breakthrough theory and this unprecedented book, Lesk will invite necessary cultural dialogue about this stigmatized illness, provoke new psychiatric and pharmacological research, and provide unequivocal comfort to those afflicted and affected by schizophrenia.

Lesk's "primitive organization theory" is based in human evolution, from Neanderthals to Homo sapiens, and the specific changes to our brains after the emergence of language. We have existed in human-like form for six million years, but we've only had language for 50,000; within the vast span of evolutionary time, that's hardly any time at all. Lesk elucidates us to the hormones affected by language, especially dopamine, and with brilliant clarity, connects human evolution, our brain affected by language, and those with schizophrenia whose dopamine doesn't flow in our new, adaptive way. In other words, the twenty million people who have schizophrenia in the world don't suppress dopamine in the way evolution has trained us, so their brains don't process language well and function as if they're in a hallucinatory, delusional dream state. Not only will Lesk's theory focus treatment efforts for schizophrenia, but it will also affect that of other dopamine-related mental illnesses like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's chorea, Tourette's, ADD, and more. Publishing Lesk's work will usher in a new era of psychiatric understanding, one that the field and the public desperately needs.

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Nicole Lobdell, "X-Ray" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

X-rays are powerful. Moving through objects undetected, revealing the body as a tryptic of skin, tissue, and bone. X-rays gave rise to a transparent world and the belief that transparency conveys truth. It stands to reason, then, that our relationship with X-rays would be a complicated one of fear and fascination, acceptance and resistance, confusion and curiosity.

In X-Ray (Bloomsbury, 2024), Nicole Lobdell explores when, where, and how we use X-rays, what meanings we give them, what metaphors we make out of them, and why, despite our fears, we're still fascinated with them. In doing so, she draws from a variety of fields, including the history of medicine, science and technology studies, literature, art, material culture, film, comics, gender studies, architecture, and industrial design.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

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Rebecca Haw Allensworth, "The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong" (Harvard UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

When we think about "red tape" and the cost of regulation it's hard to overstate the impact of professional licensing. According to Professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth, it's bigger than unions and more expensive than sales taxes.

Millions of American workers are required - by law - to obtain a license in order to work. This barrier of entry depends on requirements set by licensing boards staffed mainly by members of the profession they oversee. It limits the number of people who can serve and also confers on licensees a certain degree of prestige and trust.

In The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong (Harvard UP, 2025), Allensworth goes deep into a complex web of conflicting priorities.

Whether it's hair stylists or doctors, plumbers or lawyers, licensing board members are asked to simultaneously represent their personal practice, fellow professionals, and the public. They have to literally "wear three hats", which leads to well-intentioned, but deeply flawed and biased, decision making.

Consumers depend on licensing boards to ensure that professionals maintain high quality and reliability standards by creating - and enforcing - licensing standards.

In reality, their decisions can be maddeningly arbitrary, creating unnecessary barriers to hopeful practitioners while simultaneously failing to protect the public from bad actors who abuse the trust placed in them.

Despite good intent, board members lack the resources and sometimes the will to investigate even serious disciplinary cases. The consequences include, but are not limited to, the failure of medical licensing boards to remove the abusive doctors who fueled the opioid crisis and a system that allows unethical predatory lawyers to continue to practice, often targeting clients who are unable to protect themselves.

While in some areas licensing is deeply flawed, in others it is critical to a well-functioning society. Allensworth argues for abolition where appropriate and reform where it is most needed.

See Professor Allensworth's faculty profile video

Author recommended reading:

- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
- Drug Dealer, MD by Anna Lembke, MD

Hosted by Meghan Cochran

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Shoumita Dasgupta, "Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Dr. Dasgupta is a geneticist and internationally recognized anti-racism educator. In this book, she provides a powerful, science-based rebuttal to common fallacies about human difference.

Well-meaning physicians, parents, and even scientists today often spread misinformation about what biology can and can’t tell us about our bodies, minds, and identities. In this accessible, myth-busting book, Dr. Dasgupta draws on the latest science to correct common misconceptions about how much of our social identities are actually based in genetics.

Dasgupta weaves together history, current affairs, and cutting-edge science to break down how genetic concepts are misused and how we can approach scientific evidence in a socially responsible way. With a unifying and intersectional approach disentangling biology from bigotry, the book moves beyond race and gender to incorporate categories like sexual orientation, disability, and class. Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins is an invaluable, empowering resource for biologists, geneticists, science educators, and anyone working against bias in their community.

Dr. Scott Catey is a consultant, educator, and CEO of The Catey Group, LLC., a multimedia creative firm. scottcatey.com.

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Michael Rembis, "Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 9 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The asylum--at once a place of refuge, incarceration, and abuse--touched the lives of many Americans living between 1830 and 1950. What began as a few scattered institutions in the mid-eighteenth century grew to 579 public and private asylums by the 1940s. About one out of every 280 Americans was an inmate in an asylum at an annual cost to taxpayers of approximately $200 million.

Using the writing of former asylum inmates, as well as other sources, Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum (Oxford UP, 2025) reveals a history of madness and the asylum that has remained hidden by a focus on doctors, diagnoses, and other interventions into mad people's lives. Although those details are present in this story, its focus is the hundreds of inmates who spoke out or published pamphlets, memorials, memoirs, and articles about their experiences. They recalled physical beatings and prolonged restraint and isolation. They described what it felt like to be gawked at like animals by visitors and the hardships they faced re-entering the community. Many inmates argued that asylums were more akin to prisons than medical facilities and testified before state legislatures and the US Congress, lobbying for reforms to what became popularly known as "lunacy laws."

Michael Rembis demonstrates how their stories influenced popular, legal, and medical conceptualizations of madness and the asylum at a time when most Americans seemed to be groping toward a more modern understanding of the many different forms of "insanity." The result is a clearer sense of the role of mad people and their allies in shaping one of the largest state expenditures in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--and, at the same time, a recovery of the social and political agency of these vibrant and dynamic "mad writers."

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Daniel Oberhaus, "The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

AI psychiatrists promise to detect mental disorders with superhuman accuracy, provide affordable therapy for those who can't afford or can't access treatment, and even invent new psychiatric drugs. But the hype obscures an unnerving reality. In The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Oberhaus tells the inside story of how the quest to use AI in psychiatry has created the conditions to turn the world into an asylum. Most of these systems, he writes, have vanishingly little evidence that they improve patient outcomes, but the risks they pose have less to do with technological shortcomings than with the application of deeply flawed psychiatric models of mental disorder at unprecedented scale.

Oberhaus became interested in the subject of mental health after tragically losing his sister to suicide. In The Silicon Shrink, he argues that these new, ostensibly therapeutic technologies already pose significant risks to vulnerable people, and they won't stop there. These new breeds of AI systems are creating a psychiatric surveillance economy in which the emotions, behavior, and cognition of everyday people are subtly manipulated by psychologically savvy algorithms that have escaped the clinic. Oberhaus also introduces readers to the concept of “swipe psychology,” which is quickly establishing itself as the dominant mode of diagnosing and treating mental disorders.

It is not too late to change course, but to do so means we must reckon with the nature of mental illness, the limits of technology, and what it means to be human.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Patricia A. Roos, "Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In 2015, Patricia Roos’s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose. Turning her grief into action, Roos, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, began to research the social factors and institutional failures that contributed to his death. Surviving Alex: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction (Rutgers UP, 2024) tells her moving story—and argues for a more compassionate and effective approach to addiction treatment.

Weaving together a personal narrative and a sociological perspective, Surviving Alex describes how people become addicted. She highlights the toll that addiction took on Alex and all members of a family. Drawing from interviews with Alex’s friends, family members, therapists, teachers, and police officers—as well as files from his stays in hospitals, rehab facilities, and jails—Roos paints a compelling portrait of a young man whose life veered between happiness, anxiety, success, and despair. The book is part memoir, part sociological case study, and part policy proposal because it provides a strong challenge to extant treatment and policy options. As she explores how a punitive system failed her son, Dr. Roos calls for a community of action that would improve care for substance users and reduce addiction, realigning public health policy to address the overdose crisis.

Dr. PATRICIA ROOS is a Professor emerita of sociology at Rutgers University. Among her many publications are the books Job Queues, Gender Queues: Explaining Women's Inroads into Male Occupations (coauthored with Barbara Reskin) from Temple University Press and Gender and Work: A Comparative Analysis of Industrial Societies from University of Albany Press. After her son's death, Dr. Roos realigned her research and advocacy interests to explore mental health and substance use disorders, turning her grief into activism.

Mentioned:

David Herzberg’s White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America from University of Chicago Press.
Pat Roos on Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden addiction: Joe, Jill continue to show compassion

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Rachel Marie Niehuus, "An Archive of Possibilities: Healing and Repair in Democratic Republic of Congo" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In An Archive of Possibilities: Healing and Repair in Democratic Republic of Congo (Duke UP, 2024), anthropologist and surgeon Rachel Marie Niehuus explores possibilities of healing and repair in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo against a backdrop of 250 years of Black displacement, enslavement, death, and chronic war. Niehuus argues that in a context in which violence characterizes everyday life, Congolese have developed innovative and imaginative ways to live amid and mend from repetitive harm. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and the Black critical theory of Achille Mbembe, Christina Sharpe, Alexis Pauline Gumbs and others, Niehuus explores the renegotiation of relationships with land as a form of public healing, the affective experience of living in insecurity, the hospital as a site for the socialization of pain, the possibility of necropolitical healing, and the uses of prophesy to create collective futures. By considering the radical nature of cohabitating with violence, Niehuus demonstrates that Congolese practices of healing imagine and articulate alternative ways of living in a global regime of antiblackness.

Rachel Marie Niehuus is an anthropologist and a surgeon currently on faculty in the Department of Surgery at University of North Carolina. Her next project continues this study of world-making through an analysis of the role of medicine in what might come after the world of Man.

Atalia Israeli-Nevo is an anthropology PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Erica Borgstrom and Renske Visser, "Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement (Routledge, 2025) by Professor Erica Borgstrom & Dr. Renske Visser is the first of its kind to examine key topics in death, dying, and bereavement through a critical lens, highlighting how the understanding and experience of death can vary considerably, based on social, cultural, historical, political, and medical contexts. It looks at the complex ways in which death and dying are managed, from the political level down to end- of- life care, and the inequalities that surround and impact experiences of death, dying, and bereavement.

Readers are introduced to key theories, such as the medicalisation of dying, as well as contemporary issues, such as social movements, pandemics, and assisted dying. The book stresses how death is not only a biological process or event but rather shaped by a range of intersecting factors. Issues of inequalities in health, inequities in support, and intersectional analyses are brought to the fore, and each chapter is dedicated to an issue that has interdisciplinary resonance, thus showcasing the wider sociocultural and political factors that impact this time of life.

This book is valuable reading for scholars in thanatology and death studies, and for those in related fields such as sociology of health, medical and social anthropology, and interdisciplinary social science courses.

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Casey Golomski, "God's Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life's End" (Rutgers UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Can older racists change their tune, or will they haunt us further once they're gone? Rich in mystery and life's lessons, God's Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life's End (Rutgers University Press, 2024) considers what matters in the end for older white adults and the younger Black nurses who care for them. An innovation in creative nonfiction, Casey Golomski's story of his years of immersive research at a nursing home in South Africa, thirty years after the end of apartheid, is narrated as a one-day, room-by-room tour. The story is told in breathtakingly intimate and witty conversations with the home's residents and nurses, including the untold story of Nelson Mandela's Robben Island prison nurse, and readers learn how ageism, sexism, and racism intersect and impact health care both in South Africa and in the United States, as well as create conditions in which people primed to be enemies find grace despite the odds.

Casey Golomski is an associate professor of anthropology and women's and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire in Durham and lives in Medford, Massachusetts. He is the author of Funeral Culture: AIDS, Work, and Cultural Change in an African Kingdom.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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Camilla Nord, "The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

There are many routes to mental well-being. In this groundbreaking book, neuroscientist Camilla Nord offers a fascinating tour of the scientific developments that are revolutionising the way we think about mental health, showing why and how events--and treatments--can affect people in such different ways.

In The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health (Princeton UP, 2024), Nord explains how our brain constructs our sense of mental health--actively striving to maintain balance in response to our changing circumstances. While a mentally healthy brain deals well with life's turbulence, poor mental health results when the brain struggles with disruption. But just what is the brain trying to balance? Nord describes the foundations of mental health in the brain--from the neurobiology of pleasure, pain and desire to the role of mood-mediating chemicals like dopamine, serotonin and opioids. She then pivots to interventions, revealing how antidepressants, placebos and even recreational drugs work; how psychotherapy changes brain chemistry; and how the brain and body interact to make us feel physically (as well as mentally) healthy. Along the way, Nord explains how the seemingly small things we use to lift our moods--a piece of chocolate, a walk, a chat with a friend--work on the same pathways in our brains as the latest treatments for mental health disorders.

Understanding the cause of poor mental health is one of the crucial questions of our time. But the answer is unique to each of us, and it requires finding what helps our brains rebalance and thrive. With so many factors at play, there are more possibilities for recovery and resilience than we might think.

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Barbara J. Sahakian and Christelle Langley, "Brain Boost: Healthy Habits for a Happier Life" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Your mental health is as important as your physical health and, in times of stress, it's vital to have enhanced cognition and reserves of resilience. Brain Boost: Healthy Habits for a Happier Life (Cambridge UP, 2025) is packed with practical tips, based on scientific evidence, that will teach you how to implement lifestyle strategies that will improve your brain health, cognition, and overall wellbeing. Covering the benefits of exercise, diet, sleep, social interactions, kindness, mindfulness, and learning, you will discover how adopting habits to improve these areas of your life at an early age will lead to a longer, healthier life. Embracing these simple strategies to prioritise your brain health and wellbeing is essential for a fulfilling life, with lifestyle choices playing a significant role in promoting resilience, creativity, and overall quality of life across all ages. For anyone seeking to lead a fulfilling life through happiness, health, and personal growth, this is the book for you.

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Sarah B. Rodriguez, "The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Dr. James Burt believed women’s bodies were broken, and only he could fix them. In the 1950s, this Ohio OB-GYN developed what he called “love surgery,” a unique procedure he maintained enhanced the sexual responses of a new mother, transforming her into “a horny little house mouse.” Burt did so without first getting the consent of his patients. Yet he was allowed to practice for over thirty years, mutilating hundreds of women in the process.

It would be easy to dismiss Dr. Burt as a monstrous aberration, a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein. Yet as medical historian Sarah Rodriguez reveals, that’s not the whole story. The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation (Rutgers University Press, 2020) asks tough questions about Burt’s heinous acts and what they reveal about the failures of the medical establishment: How was he able to perform an untested surgical procedure? Why wasn’t he obliged to get informed consent from his patients? And why did it take his peers so long to take action?

The Love Surgeon is both a medical horror story and a cautionary tale about the limits of professional self-regulation.

Sarah B. Rodriguez is a medical historian at Northwestern University in the Global Health Studies Program, the Department of Medical Education, and the Graduate Program in Medical Humanities and Bioethics. Her teaching and research focuses on the history of reproduction, clinical practice, and research ethics. Her publications include the book Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Practice.

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Lisa Doggett, "Up the Down Escalator: Medicine, Motherhood, and Multiple Sclerosis" (Health Communications, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Lisa Doggett, MD, MPH is a family and lifestyle medicine physician and an award-winning author based in Austin, Texas. In 2009, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. At that time, her daughters were 2 and 4 years old, and she was the director of a clinic for people without private health insurance.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) that often affects young adults. It can manifest with many different symptoms, and its impact varies from very mild to very severe. While there's no cure yet, medications to manage the disease and slow its progression have improved tremendously in the last three decades. There has also been a lot of research investigating the connection between lifestyle factors (like exercise and diet) and the disease's progression.

In 2023, Lisa published a memoir about her journey with MS: Up the Down Escalator: Medicine, Motherhood, and Multiple Sclerosis (Health Communications, 2023). The book (available as a paperback, e-book, and audiobook) depicts episodes from various facets of her life in the years following the diagnosis: her attempts to tackle the symptoms of MS, parenting challenges and milestones, and big personal goals, like running a marathon. Lisa also shares the stories of several patients and the everyday struggles of running a community clinic. As both a physician and patient, Lisa has a unique view of the health care system. She often contrasts her experience with the experience of her low-income patients.

Up the Down Escalator tells an impressive and often humorous story starting with an episode from Lisa's medical residency and ending with her first marathon. At the same time, the chapters can also be read as independent and thought-provoking essays. In the interview, we also hear about Lisa's journey as a writer: about her journaling habit, her op-ed pieces, and how a growing number of blog posts and articles slowly turned into this book.

A big part of our conversation discusses Lisa's recent career shift into lifestyle medicine. She has always been a "health nut", who exercises every day and follows a healthy diet. Through her MS, she has learned a lot about lifestyle's role in chronic conditions. In her work as a family physician, she often observed the complex interactions between medical, socioeconomic, and lifestyle factors.

All these interests and experiences have motivated her to explore the emerging field of lifestyle medicine. It's an evidence-based field focusing on the prevention, treatment, and reversal of chronic diseases via therapeutic lifestyle interventions. It's relatively new (the board certification was introduced in 2017), but it incorporates decades of research. Its six tenants include: a predominantly plant-based diet, regular exercise, restorative sleep, avoidance of unhealthy substances, stress management, and connection with others.

In 2023, Lisa obtained board certification in lifestyle medicine. Since then, she's been working at the Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology Center at the University of Texas at Austin. She supports MS patients in setting personal goals and adopting healthier habits. Lisa tells us how she partners with neurologists and other specialists at the center, and how medication and lifestyle factors work together to increase the chances of a better outcome and manage symptoms.

Links:

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Rachel Louise Moran, "Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

New motherhood is often seen as a joyful moment in a woman’s life; for some women, it is also their lowest moment. For much of the twentieth century, popular and medical voices blamed women who had emotional and mental distress after childbirth for their own suffering. By the end of the century, though, women with postpartum mental illnesses sought to take charge of this narrative.

In Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America (U Chicago Press, 2024), Rachel Louise Moran explores the history of the naming and mainstreaming of postpartum depression. Coalitions of maverick psychiatrists, psychologists, and women who themselves had survived substantial postpartum distress fought to legitimize and normalize women’s experiences. They argued that postpartum depression is an objective and real illness and fought to avoid it being politicized alongside other fraught medical and political battles over women’s health.

Based on insightful oral histories and in-depth archival research, Blue reveals a secret history of American motherhood, women’s political activism, and the rise of postpartum depression advocacy amid an often-censorious conservative culture. By breaking new ground with the first book-length history of postpartum mental illness in the twentieth century, Moran brings mothers’ battles with postpartum depression out of the shadows and into the light.

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Camille Robcis, "Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews scholar and historian Camille Robcis. In her most recent book, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Robcis grapples with the historical, intellectual, psychiatric and psychoanalytic meaning of institutional psychotherapy as articulated at Saint-Alban Hospital in France by exploring the movement’s key thinkers, including François Tosquelles, Frantz Fanon, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. Anchored in the history of one hospital, Robcis's study draws on a wide geographic context—revolutionary Spain, occupied France, colonial Algeria, and beyond—and charts the movement's place within a broad political-economic landscape, from fascism to Stalinism to postwar capitalism.

J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and graduate student at Smith College School for Social Work currently living in Northampton, MA. He can be reached at jmull@smith.edu.

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Michael Bresalier, "Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890-1950" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Ninety years after the discovery of human influenza virus, Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890—1950 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) by Dr. Michael Bresalier traces the history of this breakthrough and its implications for understanding and controlling influenza ever since. Examining how influenza came to be defined as a viral disease in the first half of the twentieth century, it argues that influenza’s viral identity did not suddenly appear with the discovery of the first human influenza virus in 1933. Instead, it was rooted in the development of medical virus research and virological ways of knowing that grew out of a half-century of changes and innovations in medical science that were shaped through two influenza pandemics, two world wars, and by state-sponsored programs to scientifically modernise British medicine. A series of transformations, in which virological ideas and practices were aligned with and incorporated into medicine and public health, underpinned the viralisation of influenza in the 1930s and 1940s. Collaboration, conflict and exchange between researchers, medical professionals and governmental bodies lay at the heart of this process.

This book is a history of how virus researchers, clinicians, and epidemiologists, medical scientific and public health bodies, and institutions, and philanthropies in Britain, the USA and beyond, forged a new medical consensus on the identity and nature of influenza. Shedding new light on the modern history of influenza, this book is a timely account of how ways of knowing and controlling this intractable epidemic disease became viral.

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Chelsea Berry, "Poisoned Relations: Healing, Power, and Contested Knowledge in the Atlantic World" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

By the time of the opening of the Atlantic world in the fifteenth century, Europeans and Atlantic Africans had developed significantly different cultural idioms for and understandings of poison. Europeans considered poison a gendered “weapon of the weak” while Africans viewed it as an abuse by the powerful. Though distinct, both idioms centered on fraught power relationships. When translated to the slave societies of the Americas, these understandings sometimes clashed in conflicting interpretations of alleged poisoning events.

In Poisoned Relations: Healing, Power, and Contested Knowledge in the Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024), Dr. Chelsea Berry illuminates the competing understandings of poison and power in the Atlantic World. Poison was connected to central concerns of life: to the well-being in this world for oneself and one’s relatives; to the morality and use of power; and to the fraught relationships that bound people together. The social and relational nature of ideas about poison meant that the power struggles that emerged in poison cases, while unfolding in the extreme context of slavery, were not solely between enslavers and the enslaved—they also involved social conflict within enslaved communities.

Poisoned Relations examines more than five hundred investigations and trials in four colonial contexts—British Virginia, French Martinique, Portuguese Bahia, and the Dutch Guianas—bringing a groundbreaking application of historical linguistics to bear on the study of the African diaspora in the Americas. Illuminating competing understandings of poison and power in this way, Dr. Berry opens new avenues of evidence through which to navigate the violence of colonial archival silences.

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Postscript: Violence, Consent, and Coercion in American Football

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Last week, the press focused on what the press repeatedly characterized as an “ugly” fight between American college football players that broke out after the University of Michigan beat The Ohio State. But another story received less attention. Medrick Burnett Jr., a 20 year old from Southern California was playing his first season as a linebacker with Alabama A&M University when he sustained a head injury during the annual Magic City Classic against in-state rivals Alabama State University on Oct. 26. A month later, Burnett died. Today’s Postscript features two prominent scholars of sports raising questions about the hypocrisy of blaming players for a fight yet downplaying the death caused by playing by the rules. This remarkable conversation includes an unpacking of the “consent” to physical, psychological, and economic impacts, insight into the Foucauldian elements of discipline, punishment, and surveillance, and concrete reform suggestions for all people who watch football and/or work at universities. This nuanced conversation is for those who love or loathe football as a college sport.

Dr. Nathan Kalman-Lamb (he/him) is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick and Dr. Derek Silva (he/him) is Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology at King’s University College at Western University. They are co-authors of The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game published by UNC Press in 2024 – and their public-facing scholarship appears in outlets such as The Guardian and the Los Angeles Times. They are the co-hosts (with Johanna Mellis) of The End of Sport podcast.

Mentioned:

“The hypocrisy of shaming college football player brawls,” Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva, LATimes
“A player’s foreseeable death raises existential questions for college football,”Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva, The Guardian
“Alabama A&M football player dies a month after suffering a head injury in a game,” Pat Duggins, Alabama Public Radio
Paul Knepper’s New Books Network interview with Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva on their 2024 book, “The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game”
Dr. Jill A. Fisher’s Medical Research for Hire: The Political Economy of Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials (Rutgers University Press 2008)
Dr. Erin Hatton’s Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment (University of California Press, 2020)

On the University of Missouri football team’s successful threat to strike if the university president didn't resign see

"The Power of a Football Boycott,” Jake New, Inside Higher Education,
The Forgotten History of Head Injuries in Sports:
Stephen Casper, a medical historian, argues that the danger of C.T.E. used to be widely acknowledged. How did we unlearn what we once knew? Ingfei Chen, The New Yorker

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Holly M. Karibo, "Rehab on the Range: A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West" (U Texas Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In 1929, the United States government approved two ground-breaking and controversial drug addiction treatment programs. At a time when fears about a supposed rise in drug use reached a fevered pitch, the emergence of the nation’s first “narcotic farms” in Fort Worth, Texas, and Lexington, Kentucky, marked a watershed moment in the treatment of addiction. Rehab on the Range is the first in-depth history of the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm and its impacts on the American West. Throughout its operation from the 1930s to the 1970s, the institution was the only federally funded drug treatment center west of the Mississippi River. Designed to blend psychiatric treatment, physical rehabilitation, and vocational training, the Narcotic Farm, its proponents argued, would transform American treatment policies for the better. The reality was decidedly more complicated.

In Rehab on the Range: A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West (University of Texas Press, 2024) Dr. Holly M. Karibo tells the story of how this institution—once framed as revolutionary for addiction care—ultimately contributed to the turn towards incarceration as the solution to the nation’s drug problem. Blending an intellectual history of addiction and imprisonment with a social history of addicts’ experiences, Rehab on the Range provides a nuanced picture of the Narcotic Farm and its cultural impacts. In doing so, it offers crucial historical context that can help us better understand our current debates over addiction, drug policy, and the rise of mass incarceration.

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Who Cares? A Conversation with Emily Kenway

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Emily Kenway shares insights from her powerful new book Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It (Seal Press, 2023), an eye-opening exploration of the invisible world of unpaid caregivers. Drawing from her own experience caring for her terminally ill mother, Emily sheds light on the challenges faced by millions who provide critical care while being marginalized, unsupported, and overburdened. In our conversation, she urges us to reimagine a society that places care at its core, rather than on the sidelines. This conversation is a call to action for all of us to recognize and support those who give so much and ask for so little in return. Tune in to hear why Who Cares? is a book for everyone, now and in the future.

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

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Aisha M Beliso-de Jesús, "Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In 1980, Charles Wetli---a Miami-based medical examiner and self-proclaimed “cult expert” of Afro-Caribbean religions---identified what he called “excited delirium syndrome.” Soon, medical examiners began using the syndrome regularly to describe the deaths of Black men and women during interactions with police. Police and medical examiners claimed that Black people with so-called excited delirium exhibited superhuman strength induced from narcotics abuse. It was fatal heart failure that killed them, examiners said, not forceful police restraints.

In Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease (Duke University Press, 2024), Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús examines this fabricated medical diagnosis and its use to justify and erase police violence against Black and Brown communities. Exposing excited delirium syndrome’s flawed diagnostic criteria, she outlines its inextricable ties to the criminalization of Afro-Latiné religions. Beliso-De Jesús demonstrates that it is yet a further example of the systemic racism that pervades law enforcement in which the culpability for state violence is shifted from the state onto its victims. In so doing, she furthers understanding of the complex layers of medicalized state-sanctioned violence against people of color in the United States.

Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús is Olden Street Professor of American Studies at Princeton University and author of Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion.

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Elyse Ona Singer, "Lawful Sins: Abortion Rights and Reproductive Governance in Mexico" (Stanford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 6 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Mexico is at the center of the global battle over abortion. In 2007, a watershed reform legalized the procedure in the national capital, making it one of just three places across Latin America where it was permitted at the time. Abortion care is now available on demand and free of cost through a pioneering program of the Mexico City Ministry of Health, which has served hundreds of thousands of women. At the same time, abortion laws have grown harsher in several states outside the capital as part of a coordinated national backlash.

In Lawful Sins: Abortion Rights and Reproductive Governance in Mexico (Stanford University Press, 2022), Dr. Elyse Ona Singer argues that while pregnant women in Mexico today have options that were unavailable just over a decade ago, they are also subject to the expanded reach of the Mexican state and the Catholic Church over their bodies and reproductive lives. By analyzing the moral politics of clinical encounters in Mexico City's public abortion program, Lawful Sins offers a critical account of the relationship among reproductive rights, gendered citizenship, and public healthcare. With timely insights on global struggles for reproductive justice, Dr. Singer reorients prevailing perspectives that approach abortion rights as a hallmark of women's citizenship in liberal societies.

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Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 5 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by racial hierarchy, and justified through white supremacist logics. Now, in the twenty-first century, the biotech industry is the new capitalist whose race-based exploitation engages not only labor but racialized consumption. This arrangement is upheld through US drug policy, which over the past century has created a split legal system—one punitive system that criminalizes drug use common among Black, Brown, and lower-income communities and another system characterized by compassion and care that medicalizes, and thus legalizes, drug use targeted to middle-class White people.

In the award-winning book Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America (U California Press, 2023), a trio of authors—Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg—explain how this arrangement came to pass, what impacts it has, and what needs to be done. This remarkable book won the 2023 Rachel Carson Book Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science.

This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and graduate students at Vanderbilt University in the course, “American Medicine & the World.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom.

email: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu.

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Cindy Ermus, "The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Cindy Ermus on her recently published book, The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Published by Cambridge University Press, The Great Plague Scare of 1720 follows the Plague of Provence from 1720 to 1722 to understand new forms of contagion and its management. As one of the last major epidemics of the plague to strike Western Europe, the Plague of Provence generated a public health crisis that impacted the social, commercial, and diplomatic choices of France, which eventually spread the public health crisis to Italy, Great Britain, Spain, and their overseas colonies. In this transnational, transoceanic study, The Great Plague Scare of 1720 reveals how crisis in one part of the globe transcends geographic boundaries and influences society, politics, and public health policy in regions far from the epicenter of disaster.

Cindy Ermus is the Charles and Linda Wilson Associate Professor in the History of Medicine, and Director of the Humanities in Medicine Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She specializes in the history of medicine and the environment, especially catastrophe and public health crisis management, in eighteenth-century France and the Atlantic World. In addition to The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 2023), she is also the author of Urban Disasters (Cambridge UP, 2023). Currently, she is at work on a co-authored global history of epidemics (with Claire Edington). Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Verge, Stat News, and The Miami Herald, and she has been a guest on BBC World News, Univision, Al-Jazeera, and others. She is also co-series editor for France Overseas of the University of Nebraska Press, and co-founder and co-executive editor for the digital, open-access publication AgeofRevolutions.com.

Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a research assistant professor in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Isidro Gonzalez (he/him) is a pre-doctoral fellow of History at Claremont McKenna College.

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Carrie N. Baker, "Abortion Pills: US History and Politics" (Amherst College Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this compelling and informative interview, Carrie N. Baker discusses her newest book, Abortion Pills: US History and Politics (Amherst College Press, 2024). This book is the first comprehensive history of abortion pills in the United States, and Baker examines the actions of scientists, policy-makers, pharmaceutical companies, pro-abortion rights activists and anti-abortion forces as the abortion pill was developed in France in 1980, and subsequently brought to market in the United States. She carefully investigates the fight for FDA approval of the abortion pill, and reproductive rights advocates’ work to expand access. She pays particular attention to the critical period of 2020-2024 when in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic telemedicine abortion became a possibility. Baker ends exploring attempts to restrict abortion pills and self-managed abortions in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Supreme Court decision. In this thoroughly researched history, Baker draws on interviews with over 80 activists, abortion providers, researchers, and people who have used abortion pills to demonstrate the range of actors involved in efforts to expand access to abortion pills. In addition, she analyzes medical research, government records, legal cases, and the archives of several reproductive health organizations.

Abortion Pills: US History and Politics is available open-access starting December 3, 2024. Click the following link to see a PDF of the book

Carrie N. Baker holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University, a J.D. from Emory University School of Law, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Emory’s Institute of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is the Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Chair of American Studies and Professor of the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Smith College where, as a legal and social movement scholar, she teaches courses on gender, law and public policy; feminist social movements; and feminist public writing. In addition to publishing peer-reviewed academic scholarship, Baker also serves as a regular writer and contributing editor for Ms. Magazine, has a monthly column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and hosts Feminist Futures, a radio program on WHMP 101.5 FM in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Jessie Cohen holds a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, and is an editor at the New Books Network.

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Daniel J. Mallinson and A. Lee Hannah, "Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the United States" (NYU Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Political Scientists Dan Mallinson and Lee Hannah, both experts on state-level politics and the policy making process, have a new book that focuses on the state-level process of legalization of medical cannabis across the United States. Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the United States (NYU Press, 2024) is a book that needed to be written, since it is an important exploration not only of the continuing policy conflicts and tensions around marijuana in the United States, but it specifically focuses on how states have taken up this issue and what they each did in moving towards medical marijuana’s accessibility. The marijuana question in in the United States remains a fascinating federalism dynamic, with national laws in conflict with state laws, and state laws operating in different ways, around both medical marijuana and legalized recreational use of cannabis.

Mallinson and Hannah provide the reader with an excellent overview of policymaking designs and theories since their analysis takes up so many different dimensions of the policy process in the United States. They then move into the history behind the criminalization of marijuana, and the way in which this policy has clearly racialized roots. Green Rush highlights the ways that some of the shifts and changes in state policies started to make their way through different states, via action by state legislatures and or through state-wide referenda. With particular attention to a number of states, like California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, Mallinson and Hannah chart the ways that different states have gone about legalizing the medical use of marijuana, which has also been part of the pathway for other states to move towards decriminalization and legalization of adult use recreational marijuana.

Green Rush is an accessible policy analysis and provides important insight into the path that medical marijuana took as it became legal in one state after another. Green Rush: The Rise of Medical Marijuana in the United States charts the policy changes themselves, but also pays attention to changing public opinion around cannabis and shifts in the war on drugs as well.

(I found this book so useful that I have adopted it to use in my Public Policy class.)

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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Daniel S. Goldberg, "Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries: Law, Ethics, and Public Health" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Football is the national game in the United States – and many families and friends bond over their love of the sport. While few people play professional football, many participate in tackle football as children and adolescents. In the last decades, more attention has been paid to the dangers of playing tackle football, including traumatic brain injury and the degenerative brain disease, CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). As more former players donated their brains, the rate of CTE surprised even those already concerned with traumatic brain injury. If the risks are so great, why do more than two million American children under the age of 18 continue to play tackle football? Is it the opportunity to contribute to a team? Overcome adversity? Test personal limits?

In Tackle Football and Traumatic Brain Injuries: Law, Ethics, and Public Health (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024), Dr. Daniel S. Goldberg asks readers to think about American tackle football as an industry – like the American tobacco industry – that sells a product that is dangerous to those who use it. Despite the clearly documented costs to society and individuals who play, the tackle football industry has successfully manufactured doubt about the health hazards. Goldstein argues that a basic familiarity with the history of regulated industries and their intersection with public health is needed both to understand the contemporary debates and to move forward with fair and equitable policy solutions. If the risks to people who play were better known to the public, the profitability and perhaps even the viability of American football would be at risk.

Goldberg draws on public health ethics, public health law, and the histories of occupational and public health to assess the limits of parental choice to expose their children to risks of injury. Goldberg recommends using public health laws to counter the manufacture of doubt – offering specific policy proposals to address the population health and ethical problems presented by tackle football.

Daniel S. Goldstein, JD, PhD is an associate professor at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He is the director of Education at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities and director of the Public Health Ethics and Law Program.

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Public Healthcare Under Decentralized Governance in Indonesia and the Philippines

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Today’s episode focuses on the policy challenges and politics of public healthcare in Southeast Asia, a topic which has become increasingly visible and important in Southeast Asia and in the study of the region over the past decades in the context of expanding public healthcare programs in many countries across the region and the recent experience of the global pandemic.

To discuss these issues, we are joined by Professor Sarah Shair-Rosenfield, who has been conducting research on public healthcare in Indonesia and the Philippines over the past several years. Sarah Shair-Rosenfield is a Professor of Comparative Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of York here in the UK. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina and then taught at Arizona State University and the University of Essex before taking up a professorial chair at the University of York. She is the author of Electoral Reform and the Fate of New Democracies: Lessons from the Indonesian Case (University of Michigan Press, 2019) and co-author of Measuring Regional Authority: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance (Oxford University Press, 2016), and she has published articles in leading political science and other specialist journals. She is a co-editor-in-chief of the journal Political Studies and a co-founder of the Women in Southeast Asian Social Sciences (WiSEASS) network.

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Lauren D. Olsen, "Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities" (Columbia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathetic and more concerned with equity. In practice, however, these good intentions have not translated into critical consciousness. Humanities and social sciences education has often not only failed to deliver on its promise but even entrenched the inequalities that the medical profession set out to address.

In Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities (Columbia UP, 2024), Lauren D. Olsen examines how U.S. medical school faculty conceived, designed, and implemented their vision of education, tracing the failures of curricular reform. She argues that the way medical students encounter humanities and social sciences material in practice has served to reinforce the status quo by teaching them to individualize systemic problems. Students learn to avoid advocacy, critique, and attention to structural inequalities—while also gathering that it will be up to them to find coping strategies for problems from burnout to systemic racism. Olsen pinpoints the limitations of how clinical faculty understand the humanities and social sciences, arguing that in structuring and teaching courses, they assumed, reinforced, and glorified a white, elite model of the medical profession. Showing how deeply intertwined professional and social identities are in medical education, Curricular Injustice has significant implications for how occupations, organizations, and institutions shape understandings of inequality.

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Travis A. Weisse, "Health Freaks: America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness" (UNC Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In Health Freaks: America's Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness (University of North Carolina Press, 2024) Dr. Travis A. Weisse tells a new history of modern diets in America that goes beyond the familiar narrative of the nation's collective failure to lose weight. By exploring how the popularity of diets grew alongside patients' frustrations with the limitations and failures of the American healthcare system in the face of chronic disease, Weisse argues that millions of Americans sought "fad" diets—such as the notorious Atkins program which ushered in the low-carbohydrate craze—to wrest control of their health from pessimistic doctors and lifelong pharmaceutical regimens.

Drawing on novel archival sources and a wide variety of popular media, Dr. Weisse shows the lengths to which twentieth-century American dieters went to heal themselves outside the borders of orthodox medicine and the subsequent political and scientific backlash they received. Through colorful profiles of the leaders of four major diet movements, Health Freaks demonstrates that these diet gurus weren't shady snake oil salesmen preying on the vulnerable; rather, they were vocal champions for millions of frustrated Americans seeking longer, healthier lives.

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George Severs, "Radical Acts: HIV/AIDS Activism in Late Twentieth-Century England" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In Radical Acts: HIV/AIDS Activism in Late Twentieth-Century England (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Dr George Severs draws on activist campaign literature and materials, broadcast media, and new oral history interviews to reconstruct the overlooked world of radical AIDS activism in England. This book provides one of the first detailed histories of the radical HIV/AIDS movement in England, following ACT UP's travels from New York to London via prominent queer intellectuals, and reconstructing the vibrant theatrical campaigns staged by ACT UP groups across England.

But Radical Acts also highlights expressions of activism that were far more common than demonstrations and marches. Manifestations of a political commitment to ameliorating the injustices facing people living with HIV permeated most aspects of everyday life. These forms of 'everyday activism' played out in workplaces, universities and church halls across England, as well as through networks that stretched across Europe and North America. This book breaks new ground by studying the radical alongside the everyday, presenting a diverse constellation of activist responses to the epidemic.

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Muhammad H. Zaman, "We Wait for a Miracle: Health Care and the Forcibly Displaced" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Around the world, millions are forcibly displaced by conflict, climate change, and persecution. Some cross international borders, while others are displaced within their own countries. In We Wait for a Miracle: Health Care and the Forcibly Displaced (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), Muhammad H. Zaman shares poignant stories across continents to highlight the health care experiences of refugees and forced migrants. For many of these people, health risks unfortunately become part of the fabric of everyday life as they navigate new countries that treat them with varying degrees of care and indifference.

Across widely varied local systems, countries of origin, health concerns, and other contexts, Zaman finds that barriers to health care share these key factors: trust, social network, efficiency of the health system, and the regulatory framework of the host environment. A combination of these factors explains difficulties in accessing health care across the geographic and geopolitical spectrum and challenges the existing global public health framework, which is based entirely on local context. In moving stories that span seven countries—Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Colombia, and Venezuela—Zaman shares the everyday struggles of refugees, the internally displaced, and the stateless in accessing the health care they need.

This unique look at an urgent global challenge addresses the issue of access for populations that are currently in distress due to civil war, economic collapse, or a conflict driven by external state actors. Organic social networks and trust, rather than top-down policies, are often what save the lives of migrants, refugees, and the stateless. Focusing on that trust—and its deficit—in camps, urban slums, hospitals, and clinics, Zaman combines personal and journalistic accounts of refugees with broad systemic analysis on global health care access to compare problems and solutions in different regions and provide holistic policy and practice recommendations for refugees, internally displaced persons, and stateless populations.

In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy interviews Muhammad Zaman about the healthcare experiences of refugees, and the power of storytelling.

Ibrahim Fawzy is a literary translator and writer based in Boston. His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, disability studies, and migration literature.

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Rachael Litherland and Philly Hare, "People with Dementia at the Heart of Research: Co-Producing Research through The Dementia Enquirers Model" (Jessica Kingsley, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

People with dementia are uniquely qualified to discuss the challenges of their condition and the features of effective support, but their voices are all too often drowned out in research and debates about policy. According to People with Dementia at the Heart of Research: Co-Producing Research through The Dementia Enquirers Model (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2024) by Rachael Litherland & Philly Hare, it's time for that to change.

Dementia Enquirers is an ambitious and novel programme of work which has tested out what it means for people with dementia to lead research and has developed a new 'driving seat' approach to co-research.

This ground-breaking book features 26 research projects led by groups of people with dementia, supported by group facilitators and academics, to make their voices heard. Topics include giving up driving, GP dementia reviews, living alone with dementia, and using AI platforms such as smart speakers. The book also describes how people with dementia shaped the entire programme, and addressed head-on issues such as ethics approval processes and complex research language. The book is a key read for anyone involved in dementia support, this research brings the voices of people with dementia to the fore to explore their experiences of researching the condition.

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Meta-Practice (on Chinese Medicine)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Today I sit down with Volker Scheid, an interdisciplinary scholar and longtime practitioner of Chinese medicine. Together, we take an intellectual deep dive into his thoughts about the importance of blurring disciplinary boundaries and how “meta-practice” can make sense of the many different kinds of Chinese medicines. Along the way, Volker and I discuss the commensurability of Chinese medicine and biomedicine, the importance of connecting the self with the ten thousand things, and how premodern ideas can be the basis of a new politics for modern times.

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Resources mentioned in this episode:

Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. www.piercesalguero.com.

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Paul M. Renfro, "The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America" (UNC Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 10 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan White emerged as the face of the epidemic. Diagnosed with hemophilia at birth, Ryan contracted HIV through contaminated blood products. In 1985, he became a household name after he was barred from attending his Indiana middle school. As Ryan appeared on nightly news broadcasts and graced the covers of popular magazines, he was embraced by music icons and well-known athletes, achieving a curious kind of stardom.

Analyzing his struggle and celebrity, Paul M. Renfro's powerful biography grapples with the contested meanings of Ryan's life, death, and afterlives. As Renfro argues in The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America (UNC Press, 2024), Ryan's fight to attend school forced the American public to reckon with prevailing misconceptions about the AIDS epidemic. Yet his story also reinforced the hierarchies at the heart of the AIDS crisis. Because the "innocent" Ryan had contracted HIV "through no fault of his own," as many put it, his story was sometimes used to blame presumably "guilty" populations for spreading the virus. Reexamining Ryan's story through this lens, Renfro reveals how the consequences of this stigma continue to pervade policy and cultural understandings of HIV/AIDS today.

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Stuart Anderson, "Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain's Imperial World, 1618-1968" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 6 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The word "pharmacopoeia" has come to have many meanings, although it is commonly understood to be a book describing approved compositions and standards for drugs. In 1813 the Royal College of Physicians of London considered a proposal to develop an imperial British pharmacopoeia - at a time when separate official pharmacopoeias existed for England, Scotland, and Ireland. A unified British pharmacopoeia was published in 1864, and by 1914 it was considered suitable for the whole Empire.

Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain's Imperial World, 1618-1968 (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024) by Dr. Stuart Anderson traces the 350-year development of officially sanctioned pharmacopoeias across the British Empire, first from local to national pharmacopoeias, and later to a standardised pharmacopoeia that would apply throughout Britain’s imperial world. The evolution of British pharmacopoeias and the professionalisation of medicine saw developments including a transition from Galenic principles to germ theory, and a shift from plant-based to chemical medicines. While other colonial powers in Europe usually imposed metropolitan pharmacopoeias across their colonies, Britain consulted with practitioners throughout its Empire. As the scope of the pharmacopoeia widened, the process of agreeing upon drug standardisation became more complex and fraught. A wide range of issues was exposed, from bioprospecting and the inclusion of indigenous medicines in pharmacopoeias, to adulteration and demands for the substitution of pharmacopoeial drugs with locally available ones.

Pharmacopoeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires uses the evolution of an imperial pharmacopoeia in Britain as a vehicle for exploring the hegemonic power of European colonial powers in the medical field, and the meaning of pharmacopoeia more broadly.

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Gareth Millward, "Sick Note: A History of the British Welfare State" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Sick Note: A History of the British Welfare State (Oxford UP, 2022) is a history of how the British state asked, 'who is really sick?' Tracing medical certification for absence from work from 1948 to 2010, Gareth Millward shows that doctors, employers, employees, politicians, media commentators, and citizens concerned themselves with measuring sickness. At various times, each understood that a signed note from a doctor was not enough to 'prove' whether someone was really sick. Yet, with no better alternative on offer, the sick note survived in practice and in the popular imagination - just like the welfare state itself.

Sick Note reveals the interplay between medical, employment, and social security policy. The physical note became an integral part of working and living in Britain, while the term 'sick note' was often deployed rhetorically as a mocking nickname or symbol of Britain's economic and political troubles. Using government policy documents, popular media, internet archives, and contemporary research, Millward covers the evolution of medical certification and the welfare state since the Second World War, demonstrating how sickness and disability policies responded to demographic and economic changes - though not always satisfactorily for administrators or claimants. Moreover, despite the creation of 'the fit note' in 2010, the idea of 'the sick note' has remained. With the specific challenges posed by the global pandemic in the early 2020s, Sick Note shows how the question of 'who is really sick?' has never been straightforward and will continue to perplex the British state.

This episode is hosted by Dr Dion Georgiou, an Associate Lecturer in History at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the writer of The Academic Bubble – a newsletter covering contemporary history, politics, and culture.

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Anneli Jefferson, "Are Mental Disorders Brain Disorders?" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The question of whether mental disorders are disorders of the brain has led to a long-running and controversial dispute within psychiatry, psychology and philosophy of mind and psychology. While recent work in neuroscience frequently tries to identify underlying brain dysfunction in mental disorders, detractors argue that labelling mental disorders as brain disorders is reductive and can result in harmful social effects.

Are Mental Disorders Brain Disorders? (Routledge, 2024) brings a much-needed philosophical perspective to bear on this important question. Anneli Jefferson argues that while there is widespread agreement on paradigmatic cases of brain disorder such as brain cancer, Parkinson's or Alzheimer’s dementia, there is far less clarity on what the general, defining characteristics of brain disorders are. She identifies influential notions of brain disorder and shows why these are problematic. On her own, alternative, account, what counts as dysfunctional at the level of the brain frequently depends on what counts as dysfunctional at the psychological level. On this notion of brain disorder, she argues, many of the consequences people often associate with the brain disorder label do not follow. She also explores the important practical question of how to deal with the fact that many people do draw unlicensed inferences about treatment, personal responsibility or etiology from the information that a condition is a brain disorder or involves brain dysfunction.

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Sanaullah Khan, "Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self" (Lexington Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 3 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Carceral Recovery: Prisons, Drug Markets, and the New Pharmaceutical Self (Lexington Books, 2023) explores the interrelation between carceral conditions and substance use by considering the intersections between drug markets, sidewalks, households, and prisons in Baltimore. Sanaullah Khan argues that while housing, medicalization, and incarceration fundamentally create the conditions for substance use, individuals are increasingly experiencing the paradoxes of care and punishment by being propelled into a new regime of recovery which creates new pharmaceuticalized identities. By shedding light on how addiction and the impetus for healing moves through families and institutions of the state, Khan provides an account of the different competing forces that shape substance use, recovery, and relapse. Through a combination of archival research and ethnography, the book makes a case for disentangling punishment from recovery.

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Jonathan A. Allan, "Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin" (U Regina Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Nov 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The “uncut” penis is viewed by some as attractive or erotic, and by others as ugly or undesirable. Secular parents of male infants worry about whether or not the foreskin should be removed so their little boy can grow up to “look like dad” or to avoid imagined bullying in the locker room. Medical experts and public health organisations argue back and forth about whether circumcision is medically necessary, while “intactivists” advocate that removing an infant’s foreskin without their consent is mutilation.

Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin (University of Regina Press, 2024) by Dr. Jonathan Allen takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the foreskin and its contentious position in contemporary Anglo-American culture. From language to art, from religion to medicine and public health, Uncut is a provocative book that asks us to ask ourselves what we know and don’t know about this seemingly small piece of skin.

Drawing on all these threads, Dr.. Allan leads us through the history and cultural construction of the foreskin—from Michelangelo’s David to parenting manuals, from nineteenth-century panic over masturbation to foreskin restoration—to ultimately ask: what is the future of the foreskin?

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Sabina Faiz Rashid, "Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows (Routledge, 2024) provides comprehensive ethnographic accounts that depict the daily life experiences and health hardships encountered by young women and their families living in the slums of Dhaka city and the injustices they face.

The analysis focuses on two specific historical eras: 2002-2003 and 2020-2022 and shows that despite recent improvements in employment opportunities and greater mobility for young women, their lives reflect ongoing challenges reminiscent of those faced two decades earlier. While national and global organizations acknowledge the nation's economic and social progress, those on the outskirts of society continue to grapple with enduring poverty. They are excluded from the advantages of economic growth, oppressed by unjust local, national, and global systems, discriminatory laws, and policies. Their struggles go unnoticed as they confront a slew of challenges, including slum evictions, enforced lockdowns, income losses, food insecurity, and ongoing crises related to health, injuries, fatalities, and exploitation and harassment by law enforcement and influential individuals within the slum and the city. After two decades, these obstacles persist, and life remains tenuous, with health severely compromised. This book will appeal to students, academics, and researchers in the fields of Public Health, Medical Anthropology, Gender Studies, Urban Studies, Development Studies, Social Sciences, as well as professionals engaged in urban health and poverty-related work.

Rituparna Patgiri is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter.

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Stijn Vanheule, "Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy: A Road Map to Hope and Recovery for Families and Caregivers" (Other Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Today I talked with Stijn Vanheule about Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy: A Road Map to Hope and Recovery for Families and Caregivers (Other Press, 2024).

Are we all a little crazy? Roughly 15 percent of the population will have a psychotic experience, in which they lose contact with reality. Yet we often struggle to understand and talk about psychosis.

Drawing on his work in Lacanian psychoanalysis, Stijn Vanheule seeks to answer this question, which carries significant implications for mental health as a whole. With a combination of theory from Freud to Lacan, present-day research, and compelling examples from his own patients and well-known figures such as director David Lynch and artist Yayoi Kusama, he explores psychosis in an engaging way that can benefit those suffering from it as well as the people who care for and interact with them.

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Townsend Middleton, "Quinine's Remains: Empire’s Medicine and the Life Thereafter" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What happens after colonial industries have run their course—after the factory closes and the fields go fallow? Set in the cinchona plantations of India’s Darjeeling Hills, Quinine's Remains: Empire’s Medicine and the Life Thereafter (U California Press, 2024) chronicles the history and aftermaths of quinine. Harvested from cinchona bark, quinine was malaria’s only remedy until the twentieth-century advent of synthetic drugs, and it was vital to the British Empire. Today, the cinchona plantations—and the roughly fifty thousand people who call them home—remain. Their futures, however, are unclear. The Indian government has threatened to privatize or shut down this seemingly obsolete and crumbling industry, but the plantation community, led by strident trade unions, has successfully resisted. Overgrown cinchona fields and shuttered quinine factories may appear the stuff of postcolonial and postindustrial ruination, but quinine’s remains are not dead. Rather, they have become the site of urgent efforts to redefine land and life for the twenty-first century. Quinine's Remains offers a vivid historical and ethnographic portrait of what it means to forge life after empire.

Rounak Bose is a doctoral student in History at the University of Delaware. His research explores questions of caste, religiosities, sacred infrastructures, and performance in the interstices of the colonial and postcolonial state, as well as mobilities and circulations across South Asia and Indian Ocean networks. Besides these specific interests, my disciplinary interests revolve around anthropology, literature, and public history, and the digital humanities. When not reading or writing in the university library, Rounak can be found running along Newark's hiking trails and petting the dogs he meets along the way. Link to twitter page

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Johanna Hedva, "How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom" (Zando-Hillman Grad Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The long-awaited essay collection from one of the most influential voices in disability activism that detonates a bomb in our collective understanding of care and illness, showing us that sickness is a fact of life.

In the wake of the 2014 Ferguson riots, and sick with a chronic condition that rendered them housebound, Johanna Hedva turned to the page to ask: How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can't get out of bed? It was not long before this essay, "Sick Woman Theory", became a seminal work on disability, because in reframing illness as not just a biological experience but a social one, Hedva argues that under capitalism--a system that limits our worth to the productivity of our bodies--we must reach for the revolutionary act of caring for ourselves and others.

How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom (Zando-Hillman Grad Books, 2024) expands upon Hedva's paradigm-shifting perspective in a series of slyly subversive and razor-sharp essays that range from the theoretical to the personal--from Deborah Levy and Susan Sontag to wrestling, kink, mysticism, death, and the color yellow. Drawing from their experiences with America's byzantine healthcare system, and considering archetypes they call The Psychotic Woman, The Freak, and The Hag in Charge, Hedva offers a bracing indictment of the politics that exploit sickness--relying on and fueling ableism--to the detriment of us all.

With the insight of Anne Boyer's The Undying and Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams, and the wit of Samantha Irby, Hedva's debut collection upends our collective understanding of disability. In their radical reimagining of a world where care and pain are symbiotic, and our bodies are allowed to live free and well, Hedva implores us to remember that illness is neither an inconvenience or inevitability, but an enlivening and elemental part of being alive.

Johanna Hedva (they/them) is a Korean American writer, artist, and musician from Los Angeles. Hedva is the author of the essay collection How To Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom, published September 2024, by Hillman Grad Books. They are also the author of the novels Your Love Is Not Good and On Hell, as well as Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, a collection of poems, performances, and essays. Their albums are Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House and The Sun and the Moon. Their work has been shown in Berlin at Gropius Bau, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Klosterruine, and Institute of Cultural Inquiry; in Los Angeles at JOAN, HRLA, in the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time, and the LA Architecture and Design Museum; The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; Performance Space New York; Buk-Seoul Museum of Art and Gyeongnam Art Museum in South Korea; the 14th Shanghai Biennial; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich; Modern Art Oxford; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Bolzano; the Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon; and in the Transmediale, Unsound, Rewire, and Creepy Teepee Festivals. Their writing has appeared in Triple Canopy, frieze, The White Review, Topical Cream, Spike, Die Zeit, and is anthologized in Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art. Their essay “Sick Woman Theory,” published in 2016, has been translated into 11 languages.

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Michael G. Vann, "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam" (Oxford UP, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A funny thing happened to historian Michael Vann* on the way to his PhD thesis. While he was doing his research on French colonialism and the urbanist project in Hanoi, he came across an intriguing dossier: “Destruction of animals in the city”. The documents he found started him on a research path that led to a section of his dissertation, then an article that gained a wide academic and non-academic readership, and now The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford UP, 2018). But this isn’t your typical historical monograph. One of the latest volumes in Oxford University Press’s Graphic History Series, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt (with illustrations by Liz Clarke), explores the history of modernization, urbanization, and the spread of epidemic disease in the era of “New Imperialism” in an exciting and highly engaging format.

The remaking of Hanoi as a capital of French empire from the end of the nineteenth century had unintended consequences. In the state-of-the-art sewers of the French/white areas of the city, rats found the perfect home. Then came the Third plague pandemic, the disease that travelled with rats and moved from one site to another around the globe…on railroads, ships, the growing networks of trade and empire. The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt mobilizes years of research about this episode in the city’s history, illustrating (literally!) the inherent contradictions of imperialism, and the complexities of domination and resistance in a colonial context. Framed as an undergraduate lecture that features the author as a character throughout the narrative, the book is set up with teaching in mind. In addition to the fascinating story of the rat hunt itself (and all the twists and turns involved), the volume includes a rich selection of primary sources and a series of contextual essays that will allow students to explore this history in a range of productive ways. An accessible book that is at once serious and fun, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt was such a pleasure to read and to talk about. I hope listeners will enjoy my conversation with Mike as much as I did!

*Mike is also a host on New Books in History! Be sure to check out his interviews here on the network.

Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. She is the author of Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France Between the Wars (2009). Her current research focuses on the history of French nuclear weapons and testing since 1945. Her most recent article, '"No Hiroshima in Africa": The Algerian War and the Question of French Nuclear Tests in the Sahara' appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of History of the Present. She lives and reads in Vancouver, Canada. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca).

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S. L. Wisenberg, "The Adventures of Cancer Bitch" (Tortoise Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s 2006, and S. L. Wisenberg is teaching writing at one of Chicago’s great universities and living a busy life when she’s gobsmacked by a sudden cancer diagnosis. In small but powerful journal entries, she bemoans friends who’ve died, expresses disdain for her body, worries about her future, recalls previous adventures, and jokes about the seriousness of her illness. She doesn’t let the fear and discomfort stop her from throwing her left breast a farewell party. Now, fifteen years later, SL Wisenberg’s journey of self-acceptance, Adventures of Cancer Bitch (Tortoise Books, 2024) has been reissued without page numbers, but with additional entries, notes about her life, and updates about cancer.

S. L. Wisenberg was born in Texas and has lived in Chicago, more or less, since she was 18. She is the author of a fiction collection, The Sweetheart Is In; the essay collections Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions and The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home. In 2009 she published a chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, about her breast cancer from diagnosis to post-chemo. On October 15, the book is being re-released as a paperback, revised and updated. She is still cancer free, except for a rare chronic blood cancer, so she remains the Cancer Bitch. Wisenberg has received a Pushcart Prize, and awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois Arts Council, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The former co-director of the MA/MFA program at Northwestern University, she has taught workshops and read and lectured widely, from San Francisco to Sofia, Bulgaria. Wisenberg edits Another Chicago Magazine, an international online literary journal. In the summer she raises Eastern Black Swallowtail butterflies. Year round she walks through Chicago and hypnotizes wild rabbits. She also pulls weeds in public areas and leaves markers proclaiming, The Mad Weeder Strikes Again.

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Lois Peters Agnew, "Fitter, Happier: The Eugenic Strain in Twentieth-Century Cancer Rhetoric" (U Alabama Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Fitter, Happier: The Eugenic Strain in Twentieth-Century Cancer Rhetoric (U Alabama Press, 2024) is a thought-provoking exploration of the relationship between cancer rhetoric, American ideals, and eugenic influences in the twentieth century. This groundbreaking work delves into the paradoxical interplay between acknowledging the genuine threat of cancer and the ingrained American ethos of confidence and control.

Agnew's meticulous research traces the topic's historical context, unveiling how cancer discourses evolved from a hushed personal concern to a public issue thanks to the rise of cancer research centers and advocacy organizations. However, she unearths a troubling dimension to these discussions--subtle yet persistent eugenic ideologies that taint cancer arguments and advocacy groups. By dissecting prevailing cancer narratives, Agnew brings into focus how ideals rooted in eliminating imperfections and embracing progress converge with concerns for safeguarding societal fitness.

Fitter, Happier scrutinizes the military origins and metaphors that permeate government policies and medical research, the transformation of cancer's association with melancholy into a rallying cry for a positive outlook, and the nuanced implications of prevention-focused dialogues. Reflecting on the varied experiences of actual cancer patients, Agnew resists the neat assimilation of these stories into a eugenic framework. Agnew's insights prompt readers to contemplate the societal meanings of disease and disability as well as how language constructs our shared reality.

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Susan Grant, "Soviet Nightingales: Care Under Communism" (Cornell UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Soviet Nightingales: Care under Communism (Cornell UP, 2022), Susan Grant examines the history of nursing care in the Soviet Union from its nineteenth-century origins in Russia through the end of the Soviet state. With the advent of the USSR, nurses were instrumental in helping to build the New Soviet Person and in constructing a socialist society. In the interview, we explore Susan's approach to navigating an extensive timeline, the significance of care as a central concept within the female-dominated nursing profession, and the importance of flexibility when working with a diverse range of sources, some of which can be challenging to locate.

Alisa Kuzmina is a PhD Candidate at the University of Minnesota, specializing in Cultural Cold War history, with a focus on Soviet and American marriage policies and the social-cultural norms surrounding them.

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Risa Cromer, "Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics" (NYU Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In 1997, a group of white pro-life evangelical Christians in the United States created the nation’s first embryo adoption program to “save” the thousands of frozen human embryos remaining from assisted reproduction procedures, which they contend are unborn children. While a small part of US fertility services, embryo adoption has played an outsized role in conservative politics, from high-profile battles over public investment in human embryonic stem cell research to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Based on six years of ethnographic research with embryo adoption staff and participants, Dr. Risa Cromer uncovers how embryo adoption advances ambitious political goals for expanding the influence of conservative Christian values and power.

Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics (NYU Press, 2023) is the first book on embryo adoption tracing how this powerful social movement draws on white saviorist tropes in their aims to reconceive personhood, with drastic consequences for reproductive rights and justice. Documenting the practices, narratives, and beliefs that move embryos from freezers to uteruses, this book wields anthropological wariness as a tool for confronting the multiple tactics of the Christian Right. Timely and provocative, Conceiving Christian America presents a bold and nuanced examination of a family-making process focused on conceiving a Christian nation.

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Critique, Wonder, and Chinese Anatomy, with Lan A. Li

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of the Blue Beryl Podcast, Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with the show’s producer, Lan A. Li, a historian of Chinese science, medicine, and the body. We talk about their life-long practice of qigong, the limits of academic critique, and the integration of divergent epistemologies in studying Chinese anatomy. Along the way, we discuss Lan’s new book, Body Maps: Improvising Meridians and Nerves in Global Chinese Medicine (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025), Lan’s relationship to Islam, and how to cultivate wonder through academic study.

Remember, if you want to hear from more experts on Buddhism, Asian medicine, and embodied spirituality, subscribe to Blue Beryl for monthly episodes. Please enjoy!

Resources mentioned in the episode:

Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. www.piercesalguero.com.

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Daniel J. Levitin, "Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives" (Dutton Books, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives (Dutton Books, 2020), Daniel J. Levitin delivers powerful insights:

• Debunking the myth that memory always declines with age

• Confirming that “health span”—not “life span”—is what matters

• Proving that sixty-plus years is a unique and newly recognized developmental stage

• Recommending that people look forward to joy, as reminiscing doesn’t promote health

Levitin looks at the science behind what we all can learn from those who age joyously, as well as how to adapt our culture to take full advantage of older people’s wisdom and experience. Throughout his exploration of what aging really means, using research from developmental neuroscience and the psychology of individual differences, Levitin reveals resilience strategies and practical, cognitive- enhancing tricks everyone should do as they age.

Successful Aging inspires a powerful new approach to how readers think about our final decades, and it will revolutionize the way we plan for old age as individuals, family members, and citizens within a society where the average life expectancy continues to rise.

Victoria Reedman is a resident doctor in Toronto studying neurology with some health systems work on the side.

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Kyle Falcon, "Haunted Britain: Spiritualism, Psychical Research and the Great War" (Manchester UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 6 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The Great War haunted the British Empire. Shell shocked soldiers relived the war's trauma through waking nightmares consisting of mutilated and grotesque figures. Modernist writers released memoirs condemning the war as a profane and disenchanting experience. Yet British and Dominion soldiers and their families also read prophecies about the coming new millennium, experimented with séances, and claimed to see the ghosts of their loved ones in dreams and in photographs. On the battlefields, they had premonitions and attributed their survival to angelic, psychic, or spiritual forces. For many, the war was an enchanting experience that offered proof of another world and the transcendental properties of the mind. Between 1914 and 1939, an array of ghosts lived in the minds of British subjects as they navigated the shocking toll that death in modern war exerted in their communities.

Kyle Falcon is a historian specialising in the British Empire during the First World War. He is based in Ontario, Canada.

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Neil Vickers and Derek Bolton, "Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and Abandonment" (Reaktion Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 5 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A serious illness often changes the way others see us. Few, if any, relationships remain the same. The sick become more dependent on partners and family members, while more distant contacts become strained. The carers of the ill are also often isolated. This book focuses on our sense of self when ill and how infirmity plays out in our relationships with others.

In Being Ill: On Sickness, Care and Abandonment (Reaktion, 2024) Dr. Neil Vickers and Dr. Derek Bolton offer an original perspective, drawing on neuroscience, psychology and psychoanalysis, as well as memoirs of the ill or their carers, to reveal how a sense of connectedness and group belonging can not only improve care, but make societies more resilient to illness. This is an essential book on the experience of major illness.

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Mercy Ships (with Reanne Newquist)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 1 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Reanne Newquist tells me about her voyage on Mercy Ships bringing healthcare to some of the poorest people in the world, a mission started by Don Stephens in the 1970s and encouraged by Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Reanne, her husband, and her kids left everything behind, sold their home and sailed off to adventure and service. Most people go back to normal life, but Reann stayed on with Mercy Ships as part of the communications staff, spreading the word by talking with people like me (and you). Here is her story.

Mercy Ships website.
Mercy Minute podcast.
Reanne’s website.

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Camilla Nord, "The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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Joy Knoblauch, "The Architecture of Good Behavior: Psychology and Modern Institutional Design in Postwar America" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Inspired by the rise of environmental psychology and increasing support for behavioral research after the Second World War, new initiatives at the federal, state, and local levels looked to influence the human psyche through form, or elicit desired behaviors with environmental incentives, implementing what Joy Knoblauch calls “psychological functionalism.”

Recruited by federal construction and research programs for institutional reform and expansion—which included hospitals, mental health centers, prisons, and public housing—architects theorized new ways to control behavior and make it more functional by exercising soft power, or power through persuasion, with their designs.

In the 1960s –1970s era of anti-institutional sentiment, they hoped to offer an enlightened, palatable, more humane solution to larger social problems related to health, mental health, justice, and security of the population by applying psychological expertise to institutional design.

In turn, Knoblauch argues, architects gained new roles as researchers, organizers, and writers while theories of confinement, territory, and surveillance proliferated. The Architecture of Good Behavior: Psychology and Modern Institutional Design in Postwar America (University of Pittsburgh Press) explores psychological functionalism as a political tool and the architectural projects funded by a postwar nation in its efforts to govern, exert control over, and ultimately pacify its patients, prisoners, and residents.

Joy Knoblauch is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan, where she teaches history and theory of architecture as an exploration of architecture's engagement with politics and science.

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Matthew C. Ehrlich, "The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine" (U Illinois Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The brainchild of an obscure Yugoslav physician, Krebiozen emerged in 1951 as an alleged cancer treatment. Andrew Ivy, a University of Illinois vice president and a famed physiologist dubbed “the conscience of U.S. science,” wholeheartedly embraced Krebiozen. Ivy’s impeccable credentials and reputation made the treatment seem like another midcentury medical miracle. But after years of controversy, the improbable saga ended with Krebiozen proved a sham, its inventor fleeing the country, and Ivy’s reputation and legacy in ruins.

Matthew C. Ehrlich’s history of Krebiozen tells a quintessential story of quackery. Though most experts dismissed the treatment, it found passionate public support not only among cancer patients but also people in good health. The treatment’s rise and fall took place against the backdrop of America’s never-ending suspicion of educational, scientific, and medical expertise. In addition, Ehrlich examines why people readily believe misinformation and struggle to maintain hope in the face of grave threats to well-being.

A dramatic account of fraud and misplaced trust, The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine (U Illinois Press, 2024) shines a light on a forgotten medical scandal and its all-too-familiar relevance in the twenty-first century.

Matthew C. Ehrlich is professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Illinois. He has previously published five books including Dangerous Ideas on Campus: Sex, Conspiracy, and Academic Freedom in the Age of JFK and Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry That Defined an Era.

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Mariana Craciun, "From Skepticism to Competence: How American Psychiatrists Learn Psychotherapy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 8 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

From Skepticism to Competence: How American Psychiatrists Learn Psychotherapy (U Chicago Press, 2024) offers an examination of how novice psychiatrists come to understand the workings of the mind - and the nature of medical expertise - as they are trained in psychotherapy. While many medical professionals can physically examine the body to identify and understand its troubles - a cardiologist can take a scan of the heart, an endocrinologist can measure hormone levels, an oncologist can locate a tumor - psychiatrists have a much harder time unlocking the inner workings of the brain or its metaphysical counterpart, the mind.

In From Skepticism to Competence, sociologist Mariana Craciun delves into the radical uncertainty of psychiatric work by following medical residents in the field as they learn about psychotherapeutic methods. Most are skeptical at the start. While they are well equipped to treat brain diseases through prescription drugs, they must set their expectations aside and learn how to navigate their patients’ minds. Their instructors, experienced psychotherapists, help the budding psychiatrists navigate this new professional terrain by revealing the inner workings of talk and behavioral interventions and stressing their utility in a world dominated by pharmaceutical treatments. In the process, the residents examine their own doctoring assumptions and develop new competencies in psychotherapy. Exploring the world of contemporary psychiatric training, Craciun illustrates novice physicians’ struggles to understand the nature and meaning of mental illness and, with it, their own growing medical expertise.

Mariana Craciun is Associate Professor in Sociology at Tulane University. As a cultural sociologist, she is interested in the issues of expertise, professions, science, and technology. Her writings on psychotherapeutic expertise and authority and was published in top peer reviewed journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Theory and Society, Qualitative Sociology, and the Sociology of Health and Illness.

Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of environmental anthropology, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Jess Whatcott, "Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics" (Duke UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 7 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics (Duke UP, 2024), Jess Whatcott traces the link between US disability institutions and early twentieth-century eugenicist ideology, demonstrating how the legacy of those ideas continues to shape incarceration and detention today. Whatcott focuses on California, examining records from state institutions and reform organizations, newspapers, and state hospital museum exhibits. They reveal that state confinement, coercive treatment, care neglect, and forced sterilization were done out of the belief that the perceived unfitness of disabled, mad, and neurodivergent people was hereditary and thus posed a biological threat—a so-called menace to the future.

Whatcott uncovers a history of disabled resistance to these institutions that predates disability rights movements, builds a genealogy of resistance, and tells a history of eugenics from below. Theorizing how what they call “carceral eugenics” informed state treatment of disabled, mad, and neurodivergent people a century ago, Whatcott shows not only how that same logic still exists in secure treatment facilities, state prisons, and immigration detention centers, but also why it must continue to be resisted.

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John P. Davis, "Russia in the Time of Cholera" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The idea of “backwardness” often plagues historical writing on Russia. In Russia in the Time of Cholera: Disease under Romanovs and Soviets (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), Dr. John P. Davis counteracts this “backwardness” paradigm, arguing that from the early 19th to the early 20th centuries, Russian medical researchers—along with their counterparts in France and Germany—were at the forefront of the struggle against cholera. Davis’ birds-eye view of this hundred-year period illustrates that the conditions allowing cholera to flourish were the same set of conditions that helped create the collapse of the tsarist regime during the First World War. Credit for elimination of cholera must go to the Bolsheviks, both for implementing tsarist-era medical theory, and especially for making war on cholera in a organized, systematic manner that the old regime was variously unable or unwilling to achieve.

Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism.

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Elizabeth A. Williams, "Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950" (U Chicago Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 2 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Why do we eat? Is it instinct? Despite the necessity of food, anxieties about what and how to eat are widespread and persistent. In Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Elizabeth A. Williams explores contemporary worries about eating through the lens of science and medicine to show us how appetite—once a matter of personal inclination—became an object of science.

Williams charts the history of inquiry into appetite between 1750 and 1950, as scientific and medical concepts of appetite shifted alongside developments in physiology, natural history, psychology, and ethology. She shows how, in the eighteenth century, trust in appetite was undermined when researchers who investigated ingestion and digestion began claiming that science alone could say which ways of eating were healthy and which were not. She goes on to trace nineteenth- and twentieth-century conflicts over the nature of appetite between mechanists and vitalists, experimentalists and bedside physicians, and localists and holists, illuminating struggles that have never been resolved. By exploring the core disciplines in investigations in appetite and eating, Williams reframes the way we think about food, nutrition, and the nature of health itself.

Elizabeth A. Williams is professor emerita of history at Oklahoma State University.

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Ellen Hampton, "Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle Against the Nazi Occupation of France" (LSU Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Ellen Hampton's Doctors at War: The Clandestine Battle Against the Nazi Occupation of France (LSU Press, 2023) tells the stories of physicians in France working to impede the German war effort and undermine French collaborators during the Occupation from 1940 to 1945. Determined to defeat the Third Reich's incursion, one group of prominent Paris doctors founded a medical network to treat injured Resistance fighters who they then secretly transported to Allied countries to avoid forced labor in Germany. Another team of medics organized a cabal focused on intelligence gathering and sabotage that became one of the largest in wartime France, even after the Gestapo arrested and imprisoned its leaders. Deported to concentration camps, these physicians continued to frustrate Nazi efforts by rendering aid and keeping their fellow prisoners alive. Others joined rural guerrilla camps to care for the young conscripts fighting to block German reinforcements from reaching Normandy after the D-Day landing.

These stories, assembled here for the first time, add a crucial dimension to the history of Occupied France. Written for both historians and general readers of World War II history, Doctors at War stands as a dramatic, character-driven account of physicians' courage and resilience in the face of evil. It serves as a window into life under a fascist regime and the travails of doctors who negotiated the terrifying moral labyrinth that was the German military's occupation of France.

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Regina G. Kunzel, "In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the mid-twentieth century, American psychiatrists proclaimed homosexuality a mental disorder, one that was treatable and amenable to cure. Drawing on a collection of previously unexamined case files from St. Elizabeths Hospital, In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life (U Chicago Press, 2024) explores the encounter between psychiatry and queer and gender-variant people in the mid- to late-twentieth-century United States. It examines psychiatrists’ investments in understanding homosexuality as a dire psychiatric condition, a judgment that garnered them tremendous power and authority at a time that historians have characterized as psychiatry’s “golden age.” That stigmatizing diagnosis made a deep and lasting impact, too, on queer people, shaping gay life and politics in indelible ways. In the Shadow of Diagnosis helps us understand the adhesive and ongoing connection between queerness and sickness.

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Heather Murray, "Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) by Dr. Heather Murray is a cultural and intellectual history of people with mental illnesses in the twentieth-century United States. While acknowledging the fraught, and often violent, histories of American psychiatric hospitals, Heather Murray also suggests that it is in these hospitals that patients became more intense observers: they gave more conscious consideration to institutional and broader kinds of citizenship, to the nature and needs of communities versus those of individuals, to scientific modernity, and to human rights and solidarities among the suffering. All of these ideas have animated twentieth-century America, and, as Dr. Murray shows, have not just flowed into psychiatric hospitals but outward from them as well. These themes are especially clear within patients' intimate, creative, and political correspondence, writings, and drawings, as well as in hospital publications and films.

This way of thinking and imagining contrasts with more common images of the patient—as passive, resigned, and absented from the world in the cloistered setting of the hospital—that have animated psychiatry over the course of the twentieth century. Asylum Ways of Seeing traces how it is that patient resignation went from being interpreted as wisdom in the early twentieth century, to being understood as a capitulation in scientific and political sources by mid-century, to being seen as a profound violation of selfhood and individual rights by the century's end. In so doing, it makes a call to reconsider the philosophical possibilities within resignation.

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Aimee Louise Middlemiss, "Invisible Labours: The Reproductive Politics of Second Trimester Pregnancy Loss in England" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Tracing women’s experiences of miscarriage and termination for foetal anomaly in the second trimester, before legal viability, shows how such events are positioned as less ‘real’ or significant when the foetal being does not, or will not, survive. Invisible Labour: The Reproductive Politics of Second Trimester Pregnancy Loss in England (Berghahn, 2024) by Dr. Aimee Louise Middlemiss describes the reproductive politics of this category of pregnancy loss in England. It shows how second trimester pregnancy loss produces specific medical and social experiences, revealing an underlying teleological ontology of pregnancy. Some women then understand their pregnancy through kinship with the unborn baby.

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Anna Bonnell Freidin, "Birthing Romans: Childbearing and Its Risks in Imperial Rome" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Across the vast expanse of the Roman Empire, anxieties about childbirth tied individuals to one another, to the highest levels of imperial politics, even to the movements of the stars. Birthing Romans: Childbearing and Its Risks in Imperial Rome (Princeton UP, 2024) sheds critical light on the diverse ways pregnancy and childbirth were understood, experienced, and managed in ancient Rome during the first three centuries of the Common Era.

In this beautifully written book, Anna Bonnell Freidin asks how inhabitants of the Roman Empire—especially women and girls—understood their bodies and constructed communities of care to mitigate and make sense of the risks of pregnancy and childbirth. Drawing on medical texts, legal documents, poetry, amulets, funerary art, and more, she shows how these communities were deeply human yet never just human. Freidin demonstrates how patients and caregivers took their place alongside divine and material agencies to guard against the risks inherent to childbearing. She vividly illustrates how these efforts and vital networks offer a new window onto Romans’ anxieties about order, hierarchy, and the individual’s place in the empire and cosmos.

Unearthing a risky world that is both familiar and not our own, Birthing Romans reveals how mistakes, misfortunes, and interventions in childbearing were seen to have far-reaching consequences, reverberating across generations and altering the course of people’s lives, their family histories, and even the fate of an empire.

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Robert Baker, "Making Modern Medical Ethics: How African Americans, Anti-Nazis, Bureaucrats, Feminists, Veterans, and Whistleblowing Moralists Created Bioethics" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 2 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The little-known stories of the people responsible for what we know today as modern medical ethics. In Making Modern Medical Ethics: How African Americans, Anti-Nazis, Bureaucrats, Feminists, Veterans, and Whistleblowing Moralists Created Bioethics (MIT Press, 2024), Robert Baker tells the counter history of the birth of bioethics, bringing to the fore the stories of the dissenters and whistleblowers who challenged the establishment. Drawing on his earlier work on moral revolutions and the history of medical ethics, Robert Baker traces the history of modern medical ethics and its bioethical turn to the moral insurrections incited by the many unsung dissenters and whistleblowers: African American civil rights leaders, Jewish Americans harboring Holocaust memories, feminists, women, and Anglo-American physicians and healthcare professionals who were veterans of the World Wars, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. The standard narrative for bioethics typically emphasizes the morally disruptive medical technologies of the latter part of the twentieth century, such as the dialysis machine, the electroencephalograph, and the ventilator, as they created the need to reconsider traditional notions of medical ethics.

Baker, however, tells a fresh narrative, one that has historically been neglected (e.g., the story of the medical veterans who founded an international medical organization to rescue medicine and biomedical research from the scandal of Nazi medicine), and also reveals the penalties that moral change agents paid (e.g., the stubborn bureaucrat who was demoted for her insistence on requiring and enforcing research subjects’ informed consent). Analyzing major statements of modern medical ethics from the 1946–1947 Nuremberg Doctors Trials and Nuremberg Code to A Patient’s Bill of Rights, Making Modern Medical Ethics is a winning history of just how respect and autonomy for patients and research subjects came to be codified.

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Ewa K. Bacon, "Saving Lives in Auschwitz: The Prisoners’ Hospital in Buna-Monowitz" (Purdue UP, 2017)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Ewa Bacon about her book Saving Lives in Auschwitz: The Prisoners’ Hospital in Buna-Monowitz (Purdue UP, 2017).

In a 1941 Nazi roundup of educated Poles, Stefan Budziaszek--newly graduated from medical school in Krakow--was incarcerated in the Krakow Montelupich Prison and transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp in February 1942. German big businesses brutally exploited the cheap labor of prisoners in the camp, and workers were dying. In 1943, Stefan, now a functionary prisoner, was put in charge of the on-site prisoner hospital, which at the time was more like an infirmary staffed by well-connected but untrained prisoners. Stefan transformed this facility from just two barracks into a working hospital and outpatient facility that employed more than 40 prisoner doctors and served a population of 10,000 slave laborers.

Stefan and his staff developed the hospital by commandeering medication, surgical equipment, and even building materials, often from the so-called Canada warehouse filled with the effects of Holocaust victims. But where does seeking the cooperation of the Nazi concentration camp staff become collusion with Nazi genocide? How did physicians deal with debilitated patients who faced "selection" for transfer to the gas chambers? Auschwitz was a cauldron of competing agendas. Unexpectedly, ideological rivalry among prisoners themselves manifested itself as well. Prominent Holocaust witnesses Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi both sought treatment at this prisoner hospital. They, other patients, and hospital staff bear witness to the agency of prisoner doctors in an environment better known for death than survival.

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Fella Benabed, "Applied Global Health Humanities: Readings in the Global Anglophone Novel" (de Gruyter, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Fella Benabed's book Applied Global Health Humanities: Readings in the Global Anglophone Novel (de Gruyter, 2024) highlights the importance of global Anglophone literature in global health humanities, shaping perceptions of health issues in the Global South and among minorities in the Global North. Using twelve novels, it explores the historical, political, sociocultural, ethical, and environmental aspects of health by analyzing the experiences of characters who suffer from infectious diseases, mental disorders, or disabilities, and who seek holistic healing practices.

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Justin B. Stein, "Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific" (U Hawaii Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the second half of the twentieth century, Reiki went from an obscure therapy practiced by a few thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans to a global phenomenon. By the early twenty-first century, people in nearly every corner of the world have undergone the initiations that authorize them to channel a cosmic energy—known as Reiki—to heal body, mind, and spirit. They lay hands on themselves and others, use secret symbols and incantations to send Reiki to distant recipients, and strive to follow five precepts to cultivate their spiritual growth. Reiki’s international rise and development is due to the work of Hawayo Takata (1900–1980), a Hawai‘i-born Japanese American woman who brought Reiki out of Japan and adapted it for thousands of students in Hawai‘i and North America, shaping interconnections across the North Pacific region as well as cultural transformations over the transwar period spanning World War II.

Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific (U Hawaii Press, 2023) analyzes how, from her training in Japan in the mid-1930s to her death in Iowa in 1980, Takata built a vast trans-Pacific network that connected Japanese American laborers on Hawai‘i plantations to social elites in Tokyo, Hollywood, and New York; middle-class housewives in American suburbs; and off-the-grid tree planters in the mountains of British Columbia. Using recently uncovered archival materials and original oral histories, this book examines how these relationships between healer and patient, master and disciple, became deeply infused with values of their time and place and how they interplayed with Reiki’s circulation, performance, and meanings along with broader cultural shifts in the twentieth-century North Pacific. Highly readable and informative, each chapter is structured around a period in the life of Takata, the charismatic, rags-to-riches architect of the network in which Reiki spread for decades.

Alternate Currents explores Reiki as an exemplary transnational spiritual therapy, demonstrating how lived practices transcend artificial distinctions between religion and medicine, and circulate in global systems while maintaining strong connections with the practices’ homeland.

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Bishnupriya Ghosh, "The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media" (Duke UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the Global Media & Communication podcast series. This podcast is a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.

In this episode, Professor Bishnupriya Ghosh joins our host, Zehra Husain, to discuss her latest book, The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media (Duke UP, 2023).

Over the course of the interview, you’ll learn about:

The origins of the book and how Ghosh became interested in the body as a material medium
The importance of conceptualizing global epidemics in multiscalar ways
What Ghosh means by multispecies relationality and “lively media”
The distinctions between the “global” and the “planetary”
Ghosh’s research process for the book and her thoughts on using an ethnographic mode
The media archive Ghosh assembled while conducting research for the book
How and why Ghosh conceptualizes blood as media in the book
The expansive sites, scales, and temporalities that Ghosh tracks across The Virus Touch

…and much more!

About the book

“In The Virus Touch Bishnupriya Ghosh argues that media are central to understanding emergent relations between viruses, humans, and nonhuman life. Writing in the shadow of the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 global pandemics, Ghosh theorizes “epidemic media” to show how epidemics are mediated in images, numbers, and movements through the processes of reading test results and tracking infection and mortality rates. Scientific, artistic, and activist epidemic media that make multispecies relations sensible and manageable eschew anthropocentric survival strategies and instead recast global public health crises as biological, social, and ecological catastrophes, pushing us toward a multispecies politics of health. Ghosh trains her analytic gaze on these mediations as expressed in the collection and analysis of blood samples as a form of viral media; the geospatialization of data that track viral hosts like wild primates; and the use of multisensory images to trace fluctuations in viral mutations. Studying how epidemic media inscribe, store, and transmit multispecies relations attunes us to the anthropogenic drivers of pathogenicity like deforestation or illegal wildlife trading and the vulnerabilities accruing from diseases that arise from socioeconomic inequities and biopolitical neglect.” Learn more about the book on the publisher’s website!

Guest Biography

Bishnupriya Ghosh publishes in global media cultures, environmental media, and critical health studies.

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Kirsten Moore-Sheeley, "Nothing But Nets: A Biography of Global Health Science and Its Objects" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Distributed to millions of people annually across Africa and the global south, insecticide-treated bed nets have become a cornerstone of malaria control and twenty-first-century global health initiatives. Despite their seemingly obvious public health utility, however, these chemically infused nets and their rise to prominence were anything but inevitable.

In Nothing But Nets: A Biography of Global Health Science and Its Objects (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023), Dr. Kirsten Moore-Sheeley untangles the complicated history of insecticide-treated nets as it unfolded transnationally and in Kenya specifically—a key site of insecticide-treated net research—to reveal how the development of this intervention was deeply enmeshed with the emergence of the contemporary global health enterprise.

While public health workers initially conceived of nets as a stopgap measure that could be tailored to impoverished, rural health systems in the early 1980s, nets became standardised market goods with the potential to save lives and promote economic development globally. This shift attracted donor resources for malaria control amid the rise of neoliberal regimes in international development, but it also perpetuated a paradigm of fighting malaria and poverty at the level of individual consumers. Africans' experiences with insecticide-treated nets illustrate the limitations of this paradigm and provide a warning for the precariousness of malaria control efforts today.

Drawing on archival, published, and oral historical evidence from three continents, Dr. Moore-Sheeley reveals the important role Africans have played in shaping global health science and technology. In placing both insecticide-treated nets and Africa at the center of global health history, this book sheds new light on how and why commodity-based health interventions have become so entrenched as solutions to global disease control as well as the challenges these interventions pose for at-risk populations.

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Suzanne Scanlon, "Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen" (Vintage, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen (Vintage, 2024) is a critical memoir about women, reading, and mental illness. When Suzanne Scanlon was a student at Barnard in the 90s, grieving the loss of her mother—feeling untethered and swimming through inarticulable pain—she made a suicide attempt that landed her in the New York State Psychiatric Institute. After nearly three years and countless experimental treatments, Suzanne left the ward on shaky legs.

In the decades after, Suzanne came to understand her suffering as part of something larger: a long tradition of women whose complicated and compromised stories of self-actualization are reduced to “crazy chick” and “madwoman” narratives. She searched for more books, more woman writers, as the journey of her life converged with her journey through the literature that shaped her. Committed is a story of discovery and of questioning linear and neat ideas of recovery. It reclaims the idea of the madwoman as a template for insight and transcendence through the works of Audre Lorde, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Janet Frame, Shulamith Firestone, and others.

Suzanne Scanlon is the author of the memoir Committed, which was recently published with from Vintage in Spring 2024. She is also the author of two works of fiction, Promising Young Women (Dorothy, 2012) and Her 37th Year, An Index (Noemi, 2015). Her writing has appeared in Granta, BOMB, Fence, The Iowa Review, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, and elsewhere. Scanlon has a BA from Barnard College and both an MFA and an MA from Northwestern University.

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Seth A. Berkowitz, "Equal Care: Health Equity, Social Democracy, and the Egalitarian State" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Health inequity is one of the defining problems of our time. But current efforts to address the problem focus on mitigating the harms of injustice rather than confronting injustice itself. In Equal Care: Health Equity, Social Democracy, and the Egalitarian State (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024), Seth A. Berkowitz, MD, MPH, offers an innovative vision for the future of health equity by examining the social mechanisms that link injustice to poor health. He also presents practical policies designed to create a system of social relations that ensures equal care for everyone.

As Berkowitz illustrates, the project of social democracy works to improve health by bringing relationships of equality to the sites of human cooperation: in civil society, in political processes, and in economic activities. This book synthesizes three elements necessary for such a project—normative justification, mechanistic knowledge, and technical proficiency—into a practical vision of how to create health equity. Drawing from the fields of medicine, social epidemiology, sociology, economics, political science, philosophy, and more, Berkowitz makes clear that health inequity is social failure embodied, and the only true cures are political.

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Stefanie Coché, "Psychiatric Institutions and Society: The Practice of Psychiatric Committal in the "Third Reich," the Democratic Republic of Germany, and the Federal Republic of Germany, 1941-1963" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Stefanie Coché's Psychiatric Institutions and Society: the Practice of Psychiatric Commital in the “Third Reich,” the Democratic Republic of Germany, and the Federal Republic of Germany, 1941-1963 (London: Routledge, 2024; translated by Alex Skinner) probes how the serious and sometimes fatal decision was made to admit individuals to asylums during Germany’s age of extremes. The book shows that - even during the Nazi killing of the sick - relatives played an even more important role in most admissions than doctors and the authorities.

In light of admission practices, this study traces how ideas about illness, safety, and normality changed when the Nazi regime collapsed in 1945 and illuminates how closely power configurations in the psychiatric sector were linked to political and social circumstances in the early years of both German successor states.

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Jill A. Fisher, "Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals" (NYU Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Imagine that you volunteer for the clinical trial of an experimental drug. The only direct benefit of participating is that you will receive up to $5,175. You must spend twenty nights literally locked in a research facility. You will be told what to eat, when to eat, and when to sleep. You will share a bedroom with several strangers. Who are you, and why would you choose to take part in this kind of study?

This book explores the hidden world of pharmaceutical testing on healthy volunteers. Drawing on two years of fieldwork in clinics across the country and 268 interviews with participants and staff, it illustrates how decisions to take part in such studies are often influenced by poverty and lack of employment opportunities. It shows that healthy participants are typically recruited from African American and Latino/a communities, and that they are often serial participants, who obtain a significant portion of their income from these trials.

This book reveals not only how social inequality fundamentally shapes these drug trials, but it also depicts the important validity concerns inherent in this mode of testing new pharmaceuticals. These highly controlled studies bear little resemblance to real-world conditions, and everyone involved is incentivized to game the system, ultimately making new drugs appear safer than they really are.

Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals (New York University Press) provides an unprecedented view of the intersection of racial inequalities with pharmaceutical testing, signaling the dangers of this research enterprise to both social justice and public health.

Jill A. Fisher is Associate Professor of Social Medicine and Bioethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Sasha Warren, "Storming Bedlam: Madness, Mental Health, and Revolt" (Common Notions, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Mental health care and its radical possibilities reimagined in the context of its global development under capitalism.

The contemporary world is oversaturated with psychiatric programs, methods, and reforms promising to address any number of "crises" in mental health care. When these fail, alternatives to the alternatives simply pile up and seem to lead nowhere.

In an original and compelling account of radical experimentation in psychiatry, Warren traces a double movement in the global development of mental health services throughout the 20th century: a radical current pushing totalizing and idealistic visions of care to their practical limits and a reactionary one content with managing or eliminating chronically idle surplus populations.

Moral treatment is read in light of the utopian socialist movement; the theory of communication in the French Institutional Psychotherapy of Félix Guattari is put into conversation with the Brazilian art therapy of Nise da Silveira; the Mexican anti-psychiatry movement's reflections on violence are thought together with theories of violence developed in Argentinian psychoanalysis and Frantz Fanon's anticolonial therapeutic practice; the social form of the Italian Democratic Psychiatry and Brazilian anti-institutional movements are contrasted with the anti-psychiatry factions of the 1960s-70s North American counterculture.

Storming Bedlam: Madness, Mental Health, and Revolt (Common Notions, 2024) subverts the divisions between social and biological approaches to mental health or between psychiatry and anti-psychiatry. By exploring the history of psychiatry in the context of revolution, war, and economic development, Warren outlines a minor history of approaches to mental health care grounded in common struggles against conditions of scarcity, poverty, isolation, and exploitation.

Sasha Warren is a writer based in Minneapolis. His experiences within the psychiatric system and commitment to radical politics led him to cofound the group Hearing Voices Twin Cities, which provides an alternative social space for individuals to discuss often stigmatized extreme experiences and network with one-another. Following the George Floyd Uprising in 2020, he founded the project Of Unsound Mind to trace the histories of psychiatry, social work, and public health's connections to policing, prisons, and various disciplinary and managerial technologies.

Resources:

North American Networks of Alternatives to Psychiatry altpsy.net
Of Unsound Mind Substack

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Angela Garcia, "The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City's Anexos" (FSG, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Based on over a decade of research, a powerful, moving work of narrative nonfiction that illuminates the little-known world of the anexos of Mexico City, the informal addiction treatment centers where mothers send their children to escape the violence of the drug war.

The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City's Anexos (FSG, 2024) reveals a hidden place where care and violence are impossible to separate: the anexos of Mexico City. The prizewinning anthropologist Angela Garcia takes us deep into the world of these small rooms, informal treatment centers for alcoholism, addiction, and mental illness, spread across Mexico City's tenements and reaching into the United States. Run and inhabited by Mexico's most marginalized populations, they are controversial for their illegality and their use of coercion. Yet for many Mexican families desperate to keep their loved ones safe, these rooms offer something of a refuge from what lies beyond them--the intensifying violence surrounding the drug war.

This is the first book ever written on the anexos. Garcia, who spent a decade conducting anthropological fieldwork in Mexico City, draws readers into their many dimensions, casting light on the mothers and their children who are entangled in this hidden world. Following the stories of its denizens, she asks what these places are, why they exist, and what they reflect about Mexico and the wider world. With extraordinary empathy and a sharp eye for detail, Garcia attends to the lives that the anexos both sustain and erode, wrestling with the question of why mothers turn to them as a site of refuge even as they reproduce violence. Woven into these portraits is Garcia's own powerful story of family, childhood, homelessness, and drugs--a blend of ethnography and memoir converging on a set of fundamental questions about the many forms and meanings that violence, love, care, family, and hope may take.

Infused with profound ethnographic richness and moral urgency, The Way That Leads Among the Lost is a stunning work of narrative nonfiction, a book that will leave a deep mark on readers.

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Donna Drucker, "Contraception: A Concise History" (The MIT Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The beginning of the modern contraceptive era began in 1882, when Dr. Aletta Jacobs opened the first birth control clinic in Amsterdam. The founding of this facility, and the clinical provision of contraception that it enabled, marked the moment when physicians started to take the prevention of pregnancy seriously as a medical concern. In Contraception: A Concise History (The MIT Press, 2020), Donna Drucker traces the history of modern contraception, outlining the development, manufacturing, and use of contraceptive methods from the opening of Dr. Jacobs's clinic to the present. Drucker approaches the subject from the perspective of reproductive justice: the right to have a child, the right not to have a child, and the right to parent children safely and healthily.

Drucker describes contraceptive methods available before the pill, including the diaphragm (dispensed at the Jacobs clinic) and condom, spermicidal jellies, and periodic abstinences. She looks at the development and dissemination of the pill and its chemical descendants; describes technological developments in such non-hormonal contraceptives as the cervical cap and timing methods (including the “rhythm method” favored by the Roman Catholic church); and explains the concept of reproductive justice. Finally, Drucker considers the future of contraception—the adaptations of existing methods, new forms of distribution, and ongoing efforts needed to support contraceptive access

Dr. Donna Drucker leads the English as the Language for Instruction Project, which helps faculty, administrative staff, scientific staff, and students at the Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany) improve their English abilities for teaching and learning.

Chris Babits is an Andrew W. Mellon Engaged Scholar Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He researches the intersecting histories of medicine, religion, and gender and sexuality and is currently working on his book about the history of conversion therapy in the United States.

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Catherine Tan, "Spaces on the Spectrum: How Autism Movements Resist Experts and Create Knowledge" (Columbia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 6 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Movements that take issue with conventional understandings of autism spectrum disorder, a developmental disability, have become increasingly visible. Drawing on more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with participants, Dr. Catherine Tan investigates two autism-focused movements, shedding new light on how members contest expert authority. Examining their separate struggles to gain legitimacy and represent autistic people, she develops a new account of the importance of social movements as spaces for constructing knowledge that aims to challenge dominant frameworks.

Spaces on the Spectrum: How Autism Movements Resist Experts and Create Knowledge (Columbia University Press, 2024) examines the autistic rights and alternative biomedical movements, which reimagine autism in different and conflicting ways: as a difference to be accepted or as a sickness to treat. Both, however, provide a window into how ideas that conflict with dominant beliefs develop, take hold, and persist. The autistic rights movement is composed primarily of autistic adults who contend that autism is a natural human variation, not a disorder, and advocate for social and cultural inclusion and policy changes. The alternative biomedical movement, in contrast, is dominated by parents and practitioners who believe in the disproven idea that vaccines trigger autism and seek to reverse it with scientifically unsupported treatments. Both movements position themselves in opposition to researchers, professionals, and parents outside their communities. Spaces on the Spectrum offers timely insights into the roles of shared identity and communal networks in movements that question scientific and medical authority.

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Elizabeth Aislinn O'Brien, "Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770-1940" (UNC Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 5 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Surgery & Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770-1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), Elizabeth O’Brien foregrounds the racial and religious meanings of surgery to draw important connections between historical and contemporary politics regarding fetal and maternal healthcare. She traces practices of caesarean section and coercive Christianization throughout Mexico’s colonial period; patriarchal pregnancy management during republican state formation; and tubal ligation and vaginal bifurcation in Mexico’s twentieth century Eugenics movement. Surgery and Salvation has received several awards including the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies’ Judy Ewell Award; the Latin American Studies Association 2024 Best Book Award for the Nineteenth-Century Section; and Honorable Mention for the 2024 Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize (WAWH) as well as the Thomas McGann Prize (RMCLAS). O’Brien is an Assistant Professor of the History of Medicine and Latin American History at the University of California, Los Angeles. In this episode, O'Brien is interviewed by Leah Cargin (PhD candidate, University of Oklahoma).

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Language Policy at an Abortion Clinic

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 4 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Ella van Hest (Ghent University, Belgium) about her ethnographic research related to language diversity at an abortion clinic in Belgium. The conversation focusses on a co-authored paper entitled Language policy at an abortion clinic published in Language Policy in 2023.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Sigrid Schönfelder, "'Gold Fever' and Women: Transformations in Lives, Health Care and Medicine in the 19th Century American West" (Transcript, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 3 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Throughout its history, the American West symbolized a place of hope and new beginnings, where anything was possible, especially for men. However, the history written until the 1970s and 1980s excluded women.

In 'Gold Fever' and Women: Transformations in Lives, Health Care and Medicine in the 19th Century American West (Transcript, 2023), Sigrid Schönfelder illustrates how the American West served as a catalytic gold mine for many transformations for women. It draws on the life narratives of three healthcare providers whose devotion within the social reform movements of the long nineteenth century contributed significantly to shaping healthcare policies. Their stories show how women contributed to place-making in the West and served as role models for other women to enter the field of medicine.

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Pandemics Perspectives 15: The Dynamic Nature of Science

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Michael Gordin, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton University, about the differences between science and pseudoscience and how the COVID-19 Pandemic showed that most people don't realize that science is highly dynamic. Gordin is the author of (among other books) of On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience (Oxford UP, 2021).

Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details.

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Holly Ashford, "Development and Women's Reproductive Health in Ghana, 1920-1982" (Routledge, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Between the 1920s and 1980s, the choices that Ghanaian women made regarding their reproductive health were defined by development policy and practice. Spanning the colonial and immediate postcolonial periods, Holly Ashford's book Development and Women's Reproductive Health in Ghana, 1920-1982 (Routledge, 2022) demonstrates that whilst the substance of development discourse shifted over time, principles of development continued to be used to impact and legitimise reproductive health policy and practices well after independence. The book explores Ghana’s pluralist health system, the introduction of maternal and child welfare, the dominance of the Red Cross in Ghana’s maternal and child health landscape, nationalist pronatalism and global population activism. In order to understand how global iterations of development and health policy impacted ordinary lives in Ghana, the author uses evidence from multiple ‘levels,’ including private papers, national archives and records of international and transnational organisations. Providing balanced archival perspectives, the book includes extensive oral history interviews carried out with both rural Ghanaian women and traditional birth attendants, as well as with midwives, doctors and family planning fieldworkers.

This book will have an important impact on a number of historical fields including Ghanaian history, global health history, global histories of population and family planning and histories of development. It will be of interest to researchers and students in the history of public health, development, Africa, Ghana and gender.

Dr. Nicole Bourbonnais is an Associate Professor of International History and Politics and Co-Director of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Her research explores reproductive politics and practice from a transnational historical perspective. More info here. Twitter: @iheid_history and @GC_IHEID

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Peter Murray Jones, "The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England" (Boydell & Brewer, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Friars are often overlooked in the picture of health care in late mediaeval England. Physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, barbers, midwives - these are the people we think of immediately as agents of healing; whilst we identify university teachers as authorities on medical writings. Yet from their first appearance in England in the 1220s to the dispersal of the friaries in the 1530s, four orders of friars were active as healers of every type. Their care extended beyond the circle of their own brethren: patients included royalty, nobles and bishops, and they also provided charitable aid and relief to the poor. They wrote about medicine too. Bartholomew the Englishman and Roger Bacon were arguably the most influential authors, alongside the Dominican Henry Daniel. Nor should we forget the anonymous Franciscan compilers of the Tabula medicine, a handbook of cures, which, amongst other items, contains case histories of friars practising medicine. Even after the Reformation, these texts continued to circulate and find new readers amongst practitioners and householders.

The Medicine of the Friars in Medieval England (Boydell & Brewer, 2024) by Peter Murray Jones restores friars to their rightful place in the history of English health care, exploring the complex, productive entanglement between care of the soul and healing of the body, in both theoretical and practical terms. Drawing upon the surprising wealth of evidence found in the surviving manuscripts, it brings to light individuals such as William Holme (c. 1400), and his patient the duke of York (d. 1402), who suffered from swollen legs. Holme also wrote about medicinal simples and gave instructions for dealing with eye and voice problems experienced by his brother Franciscans. Friars from the thirteenth century onwards wrote their medicine differently, reflecting their religious vocation as preachers and confessors.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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John Thomas Maier, "The Disabled Will: A Theory of Addiction" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

John T. Maier's The Disabled Will: A Theory of Addiction (Routledge Press, 2024) defends a comprehensive new vision of what addiction is and how people with addictions should be treated. The author argues that, in addition to physical and intellectual disabilities, there are volitional disabilities - disabilities of the will - and that addiction is best understood as a species of volitional disability. This theory serves to illuminate long-standing philosophical and psychological perplexities about addiction and addictive motivation. It articulates a normative framework within which to understand prohibition, harm reduction, and other strategies that aim to address addiction. The argument of this book is that these should ultimately be evaluated in terms of reasonable accommodations for addicted people and that the priority of addiction policy should be the provision of such accommodations. What makes this book distinctive is that it understands addiction as a fundamentally political problem, an understanding that is suggested by standard legal approaches to addiction, but which has not received a sustained defense in the previous philosophical or psychological literature. This text marks a significant advance in the theory of addiction, one which should reshape our understanding of addiction policy and its proper aims.

Jeff Adler is an ex-linguist and occasional contributor to New Books Network!

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Paula S. De Vos, "Compound Remedies: Galenic Pharmacy from the Ancient Mediterranean to New Spain" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Compound Remedies: Galenic Pharmacy from the Ancient Mediterranean to New Spain (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) by Dr. Paula S. De Vos examines the equipment, books, and remedies of colonial Mexico City’s Herrera pharmacy—natural substances with known healing powers that formed part of the basis for modern-day healing traditions and home remedies in Mexico. Dr. De Vos traces the evolution of the Galenic pharmaceutical tradition from its foundations in ancient Greece to the physician-philosophers of mediaeval Islamic empires and the Latin West and eventually through the Spanish Empire to Mexico, offering a global history of the transmission of these materials, knowledges, and techniques.

Her detailed inventory of the Herrera pharmacy reveals the many layers of this tradition and how it developed over centuries, providing new perspectives and insight into the development of Western science and medicine: its varied origins, its engagement with and inclusion of multiple knowledge traditions, the ways in which these traditions moved and circulated in relation to imperialism, and its long-term continuities and dramatic transformations. Dr. De Vos ultimately reveals the great significance of pharmacy, and of artisanal pursuits more generally, as a cornerstone of ancient, mediaeval, and early modern epistemologies and philosophies of nature.

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Judith Vitale et al., "Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan" (Brill, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In early modern Japan, upper status groups coveted pills and powders made of exotic foreign ingredients such as mummy and rhinoceros horn. By the early twentieth century, over-the-counter-patent medicines, and, more alarmingly, morphine, had become mass commodities, fueling debates over opiates in Japan's expanding imperial territories.

The fall of the empire and the occupation of Japan by the United States created conditions favorable for heroin use, followed, in time, by glue sniffing and psychedelic mushroom ingestion.

By illuminating the neglected history of drugs, Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan (Brill, 2023) highlights both the transnational embeddedness and national peculiarities of the "politics of consumption" in Japan.

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Alex V. Barnard, "Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Is involuntary psychiatric treatment the solution to the intertwined crises of untreated mental illness, homelessness, and addiction? In recent years, politicians and advocates have sought to expand the use of conservatorships, a legal tool used to force someone deemed “gravely disabled,” or unable to meet their needs for food, clothing, or shelter as a result of mental illness, to take medication and be placed in a locked facility. At the same time, civil liberties and disability rights groups have seized on cases like that of Britney Spears to argue that conservatorships are inherently abusive.

Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness (Columbia UP, 2023) is an incisive and compelling portrait of the functioning—and failings—of California’s conservatorship system. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with professionals, policy makers, families, and conservatees, Alex V. Barnard takes readers to the streets where police encounter homeless people in crisis, the locked wards where people receiving treatment are confined, and the courtrooms where judges decide on conservatorship petitions. As he shows, California’s state government has abdicated authority over this system, leaving the question of who receives compassionate care and who faces coercion dependent on the financial incentives of for-profit facilities, the constraints of underresourced clinicians, and the desperate struggles of families to obtain treatment for their loved ones.

This book offers a timely warning: reforms to expand conservatorship will lead to more coercion but little transformative care until government assumes accountability for ensuring the health and dignity of its most vulnerable citizens.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is in the areas of social construction of experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by employees of bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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Dasha Kiper, "Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain" (Random House, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

If you’ve ever worked with dementia patients before, you know how unique and bizarre the experience can be, and how little the stereotypes actually hold up to the experience. Even knowing about the diagnosis often does little to help us in caring for people, and many caregivers find themselves getting sucked into behavioral loops of their own. This is because your brain is not wired to deal with the altered form of reality that dementia patients inhabit. Evolution has not equipped us to deal with these dynamics.

Unpacking all this is our guest today, Dasha Kiper in her book Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain (Random House, 2023). Having both worked with dementia patients and run support groups for caregivers, she’s seen patterns play out over countless situations, and has mapped the cognitive landscape of people working to take care of those afflicted with the disease. In a series of engaging and provocative essays, she’s able to elucidate our limitations, the various neurological traps we are often tempted to fall into, hopefully offering caregivers some clarity on themselves and just how far from reality this work often takes them.

Dasha Kiper is the consulting clinical director of support groups at an Alzheimer’s organization, and holds an MA in clinical psychology from Columbia University.

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Carl Elliott, "The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No" (Norton, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No (Norton, 2024) is an intellectual inquiry into the moral struggle that whistleblowers face, and why it is not the kind of struggle that most people imagine.

Carl Elliott is a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who was trained in medicine as well as philosophy. For many years he fought for an external inquiry into a psychiatric research study at his own university in which an especially vulnerable patient lost his life. Elliott’s efforts alienated friends and colleagues. The university stonewalled him and denied wrongdoing until a state investigation finally vindicated his claims.

His experience frames the six stories in this book of medical research in which patients were deceived into participating in experimental programs they did not understand, many of which had astonishing and well-concealed mortality rates. Beginning with the public health worker who exposed the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and ending with the four physicians who in 2016 blew the whistle on lethal synthetic trachea transplants at the Karolinska Institute, Elliott tells the extraordinary stories of insiders who spoke out against such abuses, and often paid a terrible price for doing the right thing.

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Andrew McDowell, "Breathless: Tuberculosis, Inequality, and Care in Rural India" (Stanford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Each year in India more than two million people fall sick with tuberculosis (TB), an infectious, airborne, and potentially deadly lung disease. The country accounts for almost 30 percent of all TB cases worldwide and well above a third of global deaths from it. Because TB’s prevalence also indicates unfulfilled development promises, its control is an important issue of national concern, wrapped up in questions of postcolonial governance. Drawing on long-term ethnographic engagement with a village in North India and its TB epidemic, anthropologist Andrew McDowell tells the stories of socially marginalized Dalit (“ex-untouchable”) farming families afflicted by TB, and the nurses, doctors, quacks, mediums, and mystics who care for them. Each of the book’s chapters centers on a material or metaphorical substance - such as dust, clouds, and ghosts - to understand how breath and airborne illness entangle biological and social life in everyday acts of care for the self, for others, and for the environment.

From this raft of stories about the ways people make sense of and struggle with troubled breath, McDowell develops a philosophy and phenomenology of breathing that attends to medical systems, patient care, and health justice. He theorizes that breath - as an intersection between person and world - provides a unique perspective on public health and inequality. Breath is deeply intimate and personal, but also shared and distributed. Through it all, Breathless: Tuberculosis, Inequality, and Care in Rural India (Stanford UP, 2024) traces the multivalent relations that breath engenders between people, environments, social worlds, and microbes.

Andrew McDowell is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Tulane University. He has a Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology from Harvard University. His research interests focus on care, contagion, pharmaceuticals, diagnosis, and inequality in North and Western Indian social worlds entangled with tuberculosis. His work has appeared in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Ethos, and The Lancet among other venues.

Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Michele Goodwin, "Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood (Cambridge University Press, 2020) a brilliant but shocking account of the criminalization of all aspects of reproduction, pregnancy, abortion, birth, and motherhood in the United States. In her extensively researched monograph, Michele Goodwin recounts the horrific contemporary situation, which includes, for example, mothers giving birth shackled in leg irons, in solitary confinement, even in prison toilets, and in some states, women being coerced by the State into sterilization, in exchange for reduced sentences. She contextualises the modern day situation in America’s history of slavery and oppression, and also in relation to its place in the world. Goodwin shows how prosecutors abuse laws, and medical professionals are complicit in a system that disproportionally impacts the poor and women of color. However, Goodwin warns that these women are just the canaries in the coalmine. Not only is the United States the deadliest country in the developed world for pregnant women, but the severe lack of protections for reproductive rights and motherhood is compounding racial and indigent disparities.

Jane Richards is a doctoral candidate in Human Rights Law at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include disability, equality, criminal law and civil disobedience. You can find her on twitter @JaneRichardsHK where she avidly follows the Hong Kong’s protests and its politics.

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Claire Weeda, "Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250: Medicine, Power and Religion" (Boydell and Brewer, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 2 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Students in twelfth-century Paris held slanging matches, branding the English drunkards, the Germans madmen and the French as arrogant. On Crusade, army recruits from different ethnic backgrounds taunted each other’s military skills. Men producing ethnography in monasteries and at court drafted derogatory descriptions of peoples dwelling in territories under colonization, questioning their work ethic, social organization, religious devotion and humanness. Monks listed and ruminated on the alleged traits of Jews, Saracens, Greeks, Saxons and Britons and their acceptance or rejection of Christianity.

Ethnicity in Medieval Europe 950-1250, Medicine, Power and Religion (Boydell and Brewer, 2021), provides a radical new approach to representations of nationhood in medieval western Europe, the author argues that ethnic stereotypes were constructed and wielded rhetorically to justify property claims, flaunt military strength, and assert moral and cultural ascendance over others. The gendered images of ethnicity in circulation reflect a negotiation over self-representations of discipline, rationality and strength, juxtaposed with the alleged chaos and weakness of racialized others. Interpreting nationhood through a religious lens, monks and schoolmen explained it as scientifically informed by environmental medicine, and ancient theory that held that location and climate influenced the physical and mental traits of peoples. Drawing on lists of ethnic character traits, school textbooks, medical treatises, proverbs, poetry and chronicles, this book shows that ethnic stereotypes served as rhetorical tools of power, crafting relationships within communities and towards others.

Claire Weeda is a cultural historian at the Institute for History at Leiden University, Netherlands. Her main fields of interest include ethnic stereotyping, the history of the body, Greco-Arabic medicine, and organic politics in Europe, 1100-1500.

Evan Zarkadas is a graduate student of European history at the University of Maine focusing on Medieval Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, medieval identity, and ethnicity during the late Middle Ages.

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Tom Mueller, "How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death and Dollars in American Medicine" (Norton, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 29 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Dialysis is a medical miracle, a treatment that allows people with kidney failure to live when otherwise they would die. It also provides a captive customer for the dialysis industry, which values the steady revenues that come from critically required long-term care that is guaranteed by the government.

Tom Mueller's six year deep dive into the dialysis industry has yielded his latest book, How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death, and Dollars in American Medicine (W. W. Norton, 2023). It's both an historical account of this lifesaving treatment and an indictment of the industry that is dominated by two for-profit companies that control ~80% of the market.

There is a precarious balance between ethical care for patients and the prioritization of profits for the providers, a tension that has led to ethical, political, and legal debates about the rationing and exploitation of life-saving care and quality of life.

Dialysis services are desperately needed by patients who require the dangerous, uncomfortable, and exhausting treatments multiple times per week, and pay for it through complex insurance procedures.

Tom Mueller’s book includes a vivid account of CEOs who lead their companies with messianic zeal to drive revenues continually up while simultaneously reducing the cost of care. He introduces us to the doctors charged with reducing those costs even at the expense of high-quality care and negative health outcomes. And we meet the patients themselves, who have little choice but to put their lives and well-being at the mercy of this system.

How did a lifesaving medical breakthrough become a for-profit enterprise that threatens many of the people it’s meant to save? And who are the brave people -patients, doctors, and employees of the system who are willing to tell their stories despite tremendous pressure to remain silent? And why do we as Americans accept worse outcomes at higher costs than the rest of the world?

Tom Mueller's highly readable yet devastating book illustrates the dialysis industry as a microcosm of American medicine.

Mueller challenges us to find a solution for dialysis, an approach that could also provide the opportunity to begin fixing our country’s dysfunctional healthcare system and a fighting chance at restoring human health outcomes, rather than the extraction of profits, as its true purpose.

To contact Tom Mueller, visit www.tommueller.co

Suggested reading:

The Body's Keepers by Paul L. Kimmel, M.D.
The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No by Carl Elliott

Also mentioned:

How to Get Away with Merger by Thomas G. Wollman (NBER working paper, 2020)
"How Acquisitions Affect Firm Behavior and Performance" by Eliason, Heebsh et al. (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2020)

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Assaf Tamari, "God as Patient: The Medical Discourse of Lurianic Kabbalah" (Magnes Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In a broken world, in which even God Himself is in a state of deep crisis, what is required in order to mend the rupture? How can one heal God and His world? Moreover, what might allow our actions to be effective? These questions stand at the heart of the Lurianic Kabbalah, the apex of the Safedian intellectual and religious renaissance of the sixteenth century, and one of the constituting phenomena of Modern Jewish thought.

God as Patient: The Medical Discourse of Lurianic Kabbalah (Magnes Press, 2023) presents medical discourse – the knowledge, language, and practice of medicine – as a significant key to our understanding of the Lurianic search for a way to mend reality, and first and foremost the Godhead. The book reads together the Lurianic texts alongside the medical writings of R. Hayyim Vital, R. Isaac Luria's chief disciple, and a medical practitioner. Consequently, the book analyzes how medicine becomes the model for the Lurianic language of action. In its final part, the book shows how God becomes in this Kabbalah the ultimate patient of the Lurianic Kabbalist, who in turn becomes the private court physician of the King of Kings, and needs, like every physician, the proper modes of healing to accomplish his task.

Dr. Assaf Tamari studies Jewish intellectual history in the early modern eastern Mediterranean, focusing on the affinities between theology, science and political thought, especially in the literature of the Kabbalah. He is currently the deputy head of the Ben Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, and teaches at Tel Aviv University, Shalem College and Alma - a Home for Hebrew Culture.

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Lucy Barnhouse, "Hospitals in Communities of the Late Medieval Rhineland" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Lucy Barnhouse of Arkansas State University talks with Jana Byars about her new book, Hospitals in Communities of the Late Medieval Rhineland: Houses of God, Places for the Sick, out 2023 with Amsterdam University Press. From the mid-twelfth century onwards, the development of European hospitals was shaped by their claim to the legal status of religious institutions, with its attendant privileges and responsibilities. The questions of whom hospitals should serve and why they should do so have recurred -- and been invested with moral weight -- in successive centuries, though similarities between medieval and modern debates on the subject have often been overlooked. Hospitals' legal status as religious institutions could be tendentious and therefore had to be vigorously defended in order to protect hospitals' resources. This status could also, however, be invoked to impose limits on who could serve in and be served by hospitals. As recent scholarship demonstrates, disputes over whom hospitals should serve, and how, find parallels in other periods of history and current debates.

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Rustam Alexander, "Gay Lives and ‘Aversion Therapy’ in Brezhnev’s Russia, 1964–1982" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Rustam Alexander's Gay Lives and 'Aversion Therapy' in Brezhnev's Russia, 1964-1982 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) examines the autobiographies and diaries of Soviet homosexual men who underwent psychotherapy during the period from 1970 to 1980 under the guidance of Yan Goland, a psychiatrist-sexopathologist from Gorky. The examination of these unique and little-known documents contributes to our scant knowledge about the practices that many would call a Soviet proto-type of 'aversion therapy'. It also helps us understand the way homosexual people faced "queer dilemmas" of the self and how they sought to reconcile their queer desire with being Soviet.

Tatiana Klepikova is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Regensburg, where she leads a research group on queer literatures and cultures under socialism.

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Reiki and the Subtle Body, with Justin B. Stein

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with Justin B. Stein, a specialist in modern Japanese religion and the preeminent historian of Reiki. We discuss Justin’s new book, Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific (U Hawaii Press, 2023), about the transnational origins of Reiki, and also get into his perspective as a both a scholar and a Reiki practitioner. Along the way, we ask what Reiki has to do with Buddhism, what subtle energy feels like up close, and what kinds of extraordinary experiences might occur when you open up to energy of the universe.

Remember, if you want to hear from more experts on Buddhism, Asian medicine, and embodied spirituality, subscribe to Blue Beryl for monthly episodes. Please enjoy!

Resources mentioned in the episode:

C. Pierce Salguero, Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Sources (2020). Justin’s translation is Chapter 5, “Psychosomatic Buddhist Medicine at the Dawn of Modern Japan”
Justin B. Stein, Alternate Currents: Reiki’s Circulation in the Twentieth-Century North Pacific (2023).
BBP interview with Nathan Michon

Dr. Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. www.piercesalguero.com.

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The Contagion of Covid Policy: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on Freedom of Speech

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 3 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

After a storied career as a health policy expert, Stanford Medicine's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya's work became a political focal point during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he advocated against widespread lockdowns. He co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter signed by infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists which advocated for a focused protection approach to COVID-19, and the Twitter Files revealed that his Twitter account had been placed on Twitter's "black list." In this conversation, he sits down to discuss how the history of American infectious disease affected our COVID response, the mimetic nature of lockdown policy, the importance of freedom of speech to the scientific endeavor, and more.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a senior fellow at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, and the Director of the Stanford Center on the Demography of Health and Aging. He holds an MD and a PhD in Economics, both from Stanford University.

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any event does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Madison’s Notes.

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Christian Hansel, "Memory Makes the Brain: The Biological Machinery That Uses Experiences To Shape Individual Brains" (World Scientific, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

If you're interested in memory, you'll find a lot in Memory Makes the Brain: The Biological Machinery That Uses Experiences To Shape Individual Brains (World Scientific, 2021), from cellular processes to unique and interesting perspectives on autism.

Detailed descriptions of cellular processes involved in forming a memory.
Connecting those cellular processes to everyday experiences - like the memorable image of a butterfly seen during a hike decades ago.
Comparisons of plasticity in different brain areas, like cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum.
Comparisons of plasticity and learning in different phases of the human life.
Important milestones in the history of neuroscience. Like Wiesel and Hubel's work identifying the critical period for plasticity, or Huttenlocher's discovery of synaptic pruning.
Up-to-date science and open questions about autism, a wide range of phenomena that seems to be connected both to synaptic pruning and to the funtion of the cerebellum.
An outlook on non-synaptic plasticity.

Professor Christian Hansel starts both the book and the conversation with establishing a very broad definition of memory. Traditionally, a lot of research focused on the "observable outcome" of learning: acquiring new skills, changing behavior. Instead, he defines memory as any event that changes the brain.

The first 2 chapters introduce major discoveries from the 1960s and 1970s. David Hubel and Thorsten Wiesel examined the visual system of kittens. They recognized that it's much more adaptive in a "critical period", ca. 4-8 weeks after birth. Peter Huttenlocher discovered another fascinating phenomena during childhood: synaptic pruning. In the years 2-12, a lot of synapses (connections between neurons) disappear.

Chapter 3 describes the molecular machinery behind all these observations. We'll get to know the terms LTP (long-term potentiation) and LTD (long-term depression), which mean the long-term strengthening and weakening of synaptic connections respectively. We find a detailed description of these processes, incl. the enzymes, neurotransmitters and receptors contributing to them.

Chapter 4 continues examining these processes across the human life span. The (perhaps surprising) conclusion: The machinery for synaptic plasticity is quite similar in a small child an in an adult. What's different is the magnitude of these processes.

Autism is a central topic both in the book and in the Hansel Lab's work. Chapter 5 starts with describing the difficulties of a definition. ASD (autism spectrum disorder) is an umbrella term encompassing several symptoms and intensities. In the last years, it has turned out that low degree of synaptic pruning plays a significant role in multiple forms of autism. We'll see in the next years how the research about synaptic pruning and learning can be used for clinical purposes. Understanding the biological mechanism can also make it easier to relate to some peculiar-sounding symptoms. If we consider that an individual's brain contains an unusually high number of synapses, their reports about unusually intense perceptions suddenly become more understandable.

A thought-provoking chapter is number 6. It describes various experiments with mouse models to study autism-like symptoms. The chapter might also make you reflect about the merits and shortcomings of animal models generally.

The cerebellum was long considered to be the brain area for finetuning movements. Now, it's clear that its repertoire is much bigger. In the interview, Christian describes a hypothesis that the cerebellum has a capability of timing. This in turn makes it a crucial factor in several behaviors beyond sophisticated movements, including speech.

We know a lot about synaptic plasticity and its significance in learning. Chapter 8 tackles the big, open question, what else? Which other processes contribute to memory formation? It presents some hypotheses about intrinsic plasticity.

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Fumilayo Showers, "Migrants Who Care: West Africans Working and Building Lives in U.S. Health Care" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

As the U.S. population ages and as health care needs become more complex, demand for paid care workers in home and institutional settings has increased. This book draws attention to the reserve of immigrant labour that is called on to meet this need.

Migrants Who Care: West Africans Working and Building Lives in U.S. Health Care (Rutgers University Press, 2023) by Dr. Fumilayo Showers tells the little-known story of a group of English-speaking West African immigrants who have become central to the U.S. health and long-term care systems. With high human capital and middle-class pre-migration backgrounds, these immigrants - hailing from countries as diverse as Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, and Liberia - encounter blocked opportunities in the U.S. labour market. They then work in the United States, as home health aides, certified nursing assistants, qualified disability support professionals, and licensed practical and registered nurses.

This book reveals the global, political, social, and economic factors that have facilitated the entry of West African women and men into the health care labour force (home and institutional care for older adults and individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities; and skilled nursing). It highlights these immigrants’ role as labour brokers who tap into their local ethnic and immigrant communities to channel co-ethnics to meet this labour demand. It illustrates how West African care workers understand their work across various occupational settings and segments in the healthcare industry. This book reveals the transformative processes migrants undergo as they become produced, repackaged, and deployed as health care workers after migration.

Ultimately, this book tells the very real and human story of an immigrant group surmounting tremendous obstacles to carve out a labour market niche in health care, providing some of the most essential and intimate aspects of care labour to the most vulnerable members of society.

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Susan Partovi, "Renegade M.D.: A Doctor's Stories from the Streets" (Bookbaby, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Susan Partovi first experienced poverty medicine volunteering at a dump site in Tijuana during high school. There, she recognized the need for all people to have access to quality medical care. Over the years, she has worked in various facilities around Los Angeles County, incorporating her renegade method of going the extra mile for her patients. As Medical Director of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, she works to provide a safety net of care for the underserved skid row community and surrounding neighborhoods.

Recognized internationally as a leader in street medicine, Dr. Partovi started documenting her patients' stories so that others could hear their voices. By addressing the practical and moral considerations when treating each patient, Dr. Partovi developed her philosophies about what it means to be a "good doctor." Along the way, she began to understand how her personal ethics evolved--from a challenging childhood and complicated relationships with her parents, through professional hurdles--often, she had to push against a system that doesn't always put the patient first.

Renegade M.D.: A Doctor's Stories from the Streets (Bookbaby, 2024) is a powerful and inspiring memoir by Dr. Susan Partovi, a renowned street doctor who has dedicated her life to treating the impoverished around the world and people experiencing homelessness on LA's skid row. Through her stories, Dr. Partovi takes us on a journey to the heart of the challenges faced by those living on the streets, and shines a light on her unwavering commitment to advocate for social justice and to provide compassionate care to some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

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Jessica Cox, "Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain" (The History Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Covering a fascinating period of population growth, high infant mortality and deep social inequality, rapid medical advances and pseudoscientific quackery, Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain (The History Press, 2023) by Dr. Jessica Cox is the untold history of pregnancy and childbirth in Victorian Britain.

During the nineteenth century, having children was frequently viewed as a woman’s central function and destiny – and yet the pregnant and postnatal body, as well as the birthing room, are almost entirely absent from the public conversation and written histories of the period. Confinement corrects this omission by exploring stories of pregnancy and motherhood across this period. Drawing on a range of contemporary sources, Dr. Cox charts the maternal experiences of women, examining fertility, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, maternal mortality, unwanted pregnancies, infant loss, breastfeeding, and postnatal bodies and minds.

From the royal family to inhabitants of the workhouse, this absorbing history reveals what motherhood was truly like for the women of nineteenth-century Britain.

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Coreen McGuire, "Measuring Difference, Numbering Normal: Setting the Standards for Disability in the Interwar Period" (Manchester UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Measurements, and their manipulation, have been underestimated as crucial historical forces motivating and guiding the way we think about disability.

Using measurement technology as a lens, and examining in particular the measurement of hearing and breathing, Coreen McGuire's book Measuring Difference, Numbering Normal: Setting the Standards for Disability in the Interwar Period (Manchester UP, 2020) draws together several existing discussions on disability, phenomenology, healthcare, medical practice, big data, embodiment, and emerging medical and scientific technologies around the turn of the twentieth century. These are popular topics of scholarly attention but have not, until now, been considered as interconnected topics within a single book. As such, this work connects several important, and usually separate academic subject areas and historical specialisms. The standards embedded in instrumentation created strict, but, ultimately arbitrary thresholds of what is categorised as normal and abnormal. Considering these standards from a long historical perspective reveals how these dividing lines shifted when pushed.

This book is available open access here.

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Bobby Cherayil, "The Logic of Immunity: Deciphering an Enigma" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Most of us appreciate the importance of the immune system yet have very little knowledge about how it actually works. If you fall into this camp and are curious to learn more about this intricate system, Bobby Cherayil's book is an excellent resource.

The Logic of Immunity: Deciphering an Enigma was published in January 2024 by John Hopkins University Press. It gives a great overview of this complex system, including several findings from the recent years. It also points out the many areas of ongoing research and open questions.

The book introduces the actors of the system and the many interactions between them:

the various types of immune cells,
the pathogens and pathogen-associated patterns they recognize,
the cascade of events that ultimately leads to an immune response.

The opening chapter explains (and visualizes!) where these cells are located. It explains how they contribute to the immune response, and how we broadly categorize them into innate and adaptive immunity.

Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the innate immune system. We get to know the general concepts, like molecular patterns and receptors recognizing them. They describe in detail some well-studied mechanisms, like the LPS-TLR4 interaction. And we also learn the story of their research spanning multiple years and multiple discoveries building upon each other.

Chapters 4-6 delve into the mechanisms of adaptive immunity and their main cell types: B- and T-lymphocytes. Have you ever wondered how the immune system is able to "remember" earlier infections? You'll find here both an overview of "immune memory" and a detailed description how B and T cell proliferate and specialize.

Chapter 7 shows how these immune reactions are sometimes provoked by harmless substances - that's what we call allergy. Or even by human cells - that's what we call autoimmune diseases.

The next chapters put the immune system into a bigger context. They discuss the variability of immunity across different individuals and the many reasons behind it. Genes, environment, past infections, life style. A particularly fascinating part of "the human ecosystem" is the microbiota. Its importance has been recognized only in the last two decades. Chapter 8 introduces really well this emerging field of study.

Chapter 11 is dedicated to an immunology topic that affects all of us: vaccines. Building upon the knowledge from previous chapters, it explains how vaccines work.

Throughout the book, we learn a lot both about the exciting developments and the open questions in the field of immunology. Chapter 12 gives a summary of some trends of the last decades and an outlook for the next big puzzles to tackle.

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Lawson R. Wulsin, "Toxic Stress: How Stress Is Making Us Ill and What We Can Do About It" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Our stress response system is magnificent - it operates beneath our awareness, like an orchestra of organs playing a hidden symphony. When we are healthy, the orchestra plays effortlessly, but what happens when our bodies face chronic stress, and the music slips out of tune?

The alarming rise of stress-related conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, and depression, show the price we're paying for our high-pressure living, while global warming, pandemics and technology have brought new kinds of stress into all our lives. But what can we do about it?

Explore the fascinating mysteries of our hidden stress response system with Dr. Wulsin, who uses his decades of experience to show how toxic stress impacts our bodies. In Toxic Stress: How Stress Is Making Us Ill and What We Can Do About It (Cambridge UP, 2024), Wulsin gives us the expert advice and tools needed to prevent toxic stress from taking over. Chapter by chapter, learn to help your body and mind recover from toxic stress.

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Bishnupriya Ghosh, "The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media" (Duke UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media (Duke UP. 2023), Bishnupriya Ghosh argues that media are central to understanding emergent relations between viruses, humans, and nonhuman life. Writing in the shadow of the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 global pandemics, Ghosh theorizes "epidemic media" to show how epidemics are mediated in images, numbers, and movements through the processes of reading test results and tracking infection and mortality rates. Scientific, artistic, and activist epidemic media that make multispecies relations sensible and manageable eschew anthropocentric survival strategies and instead recast global public health crises as biological, social, and ecological catastrophes, pushing us toward a multispecies politics of health. Ghosh trains her analytic gaze on these mediations as expressed in the collection and analysis of blood samples as a form of viral media; the geospatialization of data that track viral hosts like wild primates; and the use of multisensory images to trace fluctuations in viral mutations. Studying how epidemic media inscribe, store, and transmit multispecies relations attunes us to the anthropogenic drivers of pathogenicity like deforestation or illegal wildlife trading and the vulnerabilities accruing from diseases that arise from socioeconomic inequities and biopolitical neglect.

Professor Bishnupriya Ghosh teaches at the Department of English and Global Studies at UC Santa Barbara. She studies global media cultures, environmental media and critical health studies. Her early research includes two monographs When Borne Across: Literary Cosmopolitics in the Contemporary Indian Novel and Global Icons: Apertures to the Popular, while the co-edited volume exemplifies her current research, The Routledge Companion to Media and Risk.

Priyam Sinha is a doctoral candidate in the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. She has interdisciplinary academic interests that lie at the intersection of film studies, disability studies, production cultures, affect studies, anthropology of the body, creative media industries and cultural studies. She can be reached here.

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Tana Jean Welch, "Advancing Medical Posthumanism Through Twenty-First Century American Poetry" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Advancing Medical Posthumanism Through Twenty-First Century American Poetry (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024) places contemporary poetics in dialogue with posthumanism and biomedicine in order to create a framework for advancing a posthuman-affirmative ethics within the culture of medical practice. This book makes a case for a posthumanist understanding of the body—one that sees health and illness not as properties possessed by individual bodies, but as processes that connect bodies to their social and natural environment, shaping their capacity to act, think, and feel. Tana Jean Welch demonstrates how contemporary American poetry is specifically poised to develop a pathway toward a posthuman intervention in biomedicine, the field of medical humanities, medical discourse, and the value systems that guide U.S. healthcare in general.

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Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice" (FSG, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Raj Patel, the renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with the physician Rupa Marya to offer a radical new cure: the deep medicine of decolonization. Decolonizing heals what has been divided, reestablishing our relationships with the Earth and one another. Combining the latest scientific research and scholarship on globalization with the stories of Marya's work with patients in marginalized communities, activist passion, and the wisdom of Indigenous groups, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice (FSG, 2021) points the way toward a deep medicine that has the potential to heal not only our bodies, but the world. “This book advances a new level of diagnosis that incorporates history and lines of power into our understanding of the root causes of health disparities and the rise of inflammatory disease in industrialized places, offering compelling treatment options for what is ailing people and the planet”.

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Greg Wrenn, "Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis" (Regalo Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A dazzling, evidence-based account of one man’s quest to heal from complex PTSD by turning to endangered coral reefs and psychedelic plants after traditional therapies failed—and his awakening to the need for us to heal the planet as well. Professor Greg Wrenn likes to tell his nature-writing students, “The ecological is personal, and the personal is ecological.” What he’s never told them is how he’s lived out those correspondences to heal from childhood abuse at the hands of his mother.

Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis (Regalo Press, 2024) is a deeply researched account of Greg turning to coral reefs and a psychedelic rainforest tea called ayahuasca to heal from complex PTSD—a disorder of trust, which makes the very act of bonding with someone else panic-inducing. From the tide pools in Florida where he grew up, to Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago and the Amazon rainforest, Greg takes his readers on a journey across the globe. In his search for healing from personal and ecological trauma, he dives into both the ocean and the psyche—and finds they have a lot in common. Mothership is one man’s audacious search for healing when talk therapy and pharmaceuticals did little to help. Written with prophetic urgency, Mothership ultimately asks if doses of nature will be enough to save us before it’s too late—and what well-being means in a fracturing society on a dying planet.

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Neil Gong, "Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Sociologist Neil M. Gong explains why mental health treatment in Los Angeles rarely succeeds, for the rich, the poor, and everyone in between.

In 2022, Los Angeles became the US county with the largest population of unhoused people, drawing a stark contrast with the wealth on display in its opulent neighborhoods. In Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles (U Chicago Press, 2024), sociologist Neil M. Gong traces the divide between the haves and have-nots in the psychiatric treatment systems that shape the life trajectories of people living with serious mental illness. In the decades since the United States closed its mental hospitals in favor of non-institutional treatment, two drastically different forms of community psychiatric services have developed: public safety-net clinics focused on keeping patients housed and out of jail, and elite private care trying to push clients toward respectable futures.

In Downtown Los Angeles, many people in psychiatric crisis only receive help after experiencing homelessness or arrests. Public providers engage in guerrilla social work to secure them housing and safety, but these programs are rarely able to deliver true rehabilitation for psychological distress and addiction. Patients are free to refuse treatment or use illegal drugs—so long as they do so away from public view.

Across town in West LA or Malibu, wealthy people diagnosed with serious mental illness attend luxurious treatment centers. Programs may offer yoga and organic meals alongside personalized therapeutic treatments, but patients can feel trapped, as their families pay exorbitantly to surveil and “fix” them. Meanwhile, middle-class families—stymied by private insurers, unable to afford elite providers, and yet not poor enough to qualify for social services—struggle to find care at all.

Gong’s findings raise uncomfortable questions about urban policy, family dynamics, and what it means to respect individual freedom. His comparative approach reminds us that every “sidewalk psychotic” is also a beloved relative and that the kinds of policies we support likely depend on whether we see those with mental illness as a public social problem or as somebody’s kin. At a time when many voters merely want streets cleared of “problem people,” Gong’s book helps us imagine a fundamentally different psychiatric system—one that will meet the needs of patients, families, and society at large.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is in the areas of social construction of experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by employees of bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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Maggie Hennefeld, "Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema" (Columbia UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Can you really die from laughing too hard? Between 1870 and 1920, hundreds of women suffered such a fate—or so a slew of sensationalist obituaries would have us believe. How could laughter be fatal, and what do these reports of women’s risible deaths tell us about the politics of female joy?

In Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema (Columbia University Press, 2024), Dr. Maggie Hennefeld reveals the forgotten histories of “hysterical laughter,” exploring how women’s amusement has been theorised and demonised, suppressed and exploited. In nineteenth-century medicine and culture, hysteria was an ailment that afflicted unruly women on the cusp of emotional or nervous breakdown. Cinema, Hennefeld argues, made it possible for women to laugh outrageously as never before, with irreversible social and political consequences. As female enjoyment became a surefire promise of profitability, alarmist tales of women laughing themselves to death epitomised the tension between subversive pleasure and its violent repression.

Dr. Hennefeld traces the social politics of women’s laughter from the heyday of nineteenth-century sentimentalism to the collective euphoria of early film spectatorship, traversing contagious dancing outbreaks, hysteria photography, madwomen’s cackling, cinematic close-ups, and screenings of slapstick movies in mental asylums. Placing little-known silent films and an archive of remarkable, often unusual texts in conversation with affect theory, comedy studies, and feminist film theory, this book makes a timely case for the power of hysterical laughter to change the world.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Reducing Barriers to Language Assistance in Hospital

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Brynn Quick speaks with Erin Mulpur about how hospitals can better support patients from linguistic minority backgrounds. The conversation addresses the barriers to both communication and healthcare faced by linguistic minority patients. Drawing on Erin’s 2021 paper “Reducing Barriers to Language Assistance During a Pandemic," the focus is on Houston Methodist Hospital’s innovative use of language assistance technologies during the first waves of Covid-19.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Beth Linker, "Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian possessed a century's worth of nude "posture" photos of college students. In this riveting history, Beth Linker tells why these photos were only a small part of the incredible story of twentieth-century America's largely forgotten posture panic--a decades-long episode in which it was widely accepted as scientific fact that Americans were suffering from an epidemic of bad posture, with potentially catastrophic health consequences. Tracing the rise and fall of this socially manufactured epidemic, Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America (Princeton UP, 2024) also tells how this period continues to feed today's widespread anxieties about posture.

In the early twentieth century, the eugenics movement and fears of disability gave slouching a new scientific relevance. Bad posture came to be seen as an individual health threat, an affront to conventional race hierarchies, and a sign of American decline. What followed were massive efforts to measure, track, and prevent slouching and, later, back pain--campaigns that reached schools, workplaces, and beyond, from the creation of the American Posture League to posture pageants. The popularity of posture-enhancing products, such as girdles and lumbar supports, exploded, as did new fitness programs focused on postural muscles, such as Pilates and modern yoga. By 1970, student protests largely brought an end to school posture exams and photos, but many efforts to fight bad posture continued, despite a lack of scientific evidence.

A compelling history that mixes seriousness and humor, Slouch is a unique and provocative account of the unexpected origins of our largely unquestioned ideas about bad posture.

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Colin Elliott, "Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the middle of the second century AD, Rome was at its prosperous and powerful apex. The emperor Marcus Aurelius reigned over a vast territory that stretched from Britain to Egypt. The Roman-made peace, or Pax Romana, seemed to be permanent. Then, apparently out of nowhere, a sudden sickness struck the legions and laid waste to cities, including Rome itself. This fast-spreading disease, now known as the Antonine plague, may have been history’s first pandemic. Soon after its arrival, the Empire began its downward trajectory toward decline and fall. In Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World (Princeton University Press, 2024), historian Dr. Colin Elliott offers a comprehensive, wide-ranging account of this pivotal moment in Roman history.

Did a single disease—its origins and diagnosis still a mystery—bring Rome to its knees? Carefully examining all the available evidence, Dr. Elliott shows that Rome’s problems were more insidious. Years before the pandemic, the thin veneer of Roman peace and prosperity had begun to crack: the economy was sluggish, the military found itself bogged down in the Balkans and the Middle East, food insecurity led to riots and mass migration, and persecution of Christians intensified. The pandemic exposed the crumbling foundations of a doomed Empire. Arguing that the disease was both cause and effect of Rome’s fall, Dr. Elliott describes the plague’s “preexisting conditions” (Rome’s multiple economic, social, and environmental susceptibilities); recounts the history of the outbreak itself through the experiences of physician, victim, and political operator; and explores postpandemic crises. The pandemic’s most transformative power, Dr. Elliott suggests, may have been its lingering presence as a threat both real and perceived.

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Travis Rieder, "Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices" (Dutton, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In a world of often confusing and terrifying global problems, how should we make choices in our everyday lives? Does anything on the individual level really make a difference? In Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices (Dutton, 2024), Travis Rieder tackles the moral philosophy puzzles that bedevil us. He explores vital ethical concepts from history and today and offers new ways to think about the “right” thing to do when the challenges we face are larger and more complex than ever before.

Alongside a lively tour of traditional moral reasoning from thinkers like Plato, Mill, and Kant, Rieder posits new questions and exercises about the unique conundrums we now face, issues that can seem to transcend old-fashioned philosophical ideals. Should you drink water from a plastic bottle or not? Drive an electric car? When you learn about the horrors of factory farming, should you stop eating meat or other animal products? Do small commitments matter, or are we being manipulated into acting certain ways by corporations and media? These kinds of puzzles, Rieder explains, are everywhere now. And the tools most of us unthinkingly rely on to “do the right thing” are no longer enough. Principles like “do no harm” and “respect others” don’t provide guidance in cases where our individual actions don’t, by themselves, have any effect on others at all. We need new principles, with new justifications, in order to navigate this new world.

In the face of consequential and complex crises, Rieder shares exactly how we can live a morally decent life. It’s time to build our own catastrophe ethics.

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Kristine M. McCusker, "Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900-1955" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Kristine M. McCusker's book Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900-1955 (U Illinois Press, 2023) takes, as its focus, the combined history of death and health in the American South between 1900 and 1955. The text is ambitious in scope, and weaves together multiple oral histories to create a nuanced and engaging narrative. McCusker charts the ways in which low life expectancy in the South was regarded as problematic by commercial life insurance firms, concerned that their customers were paying insufficient dues before mortality provoked funeral expenditures, and the various Churches seeking to save souls before an untimely demise robbed them of the opportunity. Both agencies were heavily invested in health care. McCusker expertly weaves further threads into this complex narrative: Southern funeral practices, the theological basis for strong belief in family re-union at death, and racial divides that created exclusions and opportunities for the Black Americans to express their own deathways, increasingly supported through commercial enterprise. Two World Wars test and refine common frameworks for organizing the dead, and McCusker underlines the importance, amongst other things, of etiquette guidance on the correct ways to grieve and to express condolence. This is a remarkably rich text that will intrigue a more general readership and prove essential to death scholars in the US and further afield.

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Jennifer Evans, "Men's Sexual Health in Early Modern England" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 2 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How did men cope with sexual health issues in early modern England? In Men's Sexual Health in Early Modern England (Amsterdam University Press, 2023), Dr. Jennifer Evans presents a vivid history that investigates how sexual, reproductive, and genitourinary conditions were understood between 1580 and 1740. Drawing on medical sources and personal testimonies, it reveals how men responded to bouts of ill health and their relationships with the medical practitioners tasked with curing them. In doing so, this study restores men’s health to medical histories of reproduction, demonstrating how men’s sexual self-identity was tied to their health.

Charting genitourinary conditions across the life cycle, the book illustrates how fertility and potency were key to medical understandings of men’s health. Men utilised networks of care to help them with ostensibly embarrassing and shameful conditions like hernias, venereal disease, bladder stones, and testicular injuries. The book thus offers a historical voice to modern calls for men to be alert to, and open about, their own bodily health.

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Judith Pearson, "Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker" (Mayo Clinic Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Mary Woodard Lasker had a singular goal: saving lives by increasing medical research. Together with her husband, advertising genius Albert, they created the Lasker Foundation, bestowing the Lasker Awards. Known as the "American Nobels," these became the most prestigious research awards in America. The Laskers' next step was transforming the sleepy and ineffectual American Society for the Control of Cancer, reinventing it as the American Cancer Society in 1944.

But the real increase in medical research funding occurred when Mary discovered a revolutionary source: the federal government. "I'm just a catalytic agent," she would insist, while she tirelessly lobbied Congress and presidents alike. She played a major role in expanding the National Institutes of Health from a single entity to the largest research facility in the world. A feminist who used her femininity wisely, Mary's ultimate victory was bringing together two political adversaries to help launch the original cancer moonshot: the 1971 National Cancer Act.

Judith Pearson's biography Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker (Mayo Clinic Press, 2023) paints the portrait of a woman who was savvy, steely, and deliberate. Mary Lasker courageously positioned herself at the crossroads of politics, science, and medicine. At a time when women in research laboratories and the halls of Congress were anomalies, she smashed stereotypes in the fashion of Jeannette Rankin, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Shirley Chisholm. As eloquently described in this absorbing history, the country's march to conquer humanity's most feared maladies was well-fueled by its fearless and feisty crusader, Mary Lasker.

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Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, "Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam" (Duke UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Through a creative focus on skin, in Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam (Duke UP, 2021), Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu examines the ongoing influence of the Vietnam War on contemporary ideas about race and beauty. Framing skin as the site around which these ideas have been formed, Tu foregrounds the histories of militarism in the production of US biomedical knowledge and commercial cosmetics. She uncovers the efforts of wartime scientists in the US Military Dermatology Research Program to alleviate the environmental and chemical risks to soldiers' skin. These dermatologists sought relief for white soldiers while denying that African American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians were also vulnerable to harm. Their experiments led to the development of pharmaceutical cosmetics, now used by women in Ho Chi Minh City to tend to their skin, and to grapple with the damage caused by the war's lingering toxicity.

In showing how the US military laid the foundations for contemporary Vietnamese consumption of cosmetics and practices of beauty, Tu shows how the intersecting histories of militarism, biomedicine, race, and aesthetics become materially and metaphorically visible on skin.

Yadong Li is a PhD student in socio-cultural anthropology at Tulane University. He is interested in the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. If you are interested in any of these topics, feel free to contact him by email: yli88@tulane.edu / lydooooong@gmail.com.

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Daniel Skinner et al., "The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

An enduring paradox of urban public health is that many communities around hospitals are economically distressed and, counterintuitively, medically underserved. In The City and the Hospital two sociologists, Jonathan R. Wynn and Berkeley Franz, and a political scientist, Daniel Skinner, track the multiple causes of this problem and offer policy solutions.

Focusing on three urban hospitals—Connecticut’s Hartford Hospital, the flagship of the Hartford Healthcare system; the Cleveland Clinic, which coordinates with other providers for routine care while its main campus provides specialty care; and the University of Colorado Hospital, a rare example of an urban institution that relocated to a new community—the authors analyze the complicated relationship between a hospital and its neighborhoods. On the one hand, hospitals anchor the communities that surround them, often staying in a neighborhood for decades. Hospitals also craft strategies to engage with the surrounding community, many of those focused on buying locally and hiring staff from their surrounding area. On the other hand, hospitals will often only provide care to the neighboring community through emergency departments, reserving advanced medical care and long-term treatment for those who can pay a premium for it. In addition, the authors show, hospitals frequently buy neighborhood real estate and advocate for development programs that drive gentrification and displacement.

To understand how urban healthcare institutions work with their communities, the authors address power, history, race, and urbanity as much as the workings of the medical industry. These varied initiatives and effects mean that understanding urban hospitals requires seeing them in a new light—not only as medical centers but as complicated urban forces.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is about the construction of identity and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by bouncers at bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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Alison M. Downham Moore, "The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing (Oxford University Press, 2022), Alison Downham Moore discusses her contribution to the history of women's ageing. Doctors writing about menopause in France vastly outnumbered those in other cultures throughout the entire nineteenth century. The concept of menopause was invented by French male medical students in the aftermath of the French Revolution, becoming an important pedagogic topic and a common theme of doctors' professional identities in postrevolutionary biomedicine. Older women were identified as an important patient cohort for the expanding medicalisation of French society and were advised to entrust themselves to the hygienic care of doctors in managing the whole era of life from around and after the final cessation of menses. However, menopause owed much of its conceptual weft to earlier themes of women as the sicker sex, of vitalist crisis, of the vapours, and of astrological climacteric years.

This is the first comprehensive study of the origins of the medical concept of menopause, richly contextualising its role in nineteenth-century French medicine and revealing the complex threads of meaning that informed its invention. It tells a complex story of how women's ageing featured in the demographic revolution in modern science, in the denigration of folk medicine, in the unique French field of hygiène, and in the fixation on women in the emergence of modern psychiatry. It reveals the nineteenth-century French origins of the still-current medical and alternative-health approaches to women's ageing as something to be managed through gynaecological surgery, hormonal replacement, and lifestyle intervention.

Jana Byars is an independent scholar located in Amsterdam.

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Brian H. Williams, "The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal" (Broadleaf Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Trauma surgeon and professor Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all: gunshot wounds, stabbings, and traumatic brain injuries. In The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal (Broadleaf Books, 2023), Williams ushers us into the trauma bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass.

As a Harvard-trained physician, Williams learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow the rage when patients told him to take out the trash. Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, Williams tried to save the lives of police officers shot in Dallas in the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since 9/11. Thrust into the spotlight in a nation that loves feel-good stories about heroism more than hard truths about racism, Williams came to rethink everything he thought he knew about medicine, injustice, and what true healing looks like.

Now, in raw and intimate detail, Williams narrates not only the events of that night in 2016, but the grief and anger of a Black doctor on the front lines of trauma care. Working in the physician-writer tradition of Atul Gawande and Damon Tweedy, Williams diagnoses the roots of the violence that plagues us. He draws a through line between white supremacy, gun violence, and the bodies he tries to revive, and he trains his surgeon's gaze on the structural ills that manifest themselves in the bodies of his patients. What if racism is a feature of our healthcare system, not a bug? What if profiting from racial inequality is exactly what it was designed to do?

Black and brown bodies will continue to be wracked by all types of violence, Williams argues, until something changes. Until we transform policy and law with compassion and care, the bodies will keep coming.

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Buddhist Medicine in Contemporary Times (with Pierce Salguero)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Dr Pierce Salguero is interviewed by James Bae on the Buddhist Medicine & Yoga Podcast. In this extensive and in-depth conversation, we talk about differentiating religion from medicine, what Buddhist medicine can teach contemporary clinicians, current trends in the field of Buddhist studies, and hybridity versus tradition. We also explore Buddhist medicine in America, different kinds of Buddhist healers in the US, and how Buddhist medicine circulates in the contemporary era. Along the way, we dig into the promise of “metadisciplinary” collaborations, and what it means to engage in “pedagogy of the soul.” This episode combines two interviews, abridged and edited together.

Enjoy, and please subscribe so that you do not miss any episodes in the future!

Resources mentioned in the episode:

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Alka Vaid Menon, "Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Cosmetic surgery was once associated with a one-size-fits-all approach, modifying patients to conform to a single standard of beauty. As this surgery has become more accessible worldwide, changing beauty trends have led to a proliferation of beauty standards for members of different racial groups.

In Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards (University of California Press, 2023) Dr. Alka V. Menon enters the world of cosmetic surgeons, journeying from a sprawling convention centre in Kyoto to boutique clinics in the multicultural countries of the United States and Malaysia. She shows how surgeons generate and apply knowledge using racial categories and how this process is affected by transnational clinical and economic exchanges. Surgeons not only measure and organise but also elaborate upon racial differences in a globalised field of medicine. Focusing on the role of cosmetic surgeons as gatekeepers and producers of desired appearances, Refashioning Race argues that cosmetic surgeons literally reshape race—both on patients' bodies and at the broader level of culture.

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Elinor Cleghorn, "Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World" (Dutton, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Medicine carries the burden of its own troubling history. Over centuries, women’s bodies have been demonised and demeaned until we feared them, felt ashamed of them, were humiliated by them. But as doctors, researchers, campaigners and most of all as patients, women have continuously challenged medical orthodoxy. Medicine’s history has always been, and is still being, rewritten by women’s resistance, strength and incredible courage.

In this ground-breaking history Dr. Elinor Cleghorn unpacks the roots of the perpetual misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women’s bodies, illness and pain. From the ‘wandering womb’ of ancient Greece to today’s shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation and menopause, Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World (Dutton, 2021) is the revolutionary story of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical misogyny. Drawing on Elinor’s own experience as an unwell woman, this is a powerful and timely exposé of the medical world and woman’s place within it.

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Sandro Galea, "Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A provocative chronicle of how US public health has strayed from its liberal roots.

The Covid-19 response was a crucible of politics and public health—a volatile combination that produced predictably bad results. As scientific expertise became entangled with political motivations, the public-health establishment found itself mired in political encampment.

It was, as Sandro Galea argues, a crisis of liberalism: a retreat from the principles of free speech, open debate, and the pursuit of knowledge through reasoned inquiry that should inform the work of public health.

Across fifty essays, Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time (U Chicago Press, 2023) chronicles how public health became enmeshed in the insidious social trends that accelerated under Covid-19. Galea challenges this intellectual drift towards intolerance and absolutism while showing how similar regressions from reason undermined social progress during earlier eras. Within Reason builds an incisive case for a return to critical, open inquiry as a guiding principle for the future public health we want—and a future we must work to protect.

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Camillo Leonardi, "Speculum Lapidum: A Renaissance Treatise on the Healing Properties of Gemstones" (Penn State UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

First published in Venice in 1502, Camillo Leonardi’s Speculum Lapidum is an encyclopedic summary of all classical and medieval sources of lithotherapy. Today Jana Byars talks to Liliana Leopardi about her new translation, Speculum Lapidum: A Renaissance Treatise on the Healing Properties of Gemstones (Penn State University Press, 2023). In early modern Europe precious and semiprecious stones were valued not only for their beauty and rarity but also for their medical and magical properties. Lorenzo de’ Medici, Philip II of Spain, and Popes Leo X and Clement VII were all treated with expensive potions incorporating ground gems such as rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. Medical and magical/astrological lapidaries, texts describing the stones’ occult and medical qualities as well as their abilities to ward off demons and incantations, were essential resources for their use.

In describing the natural, manifest, and occult properties of precious and semiprecious stones as well as their graven images and applications, the Speculum Lapidum provides tremendous insight into the role that medical astrology and astral magic played in the life of an Italian court in the early modern period. Liliana Leopardi’s English translation, complete with critical apparatuses, gives unprecedented access to this key text within the magical lapidary genre.

A vital addition to the existing canon of lapidaria in translation, Leopardi’s work will be of special importance for students and scholars of the history of magic, medicine, religion, and Renaissance humanism, and it will fascinate anyone interested in the occult properties of precious and semiprecious stones.

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Patricio Simonetto, "A Body of One's Own: A Trans History of Argentina" (U Texas Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

As a trans history of Argentina, a country that banned medically assisted gender affirmation practices and punished trans lives, A Body of One’s Own: A Trans History of Argentina (University of Texas Press, 2024) places the histories of trans bodies at the core of modern Argentinian history. Dr. Patricio Simonetto documents the lives of people who crossed the boundaries of gender from the early twentieth century to the present. Based on extensive archival research in public and community-based archives, this book explores the mainstream medical and media portrayals of trans or travesti people, the state policing of gender embodiment, the experiences of those transgressing the boundaries of gender, and the development of homemade technologies from prosthetics to the self-injection of silicone.

A Body of One's Own explores how trans activists' challenges to the exclusionary effects of Argentina’s legal, cultural, social, and political cisgender order led to the passage of the Gender Identity Law in 2012. Analyzing the decisive yet overlooked impact of gender transformation in the formation of the nation-state, gender-belonging, and citizenship, this book ultimately shows that supposedly abstract struggles to define the shifting notions of "sex," citizenship, and nationhood are embodied material experiences.

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Sunita Puri, "That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour" (Penguin, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Sunita Puri is a writer, a palliative medicine physician, and an associate professor at the UMass Chan Medical School. In her memoir, That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour (Penguin, 2020), she explores her journey of helping patients and families redefine what it means to live and die well in the face of serious illness. In her article in Tricycle’s Winter 2023 issue, “A Gift,” she explores how she has learned to navigate love and loss through the lens of impermanence.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Puri to discuss the importance of unlearning our assumptions around death, how language can shape people’s experience of illness, her journey of learning to regard death with reverence instead of fear, and how working with dying patients influences how she lives her daily life.

Life As It Is is a monthly podcast featuring prominent voices from within and beyond the Buddhist fold. Listen to more episodes here.

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Jennifer Thomson, "The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health" (UNC Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The first wealth is health, according to Emerson. Among health’s riches is its political potential. Few know this better than environmentalists. In her debut book, The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health (UNC Press, 2019), historian Jennifer Thomson revisits canonical figures and events from the environmental movement in the United States and finds everywhere talk of health. At its best, viewing the environment through the lens of health encouraged decentralized organizing and a sense of collective responsibility. At its worst it supported technocracy and uninspired paeans to green consumerism. With shrewd analysis, Thomson gives the movement its own check-up as she reassess the careers and political imaginations of many of the its luminaries, including David Brower, Wendell Berry, Dave Foreman, and Bill McKibben. Dispensing with the habit of thinking of environmentalism as responding only and ever to itself, Thomson sets its history within the larger context of American political development. So the book is full of unexpected historical crossovers, such as Love Canal residents responding to the Mariel boatlife or the OPEC embargo-era U.S. oil industry championing the Gaia hypothesis. Few books on environmentalism’s past are a better guide for envisioning its future.

Jennifer Thomson is Assistant Professor of History at Bucknell History. She also hosts the radio program Bucknell: Occupied, which airs Thursday at 6:00 pm on WVBU.

Brian Hamilton is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he is researching African American environmental history. A Maine native, he lives in Western Massachusetts and chairs the History and Social Science Department at Deerfield Academy.

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Chinmay Tumbe, "The Age Of Pandemics (1817-1920): How They Shaped India and the World" (Harper Collins, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 3 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

On this episode of the Economic and Business History channel I spoke with Dr. Chinmay Tumbe, Assistant Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Management. He was Alfred D Chandler Jr. International Visiting Scholar in Business History, Harvard Business School in 2018. Dr, Tumbe has published academic articles in Management and Organizational History and in the Journal of Management History. He has written two books, one in 2018 India Moving: A History of Migration, which talks about how people have moved in India historically, and his 2020 book the Age of Pandemics 1817-1920: How They Shaped India and the World (HarperCollins, 2020). The book argues that the period between the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century - an age otherwise known for the worldwide spread of the industrial revolution, imperialism, and globalization - was also the 'age of pandemics'. It documents the scale of devastation caused by different pandemics, cholera, the plague, influenza, and finally Covid. The book has great resources for the classroom and for the general public such as a timeline of pandemics, striking tables such as the death toll in millions for each epidemic, and a set of photographs at the end that is definitely worth viewing.

Paula De La Cruz-Fernández is a consultant, historian, and digital editor. New Books Network en español editor. Edita CEO.

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Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, "Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920" (Ohio UP, 2019

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Ohio University Press, 2019), Lenny Ureña Valerio offers a transnational approach to Polish-German relations and nineteenth-century colonial subjectivities. She investigates key cultural dynamics in the history of medicine, colonialism, and migration that bring Germany and Prussian Poland closer to the colonial and postcolonial worlds in Africa and Latin America. She also analyzes how Poles in the German Empire positioned themselves in relation to Germans and native populations in overseas colonies. She thus recasts Polish perspectives and experiences, allowing new insights into identity formation and nationalist movements within the German Empire.

Crucially, Ureña Valerio also studies the medical projects and scientific ideas that traveled from colonies to the German metropole, and vice versa, which were influential not only in the racialization of Slavic populations, but also in bringing scientific conceptions of race to the everydayness of the German Empire. As a whole, Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities illuminates nested imperial and colonial relations using sources that range from medical texts and state documents to travel literature and fiction. By studying these scientific and political debates, Ureña Valerio uncovers novel ways to connect medicine, migration, and colonialism and provides an invigorating model for the analysis of Polish history from a global perspective.

Lenny A. Ureña Valerio received her BA in history at the University of Puerto Rico and her PhD in Central/East European history from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her dissertation, “The Stakes of Empire: Colonial Fantasies, Civilizing Agendas, and Biopolitics in the Prussian-Polish Provinces, 1840-1914,” was awarded the Distinguished Dissertation Award in Polish Studies by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (PIASA) in 2010.

Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities is the winner of the 2020 Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies and honorable mention for the 2020 Heldt Prize for the best book by a woman in Slavic/East European/Eurasian Studies, awarded by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies.

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John Christopoulos, "Abortion in Early Modern Italy" (Harvard UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 1 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Today we have John Christopoulos, Assistant Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, to talk about his new book, Abortion in Early Modern Italy (Harvard University Press, 2021)

In this authoritative history, John Christopoulos provides a provocative and far-reaching account of abortion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. His poignant portraits of women who terminated or were forced to terminate pregnancies offer a corrective to longstanding views: he finds that Italians maintained a fundamental ambivalence about abortion. Italians from all levels of society sought, had, and participated in abortions. Early modern Italy was not an absolute anti-abortion culture, an exemplary Catholic society centered on the “traditional family.” Rather, Christopoulos shows, Italians held many views on abortion, and their responses to its practice varied.

Bringing together medical, religious, and legal perspectives alongside a social and cultural history of sexuality, reproduction, and the family, Christopoulos offers a nuanced and convincing account of the meanings Italians ascribed to abortion and shows how prevailing ideas about the practice were spread, modified, and challenged. Christopoulos begins by introducing readers to prevailing ideas about abortion and women’s bodies, describing the widely available purgative medicines and surgeries that various healers and women themselves employed to terminate pregnancies. He then explores how these ideas and practices ran up against and shaped theology, medicine, and law. Catholic understanding of abortion was changing amid religious, legal, and scientific debates concerning the nature of human life, women’s bodies, and sexual politics. Christopoulos examines how ecclesiastical, secular, and medical authorities sought to regulate abortion, and how tribunals investigated and punished its procurers—or did not, even when they could have. Abortion in Early Modern Italy offers a compelling and sensitive study of abortion in a time of dramatic religious, scientific, and social change.

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

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Erika Dyck, "Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Today I talked with historian Erika Dyck about Aldous Huxley, Humphry Osmond and their correspondence over a ten year period. Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018) is a collection of letters which were carefully curated by Erika and Cynthia Carson Bisbee, Paul Bisbee, and Patrick Farrell. During our discussion, Erika recounts the special relationship between two intellectual juggernauts, Huxley and Osmond, and their discussions about drugs, addiction, and death and dying. This important set of letters raises fascinating questions about medicines, the "psychedelic renaissance," the nature of the mind, and perceptions of reality.

Dyck is the author of Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD From Clinic to Campus (Johns Hopkins UP, 2010) as well as Culture's Catalyst: Historical Encounters with Peyote and the Native American Church in Canada (Manitoba, 2017).

Lucas Richert is an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He studies intoxicating substances and the pharmaceutical industry. He also examines the history of mental health.

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Helena Vissing, "Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Trauma Treatment for Perinatal Mental Health" (Routledge, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Today we spoke with Dr. Helena Vissing about her new book Somatic Maternal Healing Psychodynamic and Somatic Trauma Treatment for Perinatal Mental Health (Routledge, 2023). What does the research of neuro science, immunology and biology tell us about the complex links between trauma, stress, inflammatory responses, and postpartum depression? What are the somatic counter transferences specific to the perinatal transition? What is the difference between empowered mothering and feminist mothering? What are the five tenets of empowered mothering? These are some of the questions we discuss with Dr. Vissing. All of them aimed at answering the larger clinical question, “What do you do with a new mother who walks into your office - how do we sit with new mothers and parents who are shaking to their core?”

Initially a school psychologist specializing in Developmental Psychology Play Therapy, Dr. Vissing was already interested in psychoanalytic or psychodynamic perspectives. When beginning her training in somatic approaches she was really excited to “learn a new modality to deepen my work in the maternal mental health specialization and specifically the transition to motherhood.” However, working in a “pretty big” community of somatic training practitioners Vissing was “a bit surprised and also a bit disappointed” to discover that there was not really a subgroup specifically dedicated to maternal mental health adaptations and that a “particular focus on the mother's perspective was missing.” Struck by this this lack Vissing became motivated and determined to “create a bridge between the two.”

For Vissing the bridge is a biopsychosocial approach which is both a “clinical attitude” and a “guiding principle” that addresses the frustrations she encountered when studying maternal mental health felt like “jumping from one paradigm to the other where the paradigms were not connecting…were not communicating and I was frustrated by that because we know all of this interacts … we know that the enormous intensity of the hormonal shifts of the perinatal transitions will impact emotional health and mental health.”

Dr. Vissing’s hope is that by reading this book, “as a clinician you will feel less apprehension about the tender work of trauma healing in the perinatal period.”

As hosts we both noted that Somatic Maternal Healing is a rigorously researched and clinically informed book. The majority of the citations reflect current findings, including research into pandemic stress and resonances in telehealth.

Golzar Selbe Naghshineh, is a training and supervising licensed Psychoanalyst with special expertise in reproductive and maternal mental health. She created and built the Network For The Advancement of Perinatal Support – an integrative mental health program for OBGYN offices and fertility clinics that she launched in 2014 at the renowned Downtown Women OBGYN practice in New York City. Naghshineh is also teaching faculty at the New York Graduate School of Psychoanalysis and the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in New York.

Christopher Russell, LP is a psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan. He is a member of the faculty and supervising analyst at The Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and The New York Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. His primary theorists are Sándor Ferenczi and Hyman Spotnitz.

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Tamara Venit-Shelton, "Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace" (Yale UP, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The modern popularity of acupuncture and herbal medicine belies the long history of Chinese medicine in the U.S. In Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace (Yale University Press, 2019), Tamara Venit-Shelton (Claremont McKenna College) examines the historical contexts that shaped perceptions of traditional Chinese medicine from the colonial period to the present. Venit-Shelton draws from court records, material culture, census records, oral interviews, and newspapers to uncover the multi-faceted roles that Chinese herbalists played in both Chinese and non-Chinese communities during the “long Progressive Era.”

Through self-Orientalizing presentations, these health practitioners enterprisingly navigated, accommodated, and resisted waves of rising xenophobia and medical regulation. After a period of struggle between the 1930s and 1970s when depression and war disrupted supply chains, Chinese medicine made a roaring comeback even as increasing numbers of Chinese Americans trained in Western medicine, leading to the rise of integrative medicine. Herbs and Roots deepens our understanding of histories of medicine and public health, American Orientalism, Asian immigration to the US, and the environment and ideas of nature.

Ian Shin is assistant professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan.

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David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Courtwright about the global nature of pleasure, vice, and capitalism. His new book is called The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business (Harvard University Press, 2019). During our discussion, Courtwright walks us through the emergence of the worldwide commodification of vice and shares his views on "limbic capitalism," the network of competitive businesses targeting the brain pathways responsible for feeling, motivation, and long-term memory. The book is equally interesting and disturbing. And Courtwright offers timely recommendations about how we can understand and address the Age of Addiction. Coming from one of the world's leading experts on the history of drugs and addiction, this important work raises stimulating and sobering questions about consumption and free will.

Courtwright is the author of Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Harvard University Press, 2001) as well as Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America (Harvard University Press, 1982).

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Nessette Falu, "Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth-Making in Brazil" (Duke UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 24 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

In Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth-Making in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2023) Nessette Falu explores how Black lesbians in Brazil define and sustain their well-being and self-worth against persistent racial, sexual, class, and gender-based prejudice. Focusing on the trauma caused by interactions with gynecologists, Falu draws on in-depth ethnographic work among the Black lesbian community to reveal their profoundly negative affective experiences within Brazil’s deeply biased medical system. In the face of such entrenched, intersectional intimate violence, Falu’s informants actively pursue well-being in ways that channel their struggle for self-worth toward broader goals of social change, self care, and communal action. Demonstrating how the racist and heteronormative underpinnings of gynecology erase Black lesbian subjecthood through mental, emotional, and physical traumas, Falu explores the daily resistance and abolitionist practices of worth-making that claim and sustain Black queer identity and living. Falu rethinks the medicalization of race, sex, and gender in Brazil and elsewhere while offering a new perspective on Black queer life through well-being grounded in relationships, socioeconomic struggles, the erotic, and freedom strivings.

Nessette Falu is Assistant Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reighan Gillam is an Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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Anne E. Linton, "Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

A compelling study of medical and literary imaginations, Anne Linton's Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge University Press, 2022) examines the complex relationship between modes of seeing, thinking, and writing intersex bodies and lives.

In this project, Linton brings a rich archive of medical cases from 1800 to 1902 into dialogue with canonical nineteenth-century authors (Honoré de Balzac, Théophile Gautier, and Emile Zola), as well as an impressive range of less well-known writers and popular fictions that captivated French readers during the period. Challenging the (Foucauldian) emphasis on the principle of a "true sex" that apparently preoccupied French doctors following the Napoleonic Code's regulation of sexual identification (within three days of birth), Linton looks at multiple instances in which the instability of sex, the uncertainties of bodies and their stories, came up again and again for medical and other observers. Revisiting the well-known case of Herculine Barbin, Linton situates Barbin's own account within the wider medical and literary worlds of nineteenth-century France. The book's earlier chapters lay a historical groundwork for subsequent closer readings of fictions that responded and contributed to a broader cultural fascination with sexual and gender identities, desires, and ambiguities.

While historically specific in its research and arguments, Unmaking Sex offers much to readers interested in the past and present politics of medical, legal, and cultural debates surrounding intersex people, with implications well beyond the French context.

Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and empire. She is the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a channel launched in 2013.

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Adrienne E. Strong, "Documenting Death: Maternal Mortality and the Ethics of Care in Tanzania" (U California Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Documenting Death: Maternal Mortality and the Ethics of Care in Tanzania (University of California Press, 2020) is a gripping ethnographic account of the deaths of pregnant women in a hospital in a low-resource setting in Tanzania. Through an exploration of everyday ethics and care practices on a local maternity ward, anthropologist Adrienne E. Strong untangles the reasons Tanzania has achieved so little sustainable success in reducing maternal mortality rates, despite global development support. Growing administrative pressures to document good care serve to preclude good care in practice while placing frontline healthcare workers in moral and ethical peril. Maternal health emergencies expose the precarity of hospital social relations and accountability systems, which, together, continue to lead to the deaths of pregnant women.

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Jenny Trinitapoli, "An Epidemic of Uncertainty: Navigating HIV and Young Adulthood in Malawi" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

A decade-long study of young adulthood in Malawi demonstrates the impact of widespread HIV status uncertainty, laying bare the sociological implications of what is not known.

An Epidemic of Uncertainty: Navigating HIV and Young Adulthood in Malawi (U Chicago Press, 2023) advances a new framework for studying social life by emphasizing something social scientists routinely omit from their theories, models, and measures–what people know they don’t know. Taking Malawi’s ongoing AIDS epidemic as an entry point, Jenny Trinitapoli shows that despite admirable declines in new HIV infections and AIDS-related mortality, an epidemic of uncertainty persists; at any given point in time, fully half of Malawian young adults don’t know their HIV status. Reckoning with the impact of this uncertainty within the bustling trading town of Balaka, Trinitapoli argues that HIV-related uncertainty is measurable, pervasive, and impervious to biomedical solutions, with consequences that expand into multiple domains of life, including relationship stability, fertility, and health.

Throughout a groundbreaking decade-long longitudinal study, rich survey data and poignant ethnographic vignettes vividly depict how individual lives and population patterns unfold against the backdrop of an ever-evolving epidemic. Even as HIV is transformed from a progressive, fatal disease to a chronic and manageable condition, the accompanying epidemic of uncertainty remains fundamental to understanding social life in this part of the world. Insisting that known unknowns can and should be integrated into social-scientific models of human behaviour, An Epidemic of Uncertainty: Navigating HIV and Young Adulthood in Malawi treats uncertainty as an enduring aspect, a central feature, and a powerful force in everyday life.

Rituparna Patgiri has a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter.

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Wayne Soon, "Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History" (Stanford UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Wayne Soon about his book Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History (Stanford UP, 2020).

In 1938, one year into the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese military found itself in dire medical straits. Soldiers were suffering from deadly illnesses, and were unable to receive blood transfusions for their wounds. The urgent need for medical assistance prompted an unprecedented flowering of scientific knowledge in China and Taiwan throughout the twentieth century. Wayne Soon draws on archives from three continents to argue that Overseas Chinese were key to this development, utilizing their global connections and diasporic links to procure much-needed money, supplies, and medical expertise. The remarkable expansion of care and education that they spurred saved more than four million lives and trained more than fifteen thousand medical personnel. Moreover, the introduction of military medicine shifted biomedicine out of elite, urban civilian institutions and laboratories and transformed it into an adaptive field-based practice for all. Universal care, practical medical education, and mobile medicine are all lasting legacies of this effort.

Wayne Soon is an Associate Professor in the Program of the History of Medicine in the Department of Surgery and the Program of History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Soon is a historian of medicine as well as modern China and Taiwan, with an interest in how international ideas and practices of medicine, institutional building, and diaspora have shaped Chinese East Asia’s interaction with its people and the world in the twentieth century. He has published scholarly articles in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Twentieth Century China, American Journal of Chinese Studies, and East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal.

Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.

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Katherine D. Von Schaik, "How to Be Healthy: An Ancient Guide to Wellness" (Galen) (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 17 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The second-century Greek physician Galen—the most famous doctor in antiquity after Hippocrates—is a central figure in Western medicine. A talented doctor, surgeon, writer, philosopher, teacher, pharmacologist, and inventor, Galen attended the court of Marcus Aurelius, living through outbreaks of plague (likely smallpox) that devastated the Roman Empire. He also served as physician for professional gladiators, boasting that only two fighters died during his first year (his predecessor had lost sixteen). In writings that provided the foundation of Western medicine up to the nineteenth century, Galen created a unified account of health and disease.

In How to Be Healthy: An Ancient Guide to Wellness (Princeton UP, 2024), practicing physician and classical historian Katherine Van Schaik presents a collection of Galen’s enduring insights about how we can take care of our bodies and minds, prevent disease, and reach a healthy old age.

Although we now know that many of Galen’s ideas about physiology are wrong, How to Be Healthy shows that much of his advice remains sound. In these selections from his writings, presented in fresh translations, Galen discusses the art of medicine, exercise and diet, the mind-body connection, the difficulty of applying general medical principles to individuals, and much more. Featuring an introduction, brief commentaries that connect ancient medical practices to modern ones, and the original Greek on facing pages, How to Be Healthy offers an entertaining and enlightening new perspective on the age-old pursuit of wellness, from the importance of “the exercise with a small ball” to the benefits of “avoiding distress.”

Katherine D. Van Schaik completed a PhD in ancient history at Harvard University while earning an MD with honors at Harvard Medical School. She is a practicing physician and a member of the faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and in the Department of Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University.

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Cristina A. Pop, "The Cancer Within: Reproduction, Cultural Transformation, and Health Care in Romania" (Rutgers UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 17 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In The Cancer Within: Reproduction, Cultural Transformation, and Health Care in Romania (Rutgers UP, 2022), Cristina Pop examines cervical cancer in Romania as a point of entry into an anthropological reflection on contemporary health care, especially in the post-communist context. Cervical cancer prevention reveals the inner workings of emerging post-communist medicine, which aligns the state and the market, public and private health care providers, policy makers, and ordinary women. Fashioned by patriarchal relations, lived religion, and the historical trauma of pronatalism, Romanian women’s responses to reproductive medicine and cervical cancer prevention are complicated by neoliberal reforms to medical care. Cervical cancer prevention – and especially the HPV vaccination – provided Romanians a legitimate instance to express their conflicting views of post-communist medicine. What sets Romania apart is that pronatalism, patriarchy, lived religion, medical reforms, and moral contestation of preventive medicine bring into line systemic contingencies that expose the historical, social, and cultural trajectories of cervical cancer.

Cristina A. Pop is an assistant professor of medical anthropology and medical humanities at Creighton University. Her research interests are reproductive health and healthcare, reproductive governance, vaccination hesitancy, post-Communism, discourse analysis, and ethnographic fiction. She has published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Medical Anthropology, Culture, Health and Sexuality, and Journal of Religion and Health. Cristina is the author of The Cancer Within: Reproduction, Cultural Transformation and Health Care in Romania, published in 2022 with Rutgers University Press in the series “Medical Anthropology: Health, Inequality, and Social Justice.”

Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. He conducts ethnography among ufologists in China. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of the paranormal, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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David Carey, Jr., "Health in the Highlands: Indigenous Healing and Scientific Medicine in Guatemala and Ecuador" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Health in the Highlands: Indigenous Healing and Scientific Medicine in Guatemala and Ecuador (University of California Press, 2023) explores how, in the early to mid-twentieth century, the governments of Ecuador and Guatemala sought to expand Western medicine within their countries, with the goals of addressing endemic diseases and improving infant and maternal health. These efforts often clashed with indigenous medical practices, particularly in the rural highlands. Drawing on extensive, original archival research, historian David Carey Jr. shows that indigenous populations embraced a syncretic approach to health, combining traditional and new practices. At times, the governments of both nations encouraged--or at least allowed--such a synthesis, yet they also attacked indigenous lifeways, going so far as to criminalize native medical practitioners and to conduct medical experiments on indigenous people without consent. Health in the Highlands traces the experiences of curanderos, midwives, bonesetters, witches, doctors, and nurses--and the indigenous people they served. Carey interrogates the relationship between 'progressive' public health policy and indigenous well-being, offering lessons from the past that remain relevant in the present. Our best way forward, this history suggests, may be a compassionate syncretism that joins indigenous approaches to healing with science and a pursuit of environmental and social justice.

Ethan Besser Fredrick is a graduate student in Modern Latin American history seeking his PhD at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on the Transatlantic Catholic movements in Mexico and Spain during the early 20th century.

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Alexandra Kitty, "A Different Track: Hospital Trains of the Second World War" (Heritage House, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Railroads played an integral role in the Second World War. Trains brought food, munitions, and essential supplies. They transported troops. They were a means of escape for those fleeing persecution. At the same, they were used to transport innocent people to their deaths. Yet there was one kind of train that improved the chances of survival every time they rolled through the battle-worn towns and cities of the European theatre of war.

Hospital trains were not a new concept in the Second World War, but their use was instrumental in this most deadly conflict of the twentieth century. Regular passenger trains were converted into mobile emergency wards tending to the critically wounded. It was an elegant solution, as train cars could be refitted with tier beds, and supplies could be easily transported along with medical staff.

A Different Track: Hospital Trains of the Second World War (Heritage House, 2023) introduces readers to the world of hospital trains of the Second World War. From the nurses who ran them to the factories that manufactured them, this book looks at how these trains quietly altered the fortunes of the world. From Canada's contributions to the role of women who both healed the sick and built the trains, this is a fascinating look at one of the hidden nuggets of history.

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Mark Munsterhjelm, "Forensic Colonialism: Genetics and the Capture of Indigenous Peoples" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Forensic genetic technologies are popularly conceptualized and revered as important tools of justice. The research and development of these technologies, however, has been accomplished through the capture of various Indigenous Peoples' genetic material and a subsequent ongoing genetic servitude.

In Forensic Colonialism: Genetics and the Capture of Indigenous Peoples (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023), Mark Munsterhjelm explores how controversial studies of Indigenous Peoples have been used to develop racializing forensic technologies. Making moral and political claims about defending the public from criminals and terrorists, international networks of scientists, police, and security agencies have developed forensic genetic technologies firmly embedded in hierarchies that target and exploit many Indigenous Peoples without their consent. Collections began under the guise of the highly controversial Human Genome Diversity Project and related efforts, including the 1987 sampling of Brazilian Indigenous Peoples as they recovered from near genocide. After 9/11, War on Terror rhetoric began to be used to justify research on ancestry estimation and physical appearance (phenotyping) markers, and since 2019, international research cooperation networks' use of genetic data from thousands of Uyghurs and other Indigenous Peoples from Xinjiang and Tibet has contributed to a series of controversies.

Munsterhjelm concludes that technologies produced by forensic genetics advance the biopolitical security only of privileged populations, and that this depends on imposing race-based divisions between who lives and who dies. Meticulously researched, Forensic Colonialism adds to growing debates over racial categories, their roots in colonialism, and the political hierarchies inherent to forensic genetics.

Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.

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The Future of Predictions: A Discussion with Christopher E. Mason

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 9 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Predictive algorithms are changing the world – that is the claim of Christopher E. Mason who has co-authored (with Igor Tulchinsky) the book The Age of Prediction: Algorithms, AI, and the Shifting Shadows of Risk (MIT Press, 2023). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones.

Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.

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Self Help

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 7 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, Angela Hume tells us about Self Help, not the neoliberal strategy of self-actualization through consumer choices, but the radical political movement of gynecological self-help, that flourished in the late twentieth century and created a set of portable political tactics based in anarchist feminist philosophy.

In the episode, she references Alondra Nelson’s book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (Minnesota UP, 2013); Michelle Murphy’s Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience (Duke UP, 2012); and several health activist organizations, including the Women’s Choice Clinic in Oakland, CA; AidAccess which provides mail order medication assisted abortion; and MYA Network, a group of clinicians seeking to expand abortion access in primary care settings.

Angela suggested we include three links that everyone should have at their fingertips, PlanC (plancpills.org) which helps people access abortion pills, AidAccess (aidaccess.org) the pill fulfillment service described above, and I Need an A (ineedana.com), a clinic locator.

In our longer conversation, she also named the Keep Our Clinics campaign, a fundraising effort to support independent abortion clinics, to which pre-sales of her book contributed. We’re sorry we didn’t get this up early enough for you to participate in the pre-sale! But now the book is out in the world, you can even read a review of it in The Guardian.

Our conversation is based Angela’s new book, Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open(link is external) (AK Press, 2023). A work of public scholarship and a history of medicine, the book tells a story of Bay Area abortion defense—from feminist clinical practice, to underground abortion provision, to street politics and clinic defense—from the 1970s to 2000s. You can read an excerpt from the book in the Post45 contemporaries collection “Abortion Now, Abortion Forever,” which was the starting point for our conversation on High Theory.

Angela Hume is a feminist historian, critic, and poet, who teaches at UC Berkeley. Her creative and expository writing classes address environmental and health justice, working-class and multiethnic American literatures, feminist and queer storytelling, and more. Beyond Deep Care, Angela is co-editor of Ecopoetics: Essays in the Field(link is external) (U of Iowa P, 2018). Her full-length books of poetry include Middle Time(link is external) (Omnidawn, 2016) and Interventions for Women (Omnidawn, 2021).

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Emma K. Sutton, "William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Emma K. Sutton's William James, MD: Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician (U Chicago Press, 2023) is the first book to map William James's preoccupation with medical ideas, concerns, and values across the breadth of his work.

William James is known as a nineteenth-century philosopher, psychologist, and psychical researcher. Less well-known is how his interest in medicine influenced his life and work, driving his ambition to change the way American society conceived of itself in body, mind, and soul. William James, MD offers an account of the development and cultural significance of James's ideas and works, and establishes, for the first time, the relevance of medical themes to his major lines of thought.

James lived at a time when old assumptions about faith and the moral and religious possibilities for human worth and redemption were increasingly displaced by a concern with the medically "normal" and the perfectibility of the body. Woven into treatises that warned against humanity's decline, these ideas were part of the eugenics movement and reflected a growing social stigma attached to illness and invalidism, a disturbing intellectual current in which James felt personally implicated. Most chronicles of James's life have portrayed a distressed young man, who then endured a psychological or spiritual crisis to emerge as a mature thinker who threw off his pallor of mental sickness for good. In contrast, Emma K. Sutton draws on his personal correspondence, unpublished notebooks, and diaries to show that James considered himself a genuine invalid to the end of his days. Sutton makes the compelling case that his philosophizing was not an abstract occupation but an impassioned response to his own life experiences and challenges. To ignore the medical James is to misread James altogether.

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Linda Eckert, "Enough: Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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Coleen T. Murphy, "How We Age: The Science of Longevity" (Princeton UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 1 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

All of us would like to live longer, or to slow the debilitating effects of age. In How We Age: The Science of Longevity (Princeton UP, 2023), Coleen Murphy shows how recent research on longevity and aging may be bringing us closer to this goal. Murphy, a leading scholar of aging, explains that the study of model systems, particularly simple invertebrate animals, combined with breakthroughs in genomic methods, have allowed scientists to probe the molecular mechanisms of longevity and aging. Understanding the fundamental biological rules that govern aging in model systems provides clues about how we might slow human aging, which could lead in turn to new therapeutics and treatments for age-related disease.

Among other vivid examples, Murphy describes research that shows how changing a single gene in the nematode worm C. elegans doubles its lifespan, extending not only the end of life but also the youthful, healthy part of life. Drawing on work in her own lab as well as other recent research, Murphy chronicles the history and current state of the field, explaining longevity's links to reproduction and mating, sensory and cognitive function, inheritances from our ancestors, and the gut microbiome. Written with clarity and wit, How We Age provides a guide to the science: what we know about aging, how we know what we know, and what we can do with this new knowledge.

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Stephanie Convery, "After the Count: The Death of Davey Browne" (Penguin Australia, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Today we are joined by Stephanie Convery, inequality editor at Guardian Australia, and author of After the Count: The Death of Davey Browne (Penguin Australia, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed the history of boxing in Australia, the failures that explain Davey Browne’s death in Sydney in 2015, the nature of violence in sport, and the future of boxing.

In After the Count, Convery blends the genres of history, reportage, and memoir to explore the death of Davey Browne and shows how this one event illustrates the problems and lacunae inside of Australian men’s boxing. Convery writes from an insider’s perspective – she is a boxer – and her work does not condemn the sport for its brutality but rather asks questions about how to make boxing safer and how to make sure the sport of boxing remains meaningful for its participants. She concludes that some of the same toxic forces that gave boxing its allure now make it hard to regulate and threaten the lives of the people who participate in it.

The book moves both chronologically and thematically as Convery shifts between a mix of traditional reporting, historical research, and experiential accounts of her own life in the ring. The beginning of the book is devoted to Davey Browne’s death and a significant portion of the end of the book contains Convery’s conclusions about the coronial case and in these places the book reads most like a traditional sports report.

Some of the most interesting chapters feature her own boxing experiences and these are interspersed in the more chronological reporting. It is a minor spoiler that Convery suffers a concussion while reporting on the book and when she as she recovers, she dives into research on concussion and CTE. The ubiquity of head injury in boxing (and sports in general) shapes her discussion of the nature of violence. Boxing requires people to fight – to throw punches – and to improve as boxers those punches need to be real and be dangerous. At the same time, fighters need to consent to fight, need to understand the rules, and should have more information about head injury, how to avoid it, and what to do if they suffer from it.

The book defies easy explanations – it’s considerate, even meditative; it swings from a report on Davey’s death in a Sydney club, to discussions of boxings seedy history in gambling dens, and to medical studies on the way to diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Convery takes readers around the country - to the places in Davey Browne’s life, to gyms in Sydney and Melbourne where Convery practices, and finally to the coronial court where the people involved in the tragedy of Davey’s death face questioning from the government of New South Wales.

It is a must read for people interested in boxing, Australian sport, and for people interested in the philosophical question of violence in sport.

Keith Rathbone is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history.

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Fae Garland and Mitchell Travis, "Intersex Embodiment: Legal Frameworks Beyond Identity and Patienthood" (Bristol UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

What is intersex and why does it matter? What is the power of law to disrupt dominant narratives? I had a fascinating conversation with authors Dr Fae Garland and Dr Mitchell Travis about their book, Intersex Embodiment: Legal Frameworks Beyond Identity and Disorder (Bristol UP, 2023). We got into detail about these groundbreaking human rights issues. We spoke about the very real challenges faced in conducting legal research that has meaningful impact for social change. In research spanning many years, Garland and Travis worked directly with intersex people and their parents to produce this nuanced, sensitive and extensively researched book. Their's is a monograph that challenges dominant medical narratives, particularly with regard to the way that gender binaries are demarcated and identities are constructed. The book has power both beyond its subject matter and beyond the academy: it will bring pause for reflection as to the role of researchers and the work that lawyers can do in the pursuit of the acceptance and emergence of difference, and especially with regard to the enforcement of human rights.

Dr Fae Garland is a Senior Lecturer in Law at The University of Manchester

Dr Mitchell Travis is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Social Justice at The University of Leeds.

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Anne Mendelson, "Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.

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Kay Wilson, "Mental Health Law: Abolish Or Reform?" (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The debate about whether mental health law should be abolished or reformed is one that is highly charged and to which there are no easy solutions. In Mental Health Law: Abolish Or Reform? (Oxford UP, 2021), Dr Kay Wilson does not shy away from these controversial debates. Examining the work that dignity can do, she makes the case for an holistic interpretation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In thinking about mental health reform, she provides a core framework which may guide support and intervention in a way that compels respect for the dignity of the person. This book makes an important contribution to the literature. Its nuanced approach and fearlessness in delving into the hard issues should be required reading for policy makers, lawyers and mental health practitioners.

Dr Kay Wilson is a postdoctoral fellow at the convenor of The Disability Law Network at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. She is also a co-editor of The Future of Mental Health, Disability and Criminal Law, (Routledge, 2023).

Jane Richards is a Lecturer in Law at York Law School, UK.

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Colin McFarlane, "Waste and the City: The Crisis of Sanitation and the Right to Citylife" (Verso, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In an age of pandemics the relationship between the health of the city and good sanitation has never been more important. Colin McFarlane, through Waste and the City: The Crisis of Sanitation and the Right to Citylife (Verso, 2023), makes a call to action on one of modern urban life's most neglected issues: sanitation infrastructure. The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the devastating consequences of unequal access to sanitation in cities across the globe. At this critical moment in global public health, Colin McFarlane makes the urgent case for Sanitation for All.

The book outlines the worldwide sanitation crisis and offers a vision for a renewed, equitable investment in sanitation that democratises and socialises the modern city. Adopting Henri Lefebvre's concept of 'the right to the city', it uses the notion of 'citylife' to reframe the discourse on sanitation from a narrowly-defined policy discussion to a question of democratic right to public life and health. In doing so, the book shows that sanitation is an urbanizing force whose importance extends beyond hygiene to the very foundation of urban social life.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is about the construction of identity and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by bouncers at bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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Linda L. Michaels et al.. "Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice" (Routledge, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 7 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Humanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice (Routledge, 2023) brings together a global community of mental health professionals to offer an impassioned defense of relationship-based depth psychotherapy. Expressing ideas that are integral to the mission of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN), the authors demonstrate a shared vision of a world where this therapy is accessible to all communities. They also articulate the difficulties created by the current mental health diagnostic system and differing conceptualizations of mental distress, the shortsightedness of evidence-based care and research, and the depreciation of depth therapy by many stakeholders.

The authors thoughtfully elucidate the crucial importance of therapies of depth, insight, and relationship in the repertoire of mental health treatment and speak to the implications of PsiAN’s mission both now and in the future.With a distinguished international group of authors and a clear focus on determining a future direction for psychotherapy, this book is essential reading for all psychotherapists.

With a distinguished international group of authors and a clear focus on determining a future direction for psychotherapy, this book is essential reading for all psychotherapists.

Linda Michaels is not only an editor of this book, but the chair and co-founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN), consulting editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, clinical associate faculty of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, and fellow of the Lauder Institute Global MBA program. Linda is a psychologist with a private practice in Chicago.

Judith Tanen is an LP candidate at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.

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Megan Nutzman, "Contested Cures: Identity and Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In the ancient Mediterranean world, individuals routinely looked for divine aid to cure physical afflictions. Contested Cures: Identity and Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) by Dr. Megan Nutzman argues that the inevitability of sickness and injury made people willing to experiment with seemingly beneficial techniques, even if they originated in a foreign cultural or religious tradition. With circumstances of close cultural contacts, such as prevailed in Palestine, the setting was ripe for neighbouring Jews, Samaritans, Christians, Greeks and Romans to borrow rituals perceived to be efficacious and to alter them to fit their own religious framework. As a result, they employed related means of seeking miraculous cures. The similarities of these rituals, despite changes in the identity of the divine healers that they invoked, made them the subject of polemical discourse among elite authors trying to police collective borders. Contested Cures investigates the resulting intersection of ritual healing and communal identity.

This innovative study synthesises evidence for the full range of healing rituals that were practised in the ancient Mediterranean world. Examining both literary and archaeological evidence, Dr. Nutzman considers ritual healing as a component of identity formation and deconstructs the artificial boundary between ‘magic’ and ‘religion’ in relation to ritual cures.

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Jeremy Howick, "The Power of Placebos: Unlocking Their Potential to Improve Health Care" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 5 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Should your doctor prescribe a placebo for you, instead of conventional medicine? And if she did, would it work? Is the double-blind placebo-controlled paradigm really the gold standard for medical research?

Placebos are the most widely used treatments in the history of medicine. Thousands of studies show that they can be effective and make us happier and healthier. Yet confusion about what placebos are and how to measure their effects prevents some doctors from using them to help patients. Meanwhile, damage caused by the nocebo effect—the negative effect of expecting something bad—is not widely recognized.

In The Power of Placebos: Unlocking Their Potential to Improve Health Care (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), Jeremy Howick provides an interdisciplinary perspective on placebos and nocebos based on more than twenty years of research and data from over 300,000 patients. This book, the culmination of that research, offers practical ways for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to put placebo and nocebo research into practice to improve health outcomes.

In addition to providing an overview of placebos and nocebos and explaining how belief systems and context can create physiological effects in the body, Howick advocates for a number of controversial positions, including why it may be unethical to include placebos in most clinical trials in which there are already established therapies and why physicians should consider using placebos regularly in their practices. Howick also underscores the importance of the therapeutic effects of interactions between health care practitioners and patients, in the context of care. The Power of Placebos dispels the confusion surrounding placebos and paves the way for doctors to help patients by enhancing placebo effects and avoiding the pitfalls of nocebos.

Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. She's on Twitter @embracingwisdom. She blogs here.

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Ann C. Bracken, "Crash: A Memoir of Overmedication and Recovery" (Charing Cross Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Ann Bracken has published three poetry collections, The Altar of Innocence, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom, Once You’re Inside: Poetry Exploring Incarceration, and a memoir entitled Crash: A Memoir of Overmedication and Recovery (Charing Cross Press, 2022). She serves as a contributing editor for Little Patuxent Review and co-facilitates the Wilde Readings Poetry Series in Columbia, Maryland, and she’s a frequent contributor to Mad in America’s family section. She volunteers as a correspondent for the Justice Arts Coalition, exchanging letters with incarcerated people to foster their use of the arts. Her poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, her work has been featured on Best American Poetry, and she’s been a guest on Grace Cavalieri’s The Poet and The Poem radio show. Her advocacy work promotes using the arts to foster paradigm change in the areas of emotional wellness, education, and prison abolition.

This interview focuses on Once You're Inside as well as Crash: A Memoir of Overmedication and Recovery. Crash is the story of Helen Dempsey and her daughter Ann who both fall victim to the same regimen of overmedication at the hands of the mental health system. Helen struggles with intractable depression and initially turns to self-medication with alcohol, but finds herself unable to recover despite numerous drugs, hospitalizations, and electroconvulsive therapy. Ann vows to build a different life for herself, but eventually descends into the pain of a mysterious migraine and intractable darkness lasting for many years. She was severely overmedicated with opioids and psychiatric drugs and then Methadone, DHE-45 injections, Migrant nasal spray (for headaches) and injecribele Demerol (for really bad days) once she was off opiates. To keep her out of depression (maintenance), she was prescribed Wellbutrin, Elavil, Topamax, and Valium; Ann crashes her car twice. It took her 4 months of energy healing to discontinue the pain meds and two years later, about a year to get off of psych drugs. Because traditional medical treatments have failed her, she challenges her doctors' advice and discovers ways to heal the source of her physical and emotional pain without drugs. The question of why her mother never got well continues to haunt her long after her mother's death until she finds the missing puzzle pieces she'd searched for all her life stashed in a dusty box in her sister's attic.

You can find more about Ann as well as her books and other writings here.

You can learn more about Megan Wildhood at meganwildhood.com.

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Jeremy Nobel, "Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection" (Avery Publishing Group, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Even before the Covid pandemic began in 2020, chronic loneliness was a private experience of profound anguish that had become a public health crisis. Since then it has reached new heights. Loneliness assumes many forms, from enduring physical isolation to feeling rejected because of difference, and it can have devastating consequences for our physical and mental health. Jeremy Nobel founded Project UnLonely to bring creativity as well as social and medical strategies to address this societal problem.

In his book Project UnLonely: Healing our Crisis of Disconnection (Avery, 2023), Dr. Nobel unpacks our personal and national experiences of loneliness to discover its roots and to show how we can take steps to find comfort and connection. Dr. Nobel brings together many voices, from pioneering researchers, to leaders in business, education, the arts, and healthcare, to lonely people of every age, background, and circumstance. He discovers that the pandemic isolated us in ways that were not only physical, and that, at its core, a true sense of loneliness results from a disconnection to the self. He clarifies how meaningful reconnection can be nourished and sustained. And he reveals that an important component of the healing process is engaging in creativity, a powerful opportunity he shows us can be accessed by all.

Ron Winslow, a former long-time medical and science reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, is a freelance medical and science journalist.

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Katherine Mason, "The Reproduction of Inequality: How Class Shapes the Pregnant Body and Infant Health" (NYU Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Can you run a marathon, drink coffee, eat fish, or fly on a plane while pregnant? Such questions are just the tip of the iceberg for how most pregnant women's bodies are managed, surveilled, and scrutinized during pregnancy. The Reproduction of Inequality: How Class Shapes the Pregnant Body and Infant Health (NYU Press, 2023) examines the intense social pressure that expectant and new mothers face when it comes to their health and body-care choices.

Drawing on interviews with dozens of pregnant women and new mothers from poor, middle-class, and mixed-class backgrounds, Katherine Mason paints a vivid picture of the immense weight of expectation that comes with the early stages of motherhood. The women in Mason's study universally sought to give their children a healthy start in life; however, their chosen approaches varied based on their socio-economic class. Whereas middle-class mothers attempted a complete lifestyle change and absolute devotion to the achievement and maintenance of "the healthy pregnant body," poorer women made strategic choices about which health goals to prioritize on a limited budget, lacking the economic and cultural capital required to speak and perfectly adhere to the language of "good health." The unfortunate result is that middle-class mothers are more likely to be seen by others and by themselves as "good" parents, whereas the efforts of working-class mothers are often misread as displaying inadequate concern about their health and that of their child. This in turn contributes to longstanding stereotypes about poor families and communities, and limits their children's chances for upward mobility.

The Reproduction of Inequality is a compelling analysis of the impact of class on new mothers' approaches to health and wellness, and a sobering examination of how inequality shapes mothers' efforts to maximize their own health and that of their children.

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Alexandre Baril, "Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide" (Temple UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Note: This episode contains a discussion of suicide. A list of resources is available below.

In Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide (Temple UP, 2023), Alexandre Baril argues that suicidal people are oppressed by what he calls structural suicidism, a hidden oppression that, until now, has been unnamed and under-theorized. Each year, suicidism and its preventionist script and strategies reproduce violence and cause additional harm and death among suicidal people through forms of criminalization, incarceration, discrimination, stigmatization, and pathologization. This is particularly true for marginalized groups experiencing multiple oppressions, including queer, trans, disabled, or Mad people.

Undoing Suicidism questions the belief that the best way to help suicidal people is through the logic of prevention. Alexandre Baril presents the thought-provoking argument that supporting assisted suicide for suicidal people could better prevent unnecessary deaths. Offering a new queercrip model of (assisted) suicide, he invites us to imagine what could happen if we started thinking about (assisted) suicide from an anti-suicidist and intersectional framework. Baril provides a radical reconceptualization of (assisted) suicide and invaluable reflections for academics, activists, practitioners, and policymakers.

An open access edition of Undoing Suicidism, made available by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa, is available here.

Alexandre Baril (abaril@uOttawa.ca) is Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa. His work is situated at the crossroads of gender, queer, trans, disability/crip/Mad studies, critical gerontology and critical suicidology. His commitment to equity has earned him awards for his involvement in queer, trans and disabled communities, including the Canadian Disability Studies Association Tanis Doe Francophone Award, and the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion President’s Award at the University of Ottawa. A prolific author who won the Young Researcher Award from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa (2023), he has given over 200 presentations at the international level and has over 80 publications.

Resources:

SAFE HOTLINES and ONLINE SUPPORT GROUPS:

Trans LifeLine (trans/non-binary): 1-877-330-6366 (Canada) and 1-877-565-8860 (USA)
Autisme Soutien: Online support for autistic people (French Canada)
BlackLine (BIPOC): 1-800-604-5841 (USA)

REGULAR HOTLINES (might trace your call and contact emergency services):

Talk Suicide Canada: 1-833-456-4566
Suicide.ca (Québec): 1-866-APPELLE
The Hope for Wellness Helpline (Indigenous people in Canada): 1-855-242-3310
The Samaritains (USA): 1-212-673-3000

A full transcript of the interview is available for accessibility.

Clayton Jarrard is a Research Project Coordinator at the University of Kansas Center for Research, contributing to initiatives at the nexus of research, policy implementation, and community efforts. His scholarly engagement spans the subject areas of Cultural Anthropology, Queer Studies, Disability Studies, Mad Studies, and Religious Studies. Clayton is also a host for the Un/Livable Cultures podcast.

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Jay Bhattacharya on the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Public Health Response

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 13:44:32 +0000

Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford University Professor of Medicine) joins to the podcast to discuss his beginnings being born in Calcutta, India, his journey to Stanford as a student obtaining four degrees at the institution (BA, MD, MA, PhD) to becoming a Stanford professor along with his research, the COVID-19 pandemic, and his views on the inadequacies of the public health community and its handling of the pandemic policy response.

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Hyun Bang Shin et al., "COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-pandemic World" (Ubiquity Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-pandemic World (Ubiquity Press, 2021) brings together an ensemble of social scientists who offer critical reflections on how the pandemic was experienced in the region.

It interrogates dominants narratives of Covid-19’s legacies and invites readers to reflect of what it means to return to ‘normal’ in contexts marked by inequalities, selective policy interventions, and invisibilised experiences of marginalised communities.

The book is structured around three themes: (1) urbanisation, digital infrastructures, economies, and the environment; (2) migrants, (im)mobilities, and borders; and (3) collective action, communities, and mutual action. Each chapter offers a distinctive point of view that contribute to a wider project of decolonising knowledge production.

Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and directs the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre.

Murray Mckenzie is a postdoctoral research assistant and research officer at the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and a strategic planning consultant.

Do Young Oh is an assistant professor at the Department of Urban Planning and Engineering, Pusan National University.

Interested readers can have the open access version of the book using this link.

Like this interview? You may also be interested in:

Christian M. Anderson, Urbanism without Guarantees: The Everyday Life of a Gentrifying West Side Neighborhood, (University of Minnesota Press, 2020)
Jacob Lederman, Chasing World-Class Urbanism: Global Policy Versus Everyday Survival in Buenos Aires, (University of Minnesota Press, 2020)

Nicole Curato is a Professor of Sociology in the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. She co-hosts the New Books in Southeast Asia Studies channel.

This episode was created in collaboration with Erron C. Medina of the Development Studies Program of Ateneo De Manila University and Nicole Anne Revita.

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E. Summerson Carr, "Working the Difference: Science, Spirit, and the Spread of Motivational Interviewing" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a professional practice, a behavioral therapy, and a self-professed conversation style that encourages clients to talk themselves into change. Originally developed to treat alcoholics, MI quickly spread into a variety of professional fields including corrections, medicine, and sanitation.

In Working the Difference: Science, Spirit, and the Spread of Motivational Interviewing (U Chicago Press, 2023), E. Summerson Carr focuses on the training and dissemination of MI to explore how cultural forms—and particularly forms of expertise—emerge and spread. The result is a compelling analysis of the American preoccupations at MI’s core, from democratic autonomy and freedom of speech to Protestant ethics and American pragmatism.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Helen Rappaport, "In Search of Mary Seacole: The Making of a Black Cultural Icon" (Pegasus Books, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Raised in Jamaica, Mary Seacole first came to England in the 1850s after working in Panama. She wanted to volunteer as a nurse and aide during the Crimean War. When her services were rejected, she financed her own expedition to Balaclava, where her reputation for her nursing—and for her compassion—became almost legendary. Popularly known as ‘Mother Seacole’, she was the most famous Black celebrity of her generation—an extraordinary achievement in Victorian Britain.

She regularly mixed with illustrious royal and military patrons and they, along with grateful war veterans, helped her recover financially when she faced bankruptcy. However, after her death in 1881, she was largely forgotten.

More recently, her profile has been revived and her reputation lionized, with a statue of her standing outside St Thomas's Hospital in London and her portrait—rediscovered by the author—now on display in the National Portrait Gallery. In Search of Mary Seacole is the fruit of almost twenty years of research and reveals the truth about Seacole's personal life, her "rivalry" with Florence Nightingale, and other misconceptions.

Vivid and moving, In Search of Mary Seacole: The Making of a Black Cultural Icon (Pegasus Books, 2022) shows that reality is often more remarkable and more dramatic than the legend.

Katrina Anderson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware.

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Buddhist Healing in Contemporary Japan (with Rev. Nathan Jishin Michon)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Dr Pierce Salguero talks with Rev. Nathan Jishin Michon, a postdoctoral fellow at Ryukoku University and an ordained priest in the Shingon Buddhist tradition. Our conversation touches on diverse Buddhist healing rituals and the role of light in Shingon practice and cosmology. We discuss the playfulness and innovation in modern Japanese Buddhism, and the rise of chaplaincy after the 3.11 tsunami and nuclear disaster. We also talk about Nathan’s ethnographic work in Japan, as well as their experiences volunteering in a “listening cafe.”

Resources mentioned in the episode:

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Janet Chrzan and Kima Cargill, "Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets" (Columbia UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What makes fad diets so appealing to so many people? And how did these fads become so central to conversations about food and nutrition?

Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets (Columbia University Press, 2022) shows that fad diets are popular because they fulfill crucial social and psychological needs―which is also why they tend to fail. Authors Janet Chrzan and Kima Cargill bring together anthropology, psychology, and nutrition to explore what these programs promise yet rarely fulfill for dieters. They demonstrate how fad diets help people cope with widespread anxieties and offer tantalizing glimpses of attainable self-transformation. Chrzan and Cargill emphasize the social contexts of diets, arguing that beliefs about nutrition are deeply rooted in pervasive cultural narratives.

Considering dietary beliefs and practices in terms of culture, nutrition, and individual psychological needs, Anxious Eaters refrains from moralizing or promoting a “right” way to eat. Instead, it offers new ways of understanding the popularity of a wide range of eating trends, including the Atkins Diet and other low- or no-carb diets; beliefs that ingredients like wheat products and sugars are toxic, allergenic, or addictive; food avoidance and “Clean Eating” practices; and paleo or primal diets. Anxious Eaters sheds new light on why people adopt such diets and why these diets remain so attractive even though they often fail.

Janet Chrzan teaches nutritional anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Alcohol: Social Drinking in Cultural Context (2013) as well as coeditor of Research Methods for the Anthropological Study of Food and Nutrition (2017) and Organic Food, Farming, and Culture (2019).

Garrett Broad is Associate Professor of Communication Studies in Rowan University’s Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts, where he also serves as Provost’s Fellow in the Catalysts for Sustainability Initiative. His research and teaching explores the connections between contemporary social movements, food systems, and digital media technology. He is the author of More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change, as well as a variety of articles on food's relationship to environmental sustainability, economic equity, and the health of humans and nonhuman animals.

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Karen Weingarten, "Pregnancy Test" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Jana Byars is an independent scholar located in Amsterdam.

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Scott Selberg, "Mediating Alzheimer's: Cognition and Personhood" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

With no known cause or cure despite a century of research, Alzheimer's disease is a true medical mystery. In Mediating Alzheimer's: Cognition and Personhood (U Minnesota Press, 2022), Scott Selberg examines the nature of this enduring national health crisis by looking at the disease's relationship to media and representation. He shows how collective investments in different kinds of media have historically shaped how we understand, treat, and live with this disease.

Selberg demonstrates how the cognitive abilities that Alzheimer's threatens--memory, for example--are integrated into the operations of representational technologies, from Polaroid photographs to Post-its to digital artificial intelligence. Focusing on a wide variety of media technologies, such as neuroimaging, art therapy, virtual reality, and social media, he shows how these cognitively oriented media ultimately help define personhood for people with Alzheimer's. Media have changed the practices of successful aging in the United States, and Selberg takes us deep into how technologies like digital brain-training and online care networks shape ideas of cognition and healthy aging.

Packed with startlingly fresh insights, Mediating Alzheimer's contributes to debates around bioethics, the labor of caregiving, and a national economy increasingly invested in communication and digital media. Probing the very technologies that promise to save and understand our brains, it gives us new ways of understanding Alzheimer's disease and aging in America.

Shu Wan is currently matriculated as a doctoral student in history at the University at Buffalo. As a digital and disability historian, he serves in the editorial team of Digital Humanities Quarterly and Nursing Clio. On Twitter: @slissw.

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Molly Ladd-Taylor, "Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Between 1907 and 1937, thirty-two states legalized the sterilization of more than 63,000 Americans. In Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020), Molly Ladd-Taylor tells the story of these state-run eugenic sterilization programs. She focuses on one such program in Minnesota, where surgical sterilization was legally voluntary and administered within a progressive child welfare system.

Tracing Minnesota's eugenics program from its conceptual origins in the 1880s to its official end in the 1970s, Ladd-Taylor argues that state sterilization policies reflected a wider variety of worldviews and political agendas than previously understood. She describes how, after 1920, people endorsed sterilization and its alternative, institutionalization, as the best way to aid dependent children without helping the "undeserving" poor. She also sheds new light on how the policy gained acceptance and why coerced sterilizations persisted long after eugenics lost its prestige. In Ladd-Taylor's provocative study, eugenic sterilization appears less like a deliberate effort to improve the gene pool than a complicated but sadly familiar tale of troubled families, fiscal and administrative politics, and deep-felt cultural attitudes about disability, dependency, sexuality, and gender.

Drawing on institutional and medical records, court cases, newspapers, and professional journals, Ladd-Taylor reconstructs the tragic stories of the welfare-dependent, sexually delinquent, and disabled people who were labeled "feebleminded" and targeted for sterilization. She chronicles the routine operation of Minnesota's three-step policy of eugenic commitment, institutionalization, and sterilization in the 1920s and 1930s and shows how surgery became the "price of freedom" from a state institution. Combining innovative political analysis with a compelling social history of those caught up in Minnesota's welfare system, Fixing the Poor is a powerful reinterpretation of eugenic sterilization.

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Maria Smilios, "The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

New York City, 1929. A sanatorium, a deadly disease, and a dire nursing shortage.

In the pre-antibiotic days when tuberculosis stirred people’s darkest fears, killing one in seven, white nurses at Sea View, New York’s largest municipal hospital, began quitting en masse. Desperate to avert a public health crisis, city officials summoned Black southern nurses, luring them with promises of good pay, a career, and an escape from the strictures of Jim Crow. But after arriving, they found themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island, yet again confronting racism and consigned to a woefully understaffed sanatorium, dubbed “the pest house,” where it was said that “no one left alive.”

Spanning the Great Depression and moving through World War II and beyond, this remarkable true story follows the intrepid young women known by their patients as the “Black Angels.” For twenty years, they risked their lives working under appalling conditions while caring for New York’s poorest residents, who languished in wards, waiting to die, or became guinea pigs for experimental surgeries and often deadly drugs. But despite their major role in desegregating the New York City hospital system—and their vital work in helping to find the cure for tuberculosis at Sea View—these nurses were completely erased from history. Maria Smilios' book The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023) recovers the voices of these extraordinary women and puts them at the center of this riveting story, celebrating their legacy and spirit of survival. New York City, 1929. A sanatorium, a deadly disease, and a dire nursing shortage.

Spanning the Great Depression and moving through World War II and beyond, this remarkable true story follows the intrepid young women known by their patients as the “Black Angels.” For twenty years, they risked their lives working under appalling conditions while caring for New York’s poorest residents, who languished in wards, waiting to die, or became guinea pigs for experimental surgeries and often deadly drugs. But despite their major role in desegregating the New York City hospital system—and their vital work in helping to find the cure for tuberculosis at Sea View—these nurses were completely erased from history. The Black Angels recovers the voices of these extraordinary women and puts them at the center of this riveting story, celebrating their legacy and spirit of survival.

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Luke Messac, "Your Money Or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

A riveting exposé of medical debt collection in America -- and the profound financial and physical costs eroding patient trust in medicine For the crime of falling sick without wealth, Americans today face lawsuits, wage garnishment, home foreclosure, and even jail time. Yet who really profits from aggressive medical debt collection? And how does this predatory system affect patients and doctors responsible for their care?

Your Money Or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine (Oxford UP, 2023) reveals how medical debt collection became a multibillion-dollar industry and how everyday Americans are made to pay the price. Emergency physician and historian Luke Messac weaves patient stories into a history of law, finance, and medicine to show how debt and debt collection are destroying the foundational trust between doctors and patients at the heart of American healthcare. The fight to stop aggressive collection tactics has brought together people from all corners of the political spectrum. But if we want to better protect the sick from financial ruin, we have to understand how we got here. With wit and clarity, Your Money or Your Life asks us all to rethink the purpose of our modern healthcare system and consider whom it truly serves.

Stephen Pimpare is a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.

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A Better Way to Buy Books

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities.

Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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Situating Religion and Medicine (with Michael Stanley-Baker)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Today I sit down for an in-depth conversation with my good friend, Michael Stanley-Baker, a scholar of Chinese religion and medicine. We talk about Mike’s international childhood and how his family history influenced his intellectual life, his training as a Chinese medical practitioner, and his book co-edited with Vivienne Lo, the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine (Routledge, 2022), which is groundbreaking... and open access! We also talk about Mike’s new book with Manchester University Press, Situating Religion and Medicine in Asia, which opens up a critical conversation about how we understand Asian medicine. Then, we look ahead to Mike’s digital humanities project, called Polyglot Asian Medicines. Along the way we talk rabbit-ducks and how fish know that they're underwater.

I hope that you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. And if you want to hear from more experts on Buddhist medicine and related topics, subscribe to Blue Beryl for monthly episodes.

Resources mentioned in the episode:

Michael Stanley-Baker and Vivienne Lo (eds), Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine (2022). Available open access here.
Michael Stanley-Baker, Situating Religion and Medicine in Asia: Methodological Insights and Innovations (2023).
The Rabbit-Duck (image)
Polyglot Asian Medicines project website
Polyglot Asian Medicines intro video
Mike's publications

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Nancy L. Segal, "The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive" (Academic Studies Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive (Academic Studies Press, 2023) is an annotated collection of original, informative, and moving photographs of the twins who survived the brutal medical experiments conducted at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp (1943-1945). The experiments were conducted by the infamous physician, Josef Mengele. These never-before-seen photographs were taken by the author (Segal) at the 40th anniversary of the camp’s liberation (January 27, 1985) and the public hearing on Mengele’s crimes at Yad Vashem (A Memorial and a Name) in Jerusalem that followed. Other memorable moments, captured in photographs, include traveling to Krakow, visiting Warsaw and hearing survivors’ testimonies. The photographs are organized into ten sections that unfold chronologically—each section is accompanied by a brief essay to provide compelling context and each photograph has an informative caption.

Dr. Nancy L. Segal is Psychology Professor and Director, Twin Studies Center, at California State University, Fullerton. Her book, Born Together-Reared Apart, won the American Psychological Association’s William James Book Award. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and Atlantic Monthly. She has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, and the BBC.

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Gerald O'Brien, "Eugenics, Genetics, and Disability in Historical and Contemporary Perspective: Implications for the Social Work Profession" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Gerald O'Brien's book Eugenics, Genetics, and Disability in Historical and Contemporary Perspective: Implications for the Social Work Profession (Oxford UP, 2023) focuses on the conceptual relationship between the American eugenic movement of the early 1900s and contemporary genetic research, policy and practices, and their relevance for social work and related professions. While the expansion of pre-natal testing and other genetic innovations are often couched as a form of "new eugenics," this description is only partially correct. This book provides the first in-depth exploration of the relationship between the emerging social work profession and the eugenic movement during the first quarter of the twentieth century and considers the historical importance of this for the profession today.

Social workers played a particularly important role in the movement of eugenic policies from targeting persons with disabilities to limiting procreation among "welfare" recipients, especially minority women. As the profession attempts to come to terms with this problematic history, it also needs to understand the dual "faces" it displays to persons with disabilities. Often purported as supporters of such persons, social workers' continued embracement of the medical model of disabilities keeps them from being accepted by many as true allies in the fight for social justice related to disability inclusion.

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The Future of the NHS: A Discussion with Gavin Francis

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 3 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The British National Health Service - free for all - used to be the envy of the world. But today the NHS is malfunctioning. More and more people are resorting to private care – is not unusual now for Brits to travel to Turkey or Lithuania to get hip replacements and the like – so should Britain now give up on the NHS and move to a European model of healthcare… Dr Gavin Francis has just written a book on the NHS: Free For All: Why the NHS is Worth Saving (Profile Books, 2024). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones.

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The Past and Present of Psychedelic Medicine

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 1 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Psychedelics have gone from the counterculture, to the mainstream. However, can you turn take such an ineffable thing — a tool for personal revelation, cosmic oneness, spiritual enlightenment, whatever people have called it — and make it just another product in late stage capitalism? From something that is potentially radical, to something that is brutally commodified, instrumentalized, hyped, and turned into the next meme stock craze. The venture capitalists and techno-optimist libertarians are certainly trying, but not everyone is happy about that. On this episode, we look at the deep rifts in and around psychedelic medicine, as different camps vie for the future of these drugs.

First, we go back to the beginning. Historian Erika Dyck tells us the little-known story of an earlier period of psychedelic research, led by pioneers in — believe it or not — Weyburn, Saskatchewan. Dyke’s book Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD on the Canadian Prairies charts the early days of this medical research, and reveals important lessons for our current tensions. The book shows that deep rifts have always existed in psychedelic research, because the drugs sit uncomfortably in-between many different ways of knowing.

Then, muckracking psychonaut David Nickles is calling out the mainstream commodification of psychedelics, as well as the bullshit and abuse within the underground. Nickles is an underground researcher, harm reduction advocate, and journalist, who is also managing editor of Psymopsia, a psychedelics watchdog group. In 2018, he excoriated the psychedelic research community for playing nice with the emerging VC-backed psychedelic firms, like the Peter Thiel-funded Compass Pathways (Nickles’ talk is summarized here, but the full talk is available on Youtube). Since then, Nickles says things have only gotten worse. He documents much of that in Power Trip, an investigative podcast series on psychedelic therapy, produced by New York Magazine and Psymosia.

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Jonathan Ablard, "Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State, 1880-1983" (Ohio UP, 2008)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 1 Sep 2023 04:00:00 +0000

Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State, 1880-1983 (Ohio UP, 2008) examines the interactions between psychiatrists, patients and their families, and the national state in modern Argentina. This book offers a fresh interpretation of the Argentine state's relationship to modernity and social change during the twentieth century, while also examining the often contentious place of psychiatry in modern Argentina.

Drawing on a number of previously untapped archival sources, author Jonathan Ablard uses the experience of psychiatric patients as a case study of how the Argentine state developed and functioned over the last century and of how Argentines interacted with it. Ablard argues that the capacity of the state to provide social services and professional opportunities and to control the populace was often constrained to an extent not previously recognized in scholarly literature. These limitations, including a shortage of hospitals, insufficient budgets, and political and economic instability, shaped the experiences of patients, their families, and doctors and also influenced medical and lay ideas about the nature and significance of mental illness. Furthermore, these experiences, and the institutional framework in which they were imbedded, had a profound impact on how Argentine psychiatrists discussed not only mental illness but also a host of related themes including immigration, poverty, and the role of the state in mitigating social problems.

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Donna J. Drucker, "Fertility Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Donna J. Drucker is Assistant Director of Scholarship and Research Development at the Columbia University School of Nursing.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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Elaine Schattner, "From Whispers to Shouts: The Ways We Talk about Cancer" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The “war on cancer” was launched during the Nixon Administration in 1971, but the term was part of the national dialog on cancer at least early as 1913. Pink ribbons have been ubiquitous symbols of breast cancer awareness and fund-raising promotions since the mid-1980s, but “cancer weeks” fostering awareness of the disease and gala fund-raisers staged by wealthy socialites were popular beginning at least 100 years earlier. Early detection was touted as a cure at the beginning of the 20th century, long before any treatments other than primitive surgery were available, not to mention tests like mammography to detect the disease.

Elaine Schattner provides these and myriad other surprising insights from our long and tortuous relationship with cancer in From Whispers to Shouts: The Ways We Talk about Cancer (Columbia UP, 2023). It is a fascinating book that traces how public perception and portrayal of cancer in our conversations, media and culture has evolved over the past century and a half. Whispers reflect the fear and shame that have led many to hide a cancer diagnosis; shouts mark the advocacy and activism that is giving patients voice in both the doctor’s office and the public stage.

Dr. Schattner, a medical oncologist, breast cancer survivor, and journalist enlists an intriguing cast of characters to tell the story: U.S. presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland and Joe Biden; Babe Ruth; Nat King Cole; the writer Susan Sontag; AIDS activist Larry Kramer; Gilda Radner and Nora Ephron are just a few of those she features whose stories have helped shape our changing attitudes toward a disease that has long been viewed as a death sentence, but one that for increasing numbers of patients is now a manageable illness with prospects for meaningful survival.

In the past 25 years, effective new, but costly drugs that target molecular drivers of tumors or unleash the immune system against the disease have transformed treatment for many patients. The rise of the internet and social media has vastly changed how we learn and talk about cancer. Dr. Schattner describes both good and bad ramifications of these disruptive events and says what is needed is greater understanding of the treatability of the disease.

Ron Winslow, a former long-time medical reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, is a freelance medical and science journalist.

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Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstein, "We've Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care" (Penguin, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Few of us need convincing that the American health insurance system needs reform. But many of the existing proposals focus on expanding one relatively successful piece of the system or building in piecemeal additions. These proposals miss the point.

As the Stanford health economist Liran Einav and the MIT economist and MacArthur Genius Amy Finkelstein argue, our health care system was never deliberately designed, but rather pieced together to deal with issues as they became politically relevant. The result is a sprawling yet arbitrary and inadequate mess. It has left 30 million Americans without formal insurance. Many of the rest live in constant danger of losing their coverage if they lose their job, give birth, get older, get healthier, get richer, or move.

It's time to tear it all down and rebuild, sensibly and deliberately. Marshaling original research, striking insights from American history, and comparative analysis of what works and what doesn’t from systems around the world, Einav and Finkelstein argue for automatic, basic, and free universal coverage for everyone, along with the option to buy additional, supplemental coverage. Their wholly original argument and comprehensive blueprint for an American universal health insurance system will surprise and provoke.

We've Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care (Penguin, 2023) is an erudite yet lively and accessible prescription we cannot afford to ignore.

John Emrich has worked for decades years in corporate finance, business valuation and fund management. He has a podcast about the investment space called Kick the Dogma.

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Laura R. Kremmel, "Romantic Medicine and the Gothic Imagination: Morbid Anatomies" (U Wales Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Romantic Medicine and the Gothic Imagination: Morbid Anatomies (U Wales Press, 2022) demonstrates a little-studied crossover between the Gothic imagination and the medical imagination in the Romantic period. Unafraid to explore the gore and uncertainty typical of medical experimentation, Laura R. Kremmel argues, Gothic novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and chapbooks expanded the possibilities of medical theories by showing what they might look like in a speculative space without limits. In comparing the Gothic’s collection of unsavory tropes to morbid anatomy’s collection of diseased organs, Kremmel shows that the Gothic’s prioritization of fear and gore gives it access to non-normative bodies, shifting medical and narrative agency to bodies considered powerless. Each chapter pairs a familiar gothic trope with a critical medical debate; the result is to give silenced bodies power over their own narratives.

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Jason Weiner, "Care and Covenant: A Jewish Bioethic of Responsibility" (Georgetown UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Jewish tradition has important perspectives, history and wisdom that can contribute significantly to crucial contemporary healthcare deliberations. Jason Weiner's book Care and Covenant: A Jewish Bioethic of Responsibility (Georgetown UP, 2023) is an attempt to show how numerous classic Jewish texts and ideas have significant things to say about some of the most urgent debates in the world of medicine today, with the potential to significantly expand and benefit the field of bioethics.

But this book is not only about applying classical Jewish values to bioethical dilemmas. It seeks to develop an approach that is primarily informed by personal and communal obligations and social responsibilities. Jewish values focus on requirements, obligations, and commandments, and has thus sometimes been called an "Ethics of Responsibility," by advancing new relevant approaches that can encourage healthcare providers to remain dedicated to preventing harm and providing compassionate care to all, based on these inspiring and timeless values.

Each chapter of this book explores questions such as: "Are we expected to risk our lives on behalf of others?" "When we can only help a limited number of people, how do we prioritize?" "What are the obligations and expectations of a society or government?" "Are issues of cultural sensitivity relevant in how we discharge our obligations to others?" "What should we do when obligations for others violate our own moral principles or commitments?" "Are there limits to how far one can be expected to go for others?" These and other issues are addressed in this book, as it attempts to describe a meaningful and compassionate Jewish bioethic of responsibility for our times.

Matthew Miller is a graduate of Yeshivat Yesodei HaTorah. He studied Jewish Studies and Linguistics at McGill for his BA and completed an MA in Hebrew Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. He works with Jewish organizations in media and content distribution, such as TheHabura.com and RabbiEfremGoldberg.org.

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Infectious Behavior: Brain-Immune Connections in Autism, Schizophrenia, and Depression

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Infectious Behavior, neurobiologist Paul Patterson examines the involvement of the immune system in autism, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder. Although genetic approaches to these diseases have garnered the lion's share of publicity and funding, scientists are uncovering evidence of the important avenues of communication between the brain and the immune system and their involvement in mental illness. Patterson focuses on this brain-immune crosstalk, exploring the possibility that it may help us understand the causes of these common, but still mysterious, diseases. The heart of this engaging book, accessible to nonscientists, concerns the involvement of the immune systems of the pregnant woman and her fetus, and a consideration of maternal infection as a risk factor for schizophrenia and autism. Patterson reports on research that may shed light on today's autism epidemic. He also outlines the risks and benefits of both maternal and postnatal vaccinations.

In the course of his discussion, Patterson offers a short history of immune manipulation in treating mental illness (recounting some frightening but fascinating early experiments) and explains how the immune system influences behavior and how the brain regulates the immune system, looking in particular at stress and depression. He examines the prenatal origins of adult disease and evidence for immune involvement in autism, schizophrenia, and depression. Finally, he describes the promise shown by recent animal experiments that have led to early clinical trials of postnatal and adult treatments for patients with autism and related disorders.

Paul H. Patterson, a developmental neurobiologist, is Anne P. and Benjamin R. Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences at the California Institute of Technology and a Research Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. He is the coauthor (with Alan Brown) of The Origins of Schizophrenia.

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Benjamin Y. Fong, "Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge" (Verso, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Benjamin Y. Fong is author of the new book Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge, which was just released in July, 2023 by Verso Books. Ben is an honors faculty fellow and associate director of the Center for Work & Democracy at Arizona State University, and his work has appeared in Jacobin, Catalyst, and the New York Times. Previously, Ben’s work focused on the (usually negative) effects of neoliberal capitalism, writing about NGOs, labor leaders, and health care. Quick Fixes expands this examination into the world of drugs, examining nine different kinds of intoxicants, and five “orienting claims” that place their use within in larger capitalist histories.

A bit about the book...

Americans are in the midst of a world-historic drug binge. Opiates, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, marijuana, antidepressants, antipsychotics--across the board, consumption has shot up in the 21st century. At the same time, the United States is home to the largest prison system in the world, justified in part by a now zombified "war" on drugs. How did we get here?

Quick Fixes is a look at American society through the lens of its pharmacological crutches. Though particularly acute in recent decades, the contradiction between America's passionate love and intense hatred for drugs has been one of its defining characteristics for over a century.

Through nine chapters, each devoted to the modern history of a drug or class of drugs, Fong examines Americans' fraught relationship with psychoactive substances. As society changes it produces different forms of stress, isolation, and alienation. These changes, in turn, shape the sorts of drugs society chooses.

By laying out the histories, functions, and experiences of our chemical comforts, the hope is to help answer that ever perplexing question: what does it mean to be an American?

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The Silent Epidemic: Coal and the Hidden Threat to Health

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 18:14:20 +0000

We will not find “exposure to burning coal” listed as the cause of death on a single death certificate, but tens of thousands of deaths from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and other illnesses are clearly linked to coal-derived pollution. As politicians and advertising campaigns extol the virtues of “clean coal,” the dirty secret is that coal kills. In The Silent Epidemic, Alan Lockwood, a physician, describes and documents the adverse health effects of burning coal. Lockwood's comprehensive treatment examines every aspect of coal, from its complex chemical makeup to details of mining, transporting, burning, and disposal—each of which generates significant health concerns. He describes coal pollution's effects on the respiratory, cardiovascular, and nervous systems, and how these problems will only get worse; explains the impact of global warming on coal-related health problems; and discusses possible policy approaches to combat coal pollution.

Coal fueled the industrial revolution and has become a major source of energy in virtually every country. In the United States, almost half of the energy used to generate electricity comes from burning coal. Relatively few people are aware of the health threats posed by coal-derived pollutants, and those who are aware lack the political clout of the coal industry. Lockwood's straightforward description of coal as a health hazard is especially timely, given the barrage of marketing efforts to promote coal as part of “energy independence.” His message is clear and urgent: “Coal-fired plants make people sick and die, particularly children and those with chronic illnesses, and they cost society huge amounts of money desperately needed for other purposes.”

Alan H. Lockwood, M.D. is Emeritus Professor of Neurology and Nuclear Medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the lead author of a Physicians for Social Responsibility report on coal’s adverse health effects.

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Why Consumers Choose Private Over Public Health Services in Vietnam

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Demographic changes, rise in disposable income, and steady economic growth has led to a growing demand for healthcare services in Vietnam. But the public healthcare system struggles to meet the diverse healthcare needs of the Vietnamese population. Within this context, the private sector in Vietnam fills an important gap left by the public sector. Today’s guest is interested in why consumers choose private over public health services in Vietnam, and in particular, the social factors that influence these choices, including word of mouth referrals, the patient-doctor relationship, the behaviour of healthcare staff, and marketing.

To discuss these issues is Dr Mai Nguyen, a public health specialist with the Ministry of Health in Vietnam. Mai was a SSEAC Writing Fellow in 2022, and her article looked at how public and private healthcare providers interact with consumers to affect their choices.

Dr Natali Pearson is Curriculum Coordinator at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, a university-wide multidisciplinary center at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on the protection, management and interpretation of underwater cultural heritage in Southeast Asia.

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Michelle Daniel Jones and Elizabeth A. Nelson, "Besides, Who Would Believe a Prisoner?: Indiana Women's Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920" (New Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What if prisoners were to write the history of their own prison? What might that tell them--and all of us--about the roots of the system that incarcerates so many millions of Americans?

In Besides, Who Would Believe a Prisoner?: Indiana Women's Carceral Institutions, 1848-1920 (New Press, 2023), a group of incarcerated women at the Indiana Women's Prison have assembled a chronicle of what was originally known as the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls, founded in 1873 as the first totally separate prison for women in the United States. In an effort that has already made the national news, and which was awarded the Indiana History Outstanding Project for 2016 by the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana Women's Prison History Project worked under conditions of sometimes-extreme duress, excavating documents, navigating draconian limitations on what information incarcerated scholars could see or access, and grappling with the unprecedented challenges stemming from co-authors living on either side of the prison walls. With contributions from ten incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women, the result is like nothing ever produced in the historical literature: a document that is at once a shocking revelation of the roots of America's first prison for women, and also a meditation on incarceration itself. "Besides, Who Would Believe a Prisoner?" is a book that will be read and studied for years to come as the nation continues to grapple with the crisis of mass incarceration.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Traditional Medicine in Laos (with Elizabeth Elliott and Ounkham Souksavanh)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Pierce Salguero sits down with two guests, Ounkham Souksavanh and Elizabeth Elliott, to talk about community engagement and community health in Laos. They discuss how Elizabeth as a medical anthropologist, and Ounkham as a physician, work together to build trust and improve healthcare access across an ethnically and religiously diverse landscape. Along the way, we learn about Elizabeth’s experience of foraging for herbs and Ounkham’s memories of growing up with traditional medicine in his family. If you want to learn about the landscape of Lao traditional healers and medicinal plants — with a few snake bites and plant talismans thrown in — then this episode is for you!

Enjoy! And, if you want to hear from more experts on Buddhist medicine and related topics, subscribe to Blue Beryl for monthly episodes here.

Resources mentioned in the podcast:

Elizabeth's dissertation: "Potent Plants, Cool Hearts" (2021)
Pierce Salguero, Traditional Thai Medicine: Buddhism, Animism, Yoga, Ayurveda (2016)
Richard Poitier, Yû dî mî hèng "être bien, avoir de la force" (2007)
Elizabeth's documentary: Traditional Medicine in Southern Laos (2023)
Brand new book released after the interview was recorded: Djaja Djendoel Soejarto et al, Medicinal Plants of Laos (2023)

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Andreas Killen, "Nervous Systems: Brain Science in the Early Cold War" (Harper, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 6 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

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Jill L. Newmark, "Without Concealment, Without Compromise: The Courageous Lives of Black Civil War Surgeons" (Southern Illinois UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Of some twelve thousand Union Civil War surgeons, only fourteen were Black men. This book is the first-ever comprehensive exploration of their lives and service.

In Without Concealment, Without Compromise: The Courageous Lives of Black Civil War Surgeons (Southern Illinois UP, 2023), Jill L. Newmark's outstanding research uncovers stories hidden for more than 150 years, illuminating the unique experiences of proud, patriotic men who fought racism and discrimination to attend medical school and serve with the U.S. military. Their efforts and actions influenced societal change and forged new pathways for African Americans.

Individual biographies bring to light Alexander T. Augusta, who challenged discriminatory laws; William P. Powell Jr., who pursued a military pension for twenty-five years; Anderson R. Abbott, a friend of Elizabeth Keckley's; John van Surly DeGrasse, the only Black surgeon to serve on the battlefield; John H. Rapier Jr., an international traveler; Richard H. Greene, the only Black surgeon known to have served in the Navy; Willis R. Revels, a preacher; Benjamin A. Boseman, a politician and postmaster; and Charles B. Purvis, who taught at Howard University. Information was limited for five other men, all of whom broke educational barriers by attending medical schools in the United States: Cortlandt Van Rensselaer Creed, William B. Ellis, Alpheus W. Tucker, Joseph Dennis Harris, and Charles H. Taylor.

Newmark presents all available information about the surgeons' early lives, influences, education, Civil War service, and post-war experiences. Many of the stories overlap, as did the lives of the men. Each man, through his service as a surgeon during the war and his lifelong activism for freedom, justice, and equality, became a catalyst of change and a symbol of an emancipated future.

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Thurka Sangaramoorthy, "Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America" (UNC Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America (UNC Press, 2023) examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean, navigate the healthcare system in the United States. Since 1990, immigration to the United States has risen sharply, and rural areas have seen the highest increases. Thurka Sangaramoorthy reveals that the corporatization of healthcare delivery and immigration policies are deeply connected in rural America. Drawing from fieldwork that centers on Maryland's sparsely populated Eastern Shore, Sangaramoorthy shows how longstanding issues of precarity among rural health systems along with the exclusionary logics of immigration have mutually fashioned a "landscape of care" in which shared conditions of physical suffering and emotional anxiety among immigrants and rural residents generate powerful forms of regional vitality and social inclusion. Sangaramoorthy connects the Eastern Shore and its immigrant populations to many other places around the world that are struggling with the challenges of global migration, rural precarity, and health governance. Her extensive ethnographic and policy research shows the personal stories behind health inequity data and helps to give readers a human entry point into the enormous challenges of immigration and rural health.

This book is open access, courtesy of the TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) project. You can learn more about open-access books published by the University of North Carolina Press here.

Thurka Sangaramoorthy is professor of anthropology at American University.

Alize Arıcan is a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University and an incoming Assistant Professor of Anthropology at CUNY—City College, focusing on urban renewal, futurity, care, and migration. You can find her on Twitter @alizearican.

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Ruth Yun-Ju Chen, "Good Formulas: Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts" (U Washington Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Ruth Yun-Ju Chen is a historian of mid-imperial China (600–1400). Her research interests lie in the histories of medicine, publishing, and material cultures during this period. Her first book, Good Formulas: Empirical Evidence in Mid-Imperial Chinese Medical Texts, will come out from the University of Washington Press in 2023. This book charts how early print culture reshaped strategies for presenting medical knowledge in Song China (960–1279). Her current project explores the transregional circulation of medical knowledge and aromatic drugs across East Asia and Southeast Asia in Song-Jin-Yuan China (960–1368). She has published articles in Chinese and English language journals and, most recently, “A New Study of Scholar-officials’ Roles in the Printing of Medical Texts in Song China” in the Bulletin of IHP 92.3 (2021) and “The Quest for Efficiency: Knowledge Management in Medical Formularies” in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 80.2 (2021).

A bit about the book:

Why and how did the strategy of documenting medical practices through personal experience rise to prominence in China? This question is at the heart of Good Formulas, the first book-length study of the use of empirical evidence in Chinese medicine between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. The rise of this new approach to substantiating knowledge, which had appeared only sporadically in earlier medical literature, provides a window into transformations in the construction of textual authority in mid-imperial China.

Focusing on medical genres and working extensively with notebooks (biji), Ruth Yun-Ju Chen shows that employing empirical evidence became prominent in conjunction with a publishing boom that enabled wider availability of medical texts and treatises. To convince a more socioculturally diverse readership to believe their claims and to win intertextual debates with contemporaneous authors, many Song medical authors turned to empirical methodology. Revealing a correlation between publishing cultures and changes in persuasion strategies in medical genres, Good Formulas offers new insights into the histories of medicine, knowledge production, and publishing in China. It also provides rich examples for scholars interested in the development of empirical evidence in the premodern world.

Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies.

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Colleen M. Grogan, "Grow and Hide: The History of America's Health Care State" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

A sweeping history of the American health care state that reveals the public has been intentionally misled about the true role of government. The US government has always invested federal, state and local dollars in public health protection and prevention. Despite this public funding, however, Americans typically believe the current system is predominantly comprised of private actors with little government interference.

In Grow and Hide: The History of America's Health Care State (Oxford UP, 2023), Colleen M. Grogan details the history of the American health care state and argues that the public has been intentionally misled about the true role of government. The US created a publicly financed system while framing it as the opposite in what Grogan terms the "grow-and-hide regime." Today, the state's role is larger than ever, yet it remains largely hidden because stakeholders-namely, private actors and their allies in government-have repeatedly, and successfully, presented the illusion of minimal government involvement. The consequences of this narrative are scarce accountability and a highly unequal distribution of benefits. In the wake of a pandemic that has killed over one million Americans--with the highest death rates among minorities and lower-income people--the time has come for an honest discussion about the health care system. As Grogan reveals, America has never had a system that resembles a competitive, free-market model. Given how much the government already invests in the health care system, means how these funds are distributed and administered are fundamental political questions for the American public, not questions that should be decided by the private sector. If we want to fix care in America, we need to reimagine the way it is organized, prioritized, funded, and, perhaps most importantly, discussed. Grow & Hide is an important contribution to this reimagining.

Stephen Pimpare is a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.

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Taylor McCall, "The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 1 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

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Daisy Cheung and Michael Dunn, "Advance Directives Across Asia: A Comparative Socio-legal Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Advance Directives in Asia: A Socio-Legal Analysis (Cambridge UP, 2023) , edited by Daisy Cheung and Michael Dunn is the first book to consider the concept of advance directives in Asia. It is unique in its depth and breadth as it brings together an extensive number of Asian jurisdictions to draw out the ways that advance directives are regulated in law and practice across the region. In their analysis Cheung and Dunn provide overall observations towards a concept of "generative accomodation". As a concept, generative accomodation has the potential to foreground new explorations of bioethics in Asia and globally. It also seeks to understand the role of the family in medical decision making. These are key concerns that come through in this comprehensive and groundbreaking book. It will be useful for regulators, Asia scholars, students, and practitioners in the field of health-law and ethics, and end of life care. The book has wider application for scholars in law, ethics and healthcare.

Daisy Cheung is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law and the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law at The University of Hong Kong.

Dr Michael Dunn is an Associate Professor and the Co-Director of Education at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK

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The Texas Two-Step and Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What’s safer than baby powder? Parents have been trusting Johnson & Johnson for over 100 years to powder their baby’s bottoms.

Yet, numerous studies have revealed the presence of trace amounts of asbestos in this talc-based powder. Thousands of parents now claim that this asbestos is responsible for their cancers. A Reuters investigation catalogued this evidence and the fact that J&J knew about the asbestos since the 1950s, yet continued to sell the powder.

Johnson & Johnson is proposing a $9 billion dollar settlement for the over 38,000 lawsuits brought and all claims into the future. However, it depends on the courts accepting a controversial bankruptcy procedure called “the Texas Two-Step.” This strategy is being used to address a raft of personal injury complaints against a number of companies, but critics call it nothing more than a ‘sham bankruptcy’ that is being used to let corporations off the hook.

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Vincanne Adams, "Glyphosate and the Swirl: An Agroindustrial Chemical on the Move" (Duke UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Vincanne Adams's book Glyphosate and the Swirl: An Agroindustrial Chemical on the Move (Duke UP, 2023) is part of a broader trend in anthropology that is developing new methods and techniques to study our increasingly polluted and toxic world. Adams takes Glyphosate as a case study and follows this chemical as it moves from the past to the present, from the lab to the dinner table, from outside our bodies, to within our cells to grapple with what it is to live in such an entangled world.

Adams explores the chemical glyphosate—the active ingredient in Roundup and a pervasive agricultural herbicide—as a predicament of contested science and chemically saturated life. Adams traces the history of glyphosate’s invention and its multiple uses as activists, regulators, scientists, clinicians, consumers, and sick people try to determine its safety and harm. Scientific and political debates over glyphosate’s toxicity are agitated into a swirl—a condition in which certainty is continually contested, divided, and multiplied. This movement replicates the chemical’s movement in soils, foods, bodies, archives, labs, and legislative bodies, settling in some places here and in other places there, its potencies changing and altering what it touches with different scales and kinds of impact. The swirl is both an artifact of academic capitalism, activist tactics, and contested scientific facts and a way to capture the complexity of contemporary life with chemicals. Prof. Vincanne Adams, is professor Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Elliott M. Reichardt, MPhil, is a PhD Candidate in Socio-Cultural Anthropology at Stanford University. Elliott's research interests are in capitalism, colonialism, and socio-ecological health in North America. Elliott also has long standing interests in medical anthropology and the history of science and medicine.

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Oyman Başaran, "Circumcision and Medicine in Modern Turkey" (U Texas Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Turkey, circumcision is viewed as both a religious obligation and a rite of passage for young boys, as communities celebrate the ritual through gatherings, gifts, and special outfits. Yet the procedure is a potentially painful and traumatic ordeal. With the expansion of modern medicine, the social position of sünnetçi (male circumcisers) became subject to the institutional arrangements of Turkey’s evolving health care and welfare system. In the transition from traditional itinerant circumcisers to low-ranking health officers in the 1960s and hospital doctors in the 1990s, the medicalization of male circumcision has become entangled with state formation, market fetishism, and class inequalities.

Based on Oyman Başaran’s extensive ethnographic and historical research, Circumcision and Medicine in Modern Turkey is a close examination of the socioreligious practice of circumcision in twenty-five cities and their outlying towns and villages in Turkey. By analyzing the changing subjectivity of medical actors who seek to alleviate suffering in male circumcision, Başaran offers a psychoanalytically informed alternate approach to the standard sociological arguments surrounding medicalization and male circumcision.

Oyman Başaran is an associate professor of sociology at Bowdoin College.

Alize Arıcan is a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University, focusing on urban renewal, futurity, care, and migration. You can find her on Twitter @alizearican.

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Heidi Hausse, "The Malleable Body: Surgeons, Artisans, and Amputees in Early Modern Germany" (Manchester UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Heide Hausse's book The Malleable Body: Surgeons, Artisans, and Amputees in Early Modern Germany (Manchester University Press, 2023) uses amputation and prostheses to tell a new story about medicine and embodied knowledge-making in early modern Europe. It draws on the writings of craft surgeons and learned physicians to follow the heated debates that arose from changing practices of removing limbs, uncovering tense moments in which decisions to operate were made. Importantly, it teases out surgeons' ideas about the body embedded in their technical instructions. This unique study also explores the material culture of mechanical hands that amputees commissioned locksmiths, clockmakers, and other artisans to create, revealing their roles in developing a new prosthetic technology. Over two centuries of surgical and artisanal interventions emerged a growing perception, fundamental to biomedicine today, that humans could alter the body - that it was malleable.

Jana Byars is an independent scholar located in Amsterdam.

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Yi-Tang Lin, "Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Taiwan, and the World, 1917-1960" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Yi-Tang Lin received her BA in sociology at National Taiwan University and MA in MA Interdisciplinary Practices of Humanities and Social Sciences, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and École Normale Supériorie (ENS), France. She completed her PhD at the University of Lausanne. After spending several years at the University of Geneva for her postdoc research on "Rockefeller Fellows as Heralds of Globalization (1917-1970), she is now PRIMA Professor at University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Yi-Tang’s research focuses on the transnational history of science, technology and medicine. She is the author of Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Taiwan and the World, 1917–1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2022). In this book, she traces the the historical process by which statistics became the language of global health for local and international health organizations. Currently, she is conducting a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, aiming to decentralize historical accounts of the Cold War-era “Green Revolution” by studying exchange pathways between Asia and Africa and challenging the notion of two regions considered only the recipients instead of actors in these exchanges.

Harry Yi-Jui Wu is Associate Professor jointly appointed by Cross College Elite Program and Department of Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan). He is the author of Mad by the Millions: Mental Disorders and the Early Years of the World Health Organization (MIT Press, 2021).

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Jenna Grant, "Fixing the Image: Ultrasound and the Visuality of Care in Phnom Penh" (U Washington Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 15 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Jenna Grant is a cultural anthropologist from the University of Washington and author of Fixing the Image: Ultrasound and the Visuality of Care in Phnom Penh, published by University of Washington Press in 2022.

Introduced in Phnom Penh around 1990, at the twilight of socialism and after two decades of conflict and upheaval, ultrasound took root in humanitarian and then privatized medicine. Services have since multiplied, promising diagnostic information and better prenatal and general health care. In Fixing the Image Jenna Grant draws on years of ethnographic and archival research to theorize the force and appeal of medical imaging in the urban landscape of Phnom Penh. Set within long genealogies of technology as tool of postcolonial modernity, and vision as central to skilled diagnosis in medicine and Theravada Buddhism, ultrasound offers stabilizing knowledge and elicits desire and pleasure, particularly for pregnant women. Grant offers the concept of "fixing"--which invokes repair, stabilization, and a dose of something to which one is addicted--to illuminate how ultrasound is entangled with practices of care and neglect across different domains. Fixing the Image thus provides a method for studying technological practice in terms of specific materialities and capacities of technologies--in this case, image production and the permeability of the body--illuminating how images are a material form of engagement between patients, between patients and their doctors, and between patients and their bodies.

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The Future of Food: A Discussion with Kimberly Wilson

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

We all know that as a nation our mental health is in crisis. But what most don't know is that a critical ingredient in this debate, and a crucial part of the solution - what we eat - is being ignored. Nutrition has more influence on what we feel, who we become and how we behave than we could ever have imagined. Listen to Kimberly Wilson speak with Owen Bennett-Jones discuss the connection between food and mental health. Wilson is the author of Unprocessed: How the Food We Eat Is Fuelling Our Mental Health Crisis (W. H. Allen, 2023).

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Methadone and Covid-19

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Helen Redmond is a Harlem-based documentary filmmaker, journalist, licensed clinical social worker, and professor at NYU. As senior editor and a multimedia journalist at Filter, a website that covers drug news, she’s been documenting America’s addiction crisis and treatment system for years. Her new documentary, Swallow THIS: A Documentary About Methadone & COVID-19, is currently on tour across the United States. We discuss the impacts the pandemic has had on methadone access in America – as well as the changes it hasn’t made – and put addiction treatment into a larger historical perspective.

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Keisha Ray, "Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People's Health" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 8 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Why do American Black people generally have worse health than American White people? To answer this question, Keisha Ray's book Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People's Health (Oxford UP, 2023) dispels any notion that Black people have inferior bodies that are inherently susceptible to disease. This is simply false racial science used to justify White supremacy and Black inferiority. A genuine investigation into the status of Black people's health requires us to acknowledge that race has always been a powerful social category that gives access to the resources we need for health and wellbeing to some people, while withholding them from other people.

Systemic racism, oppression, and White supremacy in American institutions have largely been the perpetrators of differing social power and access to resources for Black people. It is these systemic inequities that create the social conditions needed for poor health outcomes for Black people to persist. An examination of social inequities reveals that is no accident that Black people have poorer health than White people. Black Health provides a succinct discussion of Black people's health, including the social, political, and at times cultural determinants of their health. Using real stories from Black people, Ray examines the ways in which Black people's multiple identities--social, cultural, and political--intersect with American institutions--such as housing, education, environmentalism, and health care--to facilitate their poor outcomes in pregnancy and birth, pain management, sleep, and cardiovascular disease.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Quinn Eastman, "The Woman Who Couldn't Wake Up: Hypersomnia and the Science of Sleepiness" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Sleep was taking over Anna's life. Despite multiple alarm clocks and powerful stimulants, the young Atlanta lawyer could sleep for thirty or even fifty hours at a stretch. She stopped working and began losing weight because she couldn't stay awake long enough to eat. Anna's doctors didn't know how to help her until they tried an oddball drug, connected with a hunch that something produced by her body was putting her to sleep.

The Woman Who Couldn't Wake Up: Hypersomnia and the Science of Sleepiness (Columbia UP, 2023) tells Anna's story-and the broader story of her diagnosis, idiopathic hypersomnia (IH), a shadowy sibling of narcolepsy that has emerged as a focus of sleep research and patient advocacy. Quinn Eastman explores the science around sleepiness, recounting how researchers have been searching for more than a century for the substances that tip the brain into slumber. He argues that investigation of IH could unlock new understandings of how sleep is regulated and controlled. Eastman foregrounds the experiences of people with IH, relating how publicity around Anna's successful treatment helped others form a community. He shows how a group of patients who felt neglected or dismissed united to steer research toward their little-known disorder.

Sharing emerging science and powerful stories, this book testifies to the significance of underrecognized diseases and sheds new light on how our brains function, day and night. It is essential reading for anyone interested in sleep and sleep disorders, including those affected by or seeking to treat them.

Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.

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Shortage

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 7 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, Eram Alam talks with us about shortage. A political tool, rather than a natural lack, the concept of a shortage changes the flows of goods and people across borders and space. The concept of a doctor shortage was used in the US immigration reform of the 1960s to recruit discount elite labor from newly postcolonial nations, creating the downstream effect of shortages in their countries of origin. These recruiting practices remain in effect, with a US physician workforce that is approximately 25% international medical graduates, while domestic and international doctor shortages abound.

Eram Alam is an assistant professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. Her book The Care of Foreigners studies the enduring consequences of post-colonial migration from Asia to the US. We’re so excited to read it when it comes out! In the meantime, you can read her article “Cold War Crises: Foreign Medical Graduates Respond to US Doctor Shortages, 1965–1975” Social History of Medicine 33 no. 1 (Feb 2020).

This week’s image of a hospital corridor was uploaded to the image sharing site Pixbay by a user named Mitrey.

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Simon N. Whitney, "From Oversight to Overkill: Inside the Broken System That Blocks Medical Breakthroughs--And How We Can Fix It" (Rivertowns Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Medical research saves lives-yet all too often, it is thwarted by a review system supposed to safeguard patients that instead creates needless delays and expense. Institutional Review Boards, which exist at every hospital and medical school that conducts medical research, have ended up imposing such complex, draconian conditions that research is frequently damaged, delayed, and distorted. This is why medical miracles like the COVID-19 vaccines, which were developed at warp speed, are far too rare. Instead, medical research in countless areas is kept at a horse-and-buggy pace. The result: unnecessary suffering and avoidable deaths.

From Oversight to Overkill: Inside the Broken System That Blocks Medical Breakthroughs--And How We Can Fix It (Rivertowns Books, 2023) vividly recounts the story behind this crisis, one that remains unknown to the general public. Family physician and ethicist Simon Whitney shows how the IRB system was launched in response to scandals like the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study-and how, in recent decades, this well-intentioned program has become increasingly bureaucratic, convoluted, and stifling.

Readers will learn how vital breakthroughs in treating conditions from kidney stones to heart attacks and premature birth have been delayed by IRB red tape, forcing doctors and patients to settle for less-effective treatments. They'll see how ill-informed demands from Congressional leaders that regulators "get tough" on scientists have caused respected research institutions to be shut down-with no benefit to the public. And they'll learn about a balanced, common-sense approach to reforming the system that can free scientists from pointless wheel-spinning while still protecting the public from the risks of unethical or careless experimentation.

Until now, the debate about the IRB system's failures has been confined to specialty journals in medicine, law, and ethics. From Oversight to Overkill will finally alert citizens about this little-known crisis with America's medical research system-and what can be done about it.

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Rose Marie San Juan, "Violence and the Genesis of the Anatomical Image" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Nothing excited early modern anatomists more than touching a beating heart. In his 1543 treatise, Andreas Vesalius boasts that he was able to feel life itself through the membranes of a heart belonging to a man who had just been executed, a comment that appears near the woodcut of a person being dissected while still hanging from the gallows. In this highly original book, Rose Marie San Juan confronts the question of violence in the making of the early modern anatomical image.

Engaging the ways in which power operated in early modern anatomical images in Europe and, to a lesser extent, its colonies, San Juan examines literal violence upon bodies in a range of civic, religious, pedagogical, and "exploratory" contexts. She then works through the question of how bodies were thought to be constituted--systemic or piecemeal, singular or collective--and how gender determines this question of constitution. In confronting the issue of violence in the making of the anatomical image, San Juan explores not only how violence transformed the body into a powerful and troubling double but also how this kind of body permeated attempts to produce knowledge about the world at large.

Provocative and challenging, Violence and the Genesis of the Anatomical Image (Pennsylvania State UP, 2023) will be of significant interest to scholars across fields in early modern studies, including art history and visual culture, science, and medicine.

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

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Stephen Hauser, "The Face Laughs While the Brain Cries: The Education of a Doctor" (St. Martin's Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 1 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Stephen L. Hauser and a patient named Andrea were both 27 years old when they met. He was an up-and-coming neurologist-in-training; she was a Harvard Law School graduate and White House aide whose brain was being ravaged by an explosive case of multiple sclerosis. It was the 1970s and Dr. Hauser had nothing to treat her with. She lost her ability to speak, swallow and breathe. At her bridal shower just before she was married, she was hooked up to a breathing tube and strapped in a wheelchair so she wouldn’t slump over. Dr. Hauser was so moved by her case he decided to devote his career to MS research.

The Face Laughs While the Brain Cries: The Education of a Doctor (St. Martin's Press, 2023) is a riveting memoir that chronicles Dr. Hauser’s 40-year quest to find a treatment for MS, the most common crippler of young adults and a disease that affects millions worldwide. Despite enormous pushback from his field, Dr. Hauser discovered a new culprit for MS, ultimately transforming our understanding of the disease and resulting in the development of a new drug that has dramatically improved the lives of thousands of MS patient.

Dr. Hauser, director of the Weill Institute for Neurosciences at the University of California San Francisco, describes a colorful cast of characters who played roles in his upbringing and in his development as a tenacious researcher and compassionate physician. He provides moving stories of patients whose courage and optimism in the face of a debilitating illness were instrumental to the advances made in the fight against MS.

Over the course of his journey, Dr. Hauser met resistance from experts at the National Institutes of Health, who called his ideas “biologically implausible,” and the Food and Drug Administration, which put such strict limits on a critical proof-of-concept study he feared it was doomed to fail. Then, when victory finally seemed within reach, corporate takeovers threatened to scuttle the whole effort.

The Face Laughs While the Brain Cries is an inspiring, highly readable story that highlights the interplay between basic science and patient care and its crucial role in the quest for new medicines that fight disease and improve our lives.

Ron Winslow, a former long-time medical and science reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, is a freelance medical and science journalist. His story about Dr. Hauser’s research was published in STAT in March, 1917, when the drug based on the research was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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Eileen V. Wallis, "California and the Politics of Disability, 1850–1970" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Eileen V. Wallis' book California and the Politics of Disability, 1850–1970 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) explores the political, legal, medical, and social battles that led to the widespread institutionalization of Californians with disabilities from the gold rush to the 1970s. By the early twentieth century, most American states had specialized facilities dedicated to both the care and the control of individuals with disabilities. Institutions reflect the lived historical experience of many Americans with disabilities in this era. Yet we know relatively little about how such state institutions fit into specific regional, state, or local contexts west of the Mississippi River; how those contexts shaped how institutions evolved over time; or how regional institutions fit into the USA's contentious history of care and control of Americans with mental and developmental disabilities.

This book examines how medical, social, and political arguments that individuals with disabilities needed to be institutionalized became enshrined in state law in California through the creation of a "bureaucracy of disability." Using Los Angeles County as a case study, the book also considers how the friction between state and county policy in turn influenced the treatment of individuals within such facilities. Furthermore, the book tracks how the mission and methods of such institutions evolved over time, culminating in the 1960s with the birth of the disability rights movement and the complete rewriting of California's laws on the treatment and rights of Californians with disabilities. This book is a must-read for those interested in the history of California and the American West and for anyone interested in how the intersections of disability, politics, and activism shaped our historical understanding of life for Americans with disabilities.

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Rebecca Whiteley, "Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Rebecca Whiteley's book Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body (University of Chicago Press, 2023) is first full study of “birth figures” and their place in early modern knowledge-making.

Birth figures are printed images of the pregnant womb, always shown in series, that depict the variety of ways in which a fetus can present for birth. Historian Rebecca Whiteley coined the term and here offers the first systematic analysis of the images’ creation, use, and impact. Whiteley reveals their origins in ancient medicine and explores their inclusion in many medieval gynecological manuscripts, focusing on their explosion in printed midwifery and surgical books in Western Europe from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. During this period, birth figures formed a key part of the visual culture of medicine and midwifery and were widely produced. They reflected and shaped how the pregnant body was known and treated. And by providing crucial bodily knowledge to midwives and surgeons, birth figures were also deeply entangled with wider cultural preoccupations with generation and creativity, female power and agency, knowledge and its dissemination, and even the condition of the human in the universe.

Birth Figures studies how different kinds of people understood childbirth and engaged with midwifery manuals, from learned physicians to midwives to illiterate listeners. Rich and detailed, this vital history reveals the importance of birth figures in how midwifery was practiced and in how people, both medical professionals and lay readers, envisioned and understood the mysterious state of pregnancy.

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

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Catherine Carstairs, "The Smile Gap: A History of Oral Health and Social Inequality" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

As recently as fifty years ago most people expected to lose their teeth as they aged. Few children benefited from braces to straighten their teeth, and cosmetic procedures to change the appearance of smiles were largely unknown. Today, many Canadians enjoy straight, white teeth and far more of them are keeping their teeth for the entirety of their lives. Yet these advances have not reached everyone.

The Smile Gap: A History of Oral Health and Social Inequality (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022) examines the enormous improvements that have taken place over the past century. The use of fluorides, emphasis on toothbrushing, the rise of cosmetic dentistry, and better access to dental care have had a profound effect on the oral health and beauty of Canadians. Yet while the introduction of employer-provided dental insurance in the 1970s has allowed for regular visits to the dentist for many people, a significant number of Canadians still lack access to good oral health care, especially disabled Canadians, those on social assistance, the working poor, the elderly, and new immigrants. At the same time, an attractive smile has become increasingly important in the workplace and in relationships. People with damaged and missing teeth are at a substantial disadvantage, not just because of the pain and suffering caused by poor oral health, but because we live in a society that prizes good teeth and warm smiles.

The first history of oral health in Canada, The Smile Gap reveals that despite the gains made, too many Canadians go without any dental care, with damaging consequences for their oral health, general physical health, and self-image. To complete our health care system, it is time to close the gap.

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Doctor Ex Machina: AI in Medicine and its Pitfalls

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Could an artificial intelligence diagnosis what ails you? Medical futurists offer a techno-utopian vision of perfect personalized risk assessments, diagnoses, and treatment recommendations. Yet, recent stories belie this optimism. Many of these robot doctors are rather stupid, and they seem more interesting in cutting costs than providing care.

Medical AIs are largely unregulated and unverified, and this has made them woefully inadequate and sometimes blatantly racist. Plus, they have been weaponized as tools to deny treatment to the patients who need it. We explore the world of AI in medicine with STAT News investigative reporter Casey Ross, and hematologist and philosopher Ben Chin-Yee.

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Kathryn Olivarius, "Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom" (Harvard UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Disease is thought to be a great leveler of humanity, but in antebellum New Orleans acquiring immunity from the scourge of yellow fever magnified the brutal inequities of slave-powered capitalism.

Antebellum New Orleans sat at the heart of America’s slave and cotton kingdoms. It was also where yellow fever epidemics killed as many as 150,000 people during the nineteenth century. With little understanding of mosquito-borne viruses—and meager public health infrastructure—a person’s only protection against the scourge was to “get acclimated” by surviving the disease. About half of those who contracted yellow fever died.

Repeated epidemics bolstered New Orleans’s strict racial hierarchy by introducing another hierarchy, what Kathryn Olivarius terms “immunocapital.” As this highly original analysis shows, white survivors could leverage their immunity as evidence that they had paid their biological dues and could then pursue economic and political advancement. For enslaved Blacks, the story was different. Immunity protected them from yellow fever, but as embodied capital, they saw the social and monetary value of their acclimation accrue to their white owners. Whereas immunity conferred opportunity and privilege on whites, it relegated enslaved people to the most grueling labor.

The question of good health—who has it, who doesn’t, and why—is always in part political. Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom (Harvard UP, 2022) shows how powerful nineteenth-century white Orleanians—all allegedly immune—pushed this politics to the extreme. They constructed a society that capitalized mortal risk and equated perceived immunity with creditworthiness and reliability. Instead of trying to curb yellow fever through sanitation or quarantines, immune white Orleanians took advantage of the chaos disease caused. Immunological discrimination therefore became one more form of bias in a society premised on inequality, one more channel by which capital disciplined and divided the population.

Kendall Dinniene is an English PhD candidate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Their research examines how contemporary American authors respond to anti-fatness in their work, revealing the contours of citizenship and paths toward liberation.

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Han Yu, "The Curious Human Knee" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Where would we be without the knee? This down-to-earth joint connecting the thigh and the lower leg doesn’t receive the attention it deserves. Yet, as The Curious Human Knee (Columbia UP, 2023) reveals, it is crucial to countless facets of science, medicine, culture, and history—and even what makes us human.

The science writer Han Yu provides an informative, surprising, and entertaining exploration of the human knee across time and place. She begins with our earliest ancestors, emphasizing that walking upright separates us from the apes and bipedal knees appeared long before big brains and sophisticated tools. Yu considers the intricate anatomy of the knee, its evolutionary history, and the complexity of treating knee pain, including her own. She examines why women’s knees might be more prone to damage than men’s and addresses the roles of race and class in ailments such as osteoarthritis. This book gets knee-deep into an astonishing range of topics—fashion from flappers to miniskirts and ripped jeans, cultural practices spanning Japanese knee walking and Thai boxing, and more. Yu reflects on the symbolic power of kneeling from the imperial court in China to the football field in the United States and shows why the knee figures into so many social and political phenomena.

Distilling a vast amount of research in a style that is engaging, conversational, and even personal and witty, this book opens readers’ eyes to the complexity and significance of the humble knee.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England.

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James Kyung-Jin Lee, "Pedagogies of Woundedness: Illness, Memoir, and the Ends of the Model Minority" (Temple UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 8 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The pressures Asian Americans feel to be socially and economically exceptional include an unspoken mandate to always be healthy. Nowhere is this more evident than in the expectation for Asian Americans to enter the field of medicine, principally as providers of care rather than those who require care. Pedagogies of Woundedness: Illness, Memoir, and the Ends of the Model Minority (Temple UP, 2021) explores what happens when those considered model minorities critically engage with illness and medicine whether as patients or physicians.

James Kyung-Jin Lee considers how popular culture often positions Asian Americans as medical authorities and what that racial characterization means. Addressing the recent trend of writing about sickness, disability, and death, Lee shows how this investment in Asian American health via the model minority is itself a response to older racial forms that characterize Asian American bodies as diseased. Moreover, he pays attention to what happens when academics get sick and how illness becomes both methodology and an archive for scholars.

Pedagogies of Woundedness also explores the limits of biomedical “care,” the rise of physician chaplaincy, and the impact of COVID. Throughout his book and these case studies, Lee shows the social, ethical, and political consequences of these common (mis)conceptions that often define Asian Americans in regard to health and illness.

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Marius Wamsiedel, "The Moral Evaluation of Emergency Department Patients: An Ethnography of Triage Work in Romania" (Lexington, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 8 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Marius Wamsiedel's book The Moral Evaluation of Emergency Department Patients: An Ethnography of Triage Work in Romania (Lexington, 2023) is an ethnography of the social process by which healthcare workers ration and rationalize the provision of care. Examining the social categorization of patients, this work documents the interactional production of exclusion at two emergency departments in Romania.

Roland Clark is a Reader in Modern European History at the University of Liverpool, a Senior Fellow with the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, and the Principal Investigator of an AHRC-funded project on European Fascist Movements.

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Erik J. Dahl, "The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure: Why Warning Was Not Enough" (Georgetown UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Epidemiologists and national security agencies warned for years about the potential for a deadly pandemic, but in the end global surveillance and warning systems were not enough to avert the COVID-19 disaster. In The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure: Why Warning Was Not Enough (Georgetown UP, 2023), Erik J. Dahl demonstrates that understanding how intelligence warnings work--and how they fail--shows why the years of predictions were not enough.

In the first in-depth analysis of the topic, Dahl examines the roles that both traditional intelligence services and medical intelligence and surveillance systems play in providing advance warning against public health threats--and how these systems must be improved for the future. For intelligence to effectively mitigate threats, specific, tactical-level warnings must be collected and shared in real time with receptive decision makers who will take appropriate action. Dahl shows how a combination of late and insufficient warnings about COVID-19, the Trump administration's political aversion to scientific advice, and decentralized public health systems all exacerbated the pandemic in the United States. Dahl's analysis draws parallels to other warning failures that preceded major catastrophes from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, placing current events in context.

The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure is a wake-up call for the United States and the international community to improve their national security, medical, and public health intelligence systems and capabilities.

Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner.

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César Ernesto Abadía-Barrero, "Health in Ruins: The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care at a Colombian Maternity Hospital" (Duke UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 3 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Health in Ruins: The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care at a Colombian Maternity Hospital (Duke UP, 2022), César Ernesto Abadía-Barrero chronicles the story of El Materno—Colombia’s oldest maternity and neonatal health center and teaching hospital—over several decades as it faced constant threats of government shutdown. Using team-based and collaborative ethnography to analyze the social life of neoliberal health policy, Abadía-Barrero details the everyday dynamics around teaching, learning, and working in health care before, during, and after privatization. He argues that health care privatization is not only about defunding public hospitals; it also ruins rich traditions of medical care by denying or destroying ways of practicing medicine that challenge Western medicine. Despite radical cuts in funding and a corrupt and malfunctioning privatized system, El Materno’s professors, staff, and students continued to find ways to provide innovative, high-quality, and noncommodified health care. By tracking the violences, conflicts, hopes, and uncertainties that characterized the struggles to keep El Materno open, Abadía-Barrero demonstrates that any study of medical care needs to be embedded in larger political histories.

If you are interested in a conversation in Spanish about this book listen to this episode of New Books Network en español

Host María Camila Núñez Gómez is a professor interested in social studies on health, diseases, and science.

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Philip Kirby and Margaret J. Snowling, "Dyslexia: A History" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 3 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In 1896 the British physician William Pringle Morgan published an account of “Percy,” a “bright and intelligent boy, quick at games, and in no way inferior to others of his age.” Yet, in spite of his intelligence, Percy had great difficulty learning to read. Percy was one of the first children to be described as having word-blindness, better known today as dyslexia.

In Dyslexia: A History (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022), Philip Kirby and Margaret Snowling chart a journey that begins with Victorian medicine and continues to dyslexia’s current status as the most globally recognized specific learning difficulty. In an engaging narrative style, Kirby and Snowling tell the story of dyslexia, examining its origins and revealing the many scientists, teachers, and campaigners who put it on the map. Through this history they explain current debates over the diagnosis of dyslexia and its impact on learning.For those who have lived experience of dyslexia, professionals who have supported them, and scholars of social history, education, psychology, and childhood studies, Dyslexia reflects on the place of literacy in society – whom it has benefited, and whom it has left behind.

Philip Kirby is lecturer in social science, King’s College London. Margaret J. Snowling is professor of psychology, University of Oxford, and president of St John’s College.

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Amber Knight and Joshua Miller, "Prenatal Genetic Testing, Abortion, and Disability Justice" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 1 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The routinization of non-invasive prenatal genetic testing (NIPT) raises urgent questions about disability rights and reproductive justice. Supporters defend NIPT on the grounds that genetic information about the fetus helps would-be parents make better family planning choices. Prenatal Genetic Testing, Abortion, and Disability Justice challenges that assessment by exploring how NIPT can actually constrain pregnant women's options. Prospective parents must

balance a complicated array of factors, including the familial, social, and financial support they can reasonably expect to receive if they choose to carry a disabled fetus to term and raise after birth, causing many pregnant women to “choose” termination.

Focusing on the US, the book explores the intent and effects of prenatal screening in connection to women's bodily autonomy and disability rights, addressing themes at the intersection of genetic medicine, policymaking, critical disabilities studies, and political theory. Knight and Miller shift debates about reprogenetics from bioethics to political practice, as well as thoroughly critiquing the neoliberal state and the eugenic technologies that support it. Providing concrete suggestions for reforming medical practice, welfare policy, and cultural norms surrounding disability, this book highlights sites of necessary reform to envision how prospective parents can make truly free choices about prenatal genetic testing and selection abortion.

Amber Knight, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Joshua Miller, Assistant Teaching Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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Anne Gerritsen and Burton Cleetus, "Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World: Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World: Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000 (Bloomsbury, 2023): Introducing materiality into the study of the history of medicine, this volume hones in on communities across the Indian Ocean World and explores how they understood and engaged with health and medical commodities. Opening up spatial dimensions and challenging existing approaches to knowledge, power, and the market, it defines 'therapeutic commodity' and explores how different materials were understood and engaged with in various settings and for a number of purposes.

Offering new spatial realms within which the circulation of commodities created new regimes of meaning, Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World demonstrates how medicinal substances have had immediate and far-reaching economic and political consequences in various capacities. From midwifery and umbilical cords, to the social spaces of soap, and perfumes in early modern India and remedies for leprosy, this volume considers a vast range of material culture in medicinal settings to better understand the history of medicine and its role in global connections since the early 17th century.

Anne Gerritsen is Professor of History at the University of Warwick, UK, and Chair of Asian Art at the University of Leiden, Netherlands. At Warwick, she co-directs the Global History and Culture Centre.

Burton Cleetus is Assistant Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, where he teaches Modern Indian History. He specialises in the history of medicine and science and has worked on the institutionalisation of Indian medical traditions in colonial and post independent India.

Ahmed Yaqoub AlMaazmi is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies Department. His research focuses on the intersection of law, the occult sciences, and the environment across the western Indian Ocean. He can be reached by email almaazmi@princeton.edu or on Twitter @Ahmed_Yaqoub. Listeners’ feedback, questions, and book suggestions are most welcome.

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Sarah Mellors Rodriguez, "Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911-2021" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Reproductive Realities in Modern China: Birth Control and Abortion, 1911-2021 (Cambridge UP, 2022), assistant professor of history at Missouri State University, Sarah Mellors Rodriguez explores the longue durée history of birth control and abortion in China from the Republican period to the present day. Drawing from a rich array of archival materials, oral histories, posters, films, novels, and other media, she delves into the diverse attitudes, policies, and practices of birth control and abortion from 1911 to 2021.

In this episode, Rodriguez shares how she first became interested in birth control in China and her research process and decisions. She then walks listeners through her book, paying special attention to the lived experiences of women whose decisions about birth control were often mediated by geography, class, and shifting regional and national policies and enforcement. By tracing birth control and abortion in China over a long period, she is able to identify persistent trends and specific features of each period covered–the Republican period, the early People’s Republic of China, the Cultural Revolution and Sent-Down Student Movement, and the era of the One Child Policy. Sarah Mellors Rodriguez has crafted her book in a thorough, thoughtful manner, not only contributing new details and insights about birth control and abortion in China before, during, and after the One Child Policy but also commenting on the larger themes of sexuality and the law, gender, medicine, and modern China.

Laurie Dickmeyer is an Assistant Professor of History at Angelo State University, where she teaches courses in Asian and US history. Her research concerns nineteenth century US-China relations. She can be reached at laurie.dickmeyer@angelo.edu.

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COVID-19 and the Biosecurity Surveillance Regime: A Conversation with Dr. Aaron Kheriaty

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 23 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What's wrong with vaccine mandates? What is the "biosecurity surveillance regime"? Is trust in our public health institutions damaged beyond repair? Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was fired by the UC Irvine School of Medicine for refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, joins Madison's Notes to answer these questions and more.

Dr. Kheriaty's Substack is here.

Dr. Kheriaty's Senate Testimony is here.

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Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, "From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 21 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969 (U Nebraska Press, 2020), Alicia Gutierrez-Romine examines the history of criminal abortion in California and the role abortion providers played in exposing and exploiting the faults in California’s anti-abortion statute throughout the twentieth century. Focused on the patients who used this underground network and the physicians who facilitated it, Gutierrez-Romine provides insight into the world of illegal abortion from the 1920s through the 1960s, including regular physicians as well as women and African American abortionists, and the investigations, scandals, and trials that surrounded them.

During the 1930s the Pacific Coast Abortion Ring, a large, coast-wide, and comparatively safe abortion syndicate, became the target of law enforcement agencies, forcing those needing abortions across the border into Mexico and ushering in an era of Tijuana “abortion tourism” in the early 1950s. The movement south of the border ultimately compelled the California Supreme Court to rule its abortion statute “void for vagueness” in People v. Belous in 1969—four years before Roe v. Wade.

Gutierrez-Romine presents the first book focused on abortion on the West Coast and the U.S.-Mexico border and provides a new approach to studying how providers of illegal abortions and their clients navigated this underground network. In the post-Dobbs moment, From Back Alley to the Border shows us how little we have learned from history.

Jeannette Cockroft is an associate professor of history and political science at Schreiner University.

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The Future of the Human Heart: A Discussion with Vincent M. Figueredo

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 19 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Long considered the most important of all organs, the human heart has fascinated artists and scientists alike. Listen to cardiologist Vincent Figueredo discuss knowledge of and attitudes towards the heart in societies ancient and modern. Figueredo is the author of The Curious History of the Heart: A Cultural and Scientific Journey (Columbia UP, 2023).

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Eugene Lipov and Jamie Mustard, "The Invisible Machine: The Startling Truth About Trauma and the Scientific Breakthrough That Can Transform Your Life" (BenBella Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 18 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Eugene Lipov about his new book (co-authored with Jamie Mustard), The Invisible Machine: The Startling Truth About Trauma and the Scientific Breakthrough That Can Transform Your Life (BenBella Books, 2023)

Human beings aren’t biologically build to endure sustained stress. A 30-second blast of anxiety in dealing with a threat isn’t anything likely the ongoing suffering taking place in society today. From soldiers who are returning from overseas combat to poverty-ridden inner-city youth to suburban girls traumatized in their own by endlessly comparing themselves (unfavorably) to others posted online, toxicity is everywhere. This book and this interview involves a passionate, practical solution for dealing with the ”broken leg” inside so many of us as victims of trauma. To add hope to the lexicon of stress over and above using anger and hypervigilant fear to cope, this episode highlights the battle within.

Eugene Lipov, M.D., is a complex anesthesiologist who has been called the “Einstein” of his field given his development of the highly effective and innovative Dual Sympathetic Reset (DSR) method, which was endorsed by President Obama in 2010. His co-author, Jamie Mustard, is an artist, futurist, multi-media consultant and writer whose passion is teaching how to break through today’s media clutter.

Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His latest two books are Blah Blah Blah: A Snarky Guide to Office Lingo and Emotionomics 2.0: The Emotional Dynamics Underlying Key Business Goals.

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Misinformed: The Covid Lab Leak Theory and the Politics of Misinformation

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 17 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The COVID-19 lab leak theory went from being dismissed as mere misinformation, to now a credible matter of debate amongst media, scientific, and intelligence organizations. What’s changed, and what does this teach us about science journalism and science communication? Is it time to let go of our obsession over “misinformation”?

First, Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic lays out the political problems with the idea of misinformation. Later, Nicole M. Krause, a PhD candidate focussing on science communication, looks at conceptual problems in the research itself. What’s “True,” and who gets to decide?

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America & Democracy Ep. 2: Jonathan M. Berman on Anti-Vaxxers

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 16 May 2023 22:53:50 +0000

In this series of interviews from The MIT Press Podcast, we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping the American political landscape of today.

The second episode of this series features a discussion with the author of Anti-vaxxers, Jonathan M. Berman. Vaccines are a documented success story, one of the most successful public health interventions in history. Yet there is a vocal anti-vaccination movement, featuring celebrity activists including actress Jenny McCarthy, talk-show host Bill Maher, and presidential hopeful Kanye West.

How do we address those with views that might be deemed absurd and confusing? How do we ensure that the public sphere is based upon evidenced and good faith arguments? And what might be redeemed from world-views built upon misinformation?

Jonathan M. Berman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Basic Sciences at NYITCOM–Arkansas. An active science communicator, he served as national cochair of the 2017 March for Science.

Hosted by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samantha Doyle; Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

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Kate Clancy, "Period: The Real Story of Menstruation" (Princeton UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Offering a revelatory new perspective on one of the most captivating biological processes in the human body, Period will change the way you think about the past, present, and future of periods.

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Michelle Smirnova, "The Prescription-To-Prison Pipeline: The Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain" (Duke UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 15 May 2023 04:00:00 +0000

In The Prescription-To-Prison Pipeline: The Medicalization and Criminalization of Pain (Duke UP, 2023), Michelle Smirnova argues that the ongoing opioid drug epidemic is the result of an endless cycle in which suffering is medicalized and drug use is criminalized. Drawing on interviews with eighty incarcerated individuals in Missouri correctional institutions, Smirnova shows how contradictions in medical practices, social ideals, and legal policies disproportionately criminalize the poor for their social condition. This criminalization further exacerbates and perpetuates drug addiction and poverty.

Tracing the processes by which social issues are constructed as biomedical ones that necessitate pharmacological intervention, Smirnova highlights how inequitable surveillance, policing, and punishment of marginalized populations intensify harms associated with both treatment and punishment, especially given that the distinctions between the two have become blurred. By focusing on the stories of people whose pain and pharmaceutical treatment led to incarceration, Smirnova challenges the binary of individual and social problems, effectively exploring how the conceptualization, diagnosis, and treatment of substance use may exacerbate outcomes such as relapse, recidivism, poverty, abuse, and death.

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Pharmacological Histories Ep. 3: Bita Moghaddam on Ketamine

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 May 2023 17:38:14 +0000

In this episode, Bita Moghaddam discusses the emergence of ketamine as a combat anesthetic in the Vietnam war, its transformation into a recreation drug central to club culture, and its current transition into a treatment for depression.

Ketamine, approved in 2019 by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of depression, has been touted by scientists and media reports as something approaching a miracle cure. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series chronicles the ascent of a drug that has been around for fifty years--in previous incarnations, a Vietnam-era combat anesthetic and a popular club drug--that has now been reinvented as a treatment for depression. Bita Moghaddam, a leading researcher in neuropharmacology, explains the scientific history and the biology of ketamine, its clinical use, and its recently discovered antidepressant effects, for the nonspecialist reader.

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Pharmacological Histories Ep. 2: Mikkael A. Sekeres on the Drugs Fighting Leukemia

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 11 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

This episode offers an insight into the work of leading cancer specialist and author of When Blood Breaks Down, Mikkael A. Sekeres. 1 in 2 people will develop cancer in their lifetime, but thankfully treatment for the disease is rapidly changing and improving. I ask Mikkael about the drugs that allow people to beat cancer and live better with it.

When you are told that you have leukemia, your world stops. Your brain can't function. You are asked to make decisions about treatment almost immediately, when you are not in your right mind. And yet you pull yourself together and start asking questions. Beside you is your doctor, whose job it is to solve the awful puzzle of bone marrow gone wrong. The two of you are in it together. In When Blood Breaks Down, Mikkael Sekeres, a leading cancer specialist, takes readers on the journey that patient and doctor travel together.

Sekeres, who writes regularly for the "Well" section of The New York Times, tells the compelling stories of three people who receive diagnoses of adult leukemia within hours of each other: Joan, a 48-year-old surgical nurse, a caregiver who becomes a patient; David, a 68-year-old former factory worker who bows to his family's wishes and pursues the most aggressive treatment; and Sarah, a 36-year-old pregnant woman who must decide whether to undergo chemotherapy and put her fetus at risk. We join the intimate conversations between Sekeres and his patients, and we watch as he teaches trainees. Along the way, Sekeres also explores leukemia in its different forms and the development of drugs to treat it--describing, among many other fascinating details, the invention of the bone marrow transplant (first performed experimentally on beagles) and a treatment that targets the genetics of leukemia.

The lessons to be learned from leukemia, Sekeres shows, are not merely medical; they teach us about courage and grace and defying the odds.

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Britta K. Ager, "The Scent of Ancient Magic" (U Michigan Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Magic was a fundamental part of the Greco-Roman world. Curses, erotic spells, healing charms, divination, and other supernatural methods of trying to change the universe were everyday methods of coping with the difficulties of life in antiquity. While ancient magic is most often studied through texts like surviving Greco-Egyptian spellbooks and artifacts like lead curse tablets, for a Greek or Roman magician a ritual was a rich sensual experience full of unusual tastes, smells, textures, and sounds, bright colors, and sensations like fasting and sleeplessness. Greco-Roman magical rituals were particularly dominated by the sense of smell, both fragrant smells and foul odors. Ritual practitioners surrounded themselves with clouds of fragrant incense and perfume to create a sweet and inviting atmosphere for contact with the divine and to alter their own perceptions; they also used odors as an instrumental weapon to attack enemies and command the gods. Elsewhere, odiferous herbs were used equally as medical cures and magical ingredients. In literature, scent and magic became intertwined as metaphors, with fragrant spells representing the dangers of sensual perfumes and conversely, smells acting as a visceral way of envisioning the mysterious action of magic.

The Scent of Ancient Magic (University of Michigan Press, 2022) by Dr. Britta Ager explores the complex interconnection of scent and magic in the Greco-Roman world between 800 BCE and CE 600, drawing on ancient literature and the modern study of the senses to examine the sensory depth and richness of ancient magic. Dr. Ager looks at how ancient magicians used scents as part of their spells, to put themselves in the right mindset for an encounter with a god or to attack their enemies through scent. She also examines the magicians who appear in ancient fiction, like Medea and Circe, and the more metaphorical ways in which their spells are confused with perfumes and herbs. This book brings together recent scholarship on ancient magic from classical studies and on scent from the interdisciplinary field of sensory studies in order to examine how practicing ancient magicians used scents for ritual purposes, how scent and magic were conceptually related in ancient literature and culture, and how the assumption that strong scents convey powerful effects of various sorts was also found in related areas like ancient medical practices and normative religious ritual.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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Michael Brown, "Emotions and Surgery in Britain, 1793-1912" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 10 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this innovative analytical account of the place of emotion and embodiment in nineteenth-century British surgery, Michael Brown examines the changing emotional dynamics of surgical culture for both surgeons and patients from the pre-anaesthetic era through the introduction of anaesthesia and antisepsis techniques. Drawing on diverse archival and published sources, Brown explores how an emotional regime of Romantic sensibility, in which emotions played a central role in the practice and experience of surgery, was superseded by one of scientific modernity, in which the emotions of both patient and practitioner were increasingly marginalised. Demonstrating that the cultures of contemporary surgery and the emotional identities of its practitioners have their origins in the cultural and conceptual upheavals of the later nineteenth century, this book challenges us to question our perception of the pre-anaesthetic period as an era of bloody brutality and casual cruelty. Emotions and Surgery in Britain, 1793-1912 (Cambridge UP, 2022) is available as open access.

Dr Michael Brown is a lecturer in Modern British History at Lancaster University.

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Pharmacological Histories Ep. 1: Nancy D. Campbell on Naloxone

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Drawing on interviews with approximately sixty advocates, drug users, former users, friends, families, witnesses, clinicians, and scientists; Nancy D. Campbell has drawn together a history of a defining tragedy of contemporary life; the overdose. I ask her about the reality of drug overdoses and one of the tools being used by activists to prevent more deaths--Naloxone.

For years, drug overdose was unmentionable in polite society. OD was understood to be something that took place in dark alleys--an ugly death awaiting social deviants--neither scientifically nor clinically interesting. But over the last several years, overdose prevention has become the unlikely object of a social movement, powered by the miracle drug naloxone. In OD, Nancy Campbell charts the emergence of naloxone as a technological fix for overdose and describes the remaking of overdose into an experience recognized as common, predictable, patterned--and, above all, preventable. Naloxone, which made resuscitation, rescue, and "reversal" after an overdose possible, became a tool for shifting law, policy, clinical medicine, and science toward harm reduction. Liberated from emergency room protocols and distributed in take-home kits to non-medical professionals, it also became a tool of empowerment.

After recounting the prehistory of naloxone--the early treatment of OD as a problem of poisoning, the development of nalorphine (naloxone's predecessor), the idea of "reanimatology"--Campbell describes how naloxone emerged as a tool of harm reduction. She reports on naloxone use in far-flung locations that include post-Thatcherite Britain, rural New Mexico, and cities and towns in Massachusetts. Drawing on interviews with approximately sixty advocates, drug users, former users, friends, families, witnesses, clinicians, and scientists--whom she calls the "protagonists" of her story--Campbell tells a story of saving lives amid the complex, difficult conditions of an unfolding unnatural disaster.

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Rapid Reviews: COVID-19

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 8 May 2023 14:38:59 +0000

Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 brings together urgency and scientific rigor so the world’s researchers can quickly disseminate new discoveries that the public can trust. Amy Brand (Director, The MIT Press) and Vilas Dhar (Trustee, The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation) discuss this new overlay journal, its innovative goals, and its role as a proof-of-concept for new models of peer-review and rapid publishing.

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Stephen G. Post, "Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People: How Caregivers Can Meet the Challenges of Alzheimer's Disease" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 7 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

How do we approach a "deeply forgetful" loved one so as to notice and affirm their continuing self-identity? For three decades, Stephen G. Post has worked around the world encouraging caregivers to become more aware of--and find renewed hope in--surprising expressions of selfhood despite the challenges of cognitive decline.

In Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People: How Caregivers Can Meet the Challenges of Alzheimer's Disease (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022), Post offers new perspectives on the worth and dignity of people with Alzheimer's and related disorders despite the negative influence of "hypercognitive" values that place an ethically unacceptable emphasis on human dignity as based on linear rationality and strength of memory. This bias, Post argues, is responsible for the abusive exclusion of this population from our shared humanity. With vignettes and narratives, he argues for a deeper dignity grounded in consciousness, emotional presence, creativity, interdependence, music, and a self that is not "gone" but "differently abled." Post covers key practical topics such as:

- understanding the experience of dementia

- noticing subtle expressions of continuing selfhood, including "paradoxical lucidity"

- perspectives on ethical quandaries from diagnosis to terminal care and everything in between, as gleaned from the voices of caregivers

- how to communicate optimally and use language effectively

- the value of art, poetry, symbols, personalized music, and nature in revealing self-identity

- the value of trained "dementia companion" dogs

At a time when medical advances to cure these conditions are still out of reach and the most recent drugs have shown limited effectiveness, Post argues that focusing discussion and resources on the relational dignity of these individuals and the respite needs of their caregivers is vital. Grounding ethics on the equal worth of all conscious human beings, he provides a cautionary perspective on preemptive assisted suicide based on cases that he has witnessed. He affirms vulnerability and interdependence as the core of the human condition and celebrates caregivers as advocates seeking social and economic justice in an American system where they and their loved ones receive only leftover scraps. Racially inclusive and grounded in diversity, Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People also includes a workshop appendix focused on communication and connection, "A Caregiver Resilience Program," by Rev. Dr. Jade C. Angelica.

Stephen G. Post is the director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

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Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 2 May 2023 14:36:55 +0000

In Break On Through, Lucas Richert explores Anti-psychiatry, psychedelics, and radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. In this interview Lucas discusses the issues that run through the sixties and seventies and how they're forming debates about mental health today.

"Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s.

The upheavals of the 1960s gave way to a decade of disruptions in the 1970s, and among the rattled fixtures of American society was mainstream psychiatry. A "Radical Caucus" formed within the psychiatric profession and the "antipsychiatry" movement arose. Critics charged that the mental health establishment was complicit with the military-industrial complex, patients were released from mental institutions, and powerful antipsychotic drugs became available. Meanwhile, practitioners and patients experimented with new approaches to mental health, from primal screaming and the therapeutic use of psychedelics to a new reliance on quantification. In Break on Through, Lucas Richert investigates the radical challenges to psychiatry and to the conventional treatment of mental health that emerged in the 1970s and the lessons they offer for current debates.

Drawing on archives and government documents, medical journals, and interviews, and interweaving references to pop (counter)culture into his account, Richert offers fascinating stories of the decade's radical mental health practices. He discusses anti-Vietnam War activism and the new diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder given to some veterans; the radical psychiatrists who fought the system (and each other); the entry of New Age-style therapies, including Esalen's Human Potential Movement, into the laissez-faire therapeutic marketplace of the 1970s; the development of DSM III; and the use of LSD, cannabis, and MDMA.

Many of these issues have resonance today. Debates over medical marijuana and microdoses of psychedelics echo debates of the 1970s. With rising rates of such disorders as anxiety and depression, practitioners and patients continue to search for therapeutic breakthroughs.

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Ian Hembrow, "Ralph Edwards: Rare Events--The Inside Story of a Worldwide Quest for Safer Medicines" (Springer, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Medical treatments designed to help people can also be harmful or fatal. Around 2.5 million people die this way each year. So if any kind of medicine makes someone unwell, they or their doctor should report it. Those reports, from nearly every country in the world, go to the Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) in Sweden. As the Centre’s first director, Professor Ivor Ralph Edwards transformed it from a tiny operation with limited horizons into an internationally acclaimed scientific organization at the heart of the World Health Organization’s Programme for International Drug Monitoring. He was then succeeded by his wife, Dr Marie Lindquist.

Ian Hembrow's Ralph Edwards: Rare Events--The Inside Story of a Worldwide Quest for Safer Medicines (Springer, 2023) is the story of how a new science developed and a passionate and dedicated pursuit of worldwide medicines safety, with an unerring focus on the welfare of patients. The pioneering work of Ralph, Marie and their collaborators on every continent protected the lives of millions of people. It may yet improve the lives of billions more.

Victoria Phillips is a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics in the Department of International History.

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Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk, "A History of Plague in Java, 1911-1942" (SEA Program Publications, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 30 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

I was very excited to chat with Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk as we share some obsessions, namely rats and plague in colonial Southeast Asia. His A History of Plague in Java, 1911-1942 (Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2022) is an engaging study of a massive public health campaign in the Dutch East Indies. As he records the most invasive colonial policy in Indonesian history, his work ties together the histories of disease, imperialism, and modernity. A History of Plague in Java, 1911-1942 will be of interest to Southeast Asianists, scholars of disease, and anyone interested the origins of modern state systems.

Dr. Meerwijk earned his Ph.D in History at the University of Hong Kong with a dissertation entitled Dengue Fever in Modern Asia. He has been a Research Associate at the University of St. Andrews and a Lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. He is currently a postdoc researcher at the University of Leiden and the scientific secretary at the Health Council of the Netherlands. A History of Plague in Java, 1911-1942 is his first book.

Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.

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The Future of Germs: A Discussion with Jonathan Kennedy

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Have germs or humans done the most to shape the world’s history? Did Homo Sapiens get the better of the Neanderthals because of superior brainpower or because of better resistance to some infectious disease? And are germs part of the story behind the fall of Rome and rise of Islam? Owen Bennett Jones talks germs with Jonathan Kennedy of London University. Kennedy is the author of Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues (Crown Publishing, 2023).

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The History of Contraception

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 19:36:03 +0000

An interview with Donna J. Drucker, author of Contraception, from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series. We discuss reproductive justice, the history of contraceptive technology and how the future of contraception can offer more choice and more freedom for every kind of person.

The development, manufacturing, and use of contraceptive methods from the late nineteenth century to the present, viewed from the perspective of reproductive justice.

The beginning of the modern contraceptive era began in 1882, when Dr. Aletta Jacobs opened the first birth control clinic in Amsterdam. The founding of this facility, and the clinical provision of contraception that it enabled, marked the moment when physicians started to take the prevention of pregnancy seriously as a medical concern. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Donna Drucker traces the history of modern contraception, outlining the development, manufacturing, and use of contraceptive methods from the opening of Dr. Jacobs's clinic to the present. Drucker approaches the subject from the perspective of reproductive justice: the right to have a child, the right not to have a child, and the right to parent children safely and healthily.

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Tom Hutton, "Hitler's Maladies and Their Impact on World War II" (Texas Tech UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 23 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Toward the end of World War II, Hitler's many health complications became even more pronounced, making an evil man yet more erratic and dangerous. While the subject of Hitler's health has been catalogued previously, never has it been done so this thoroughly or with this level of up-to-date medical expertise.

Tom Hutton's Hitler's Maladies and Their Impact on World War II (Texas Tech UP, 2023) draws from a lifetime of medical research and clinical experience to understand how the dictator's particular medical history further warped a deformed personality and altered Hitler's decision making. Dr. Hutton trained under the world-renowned neuropsychologist and father of modern neuropsychological assessment, Dr. Alexander Luria, giving him a uniquely qualified eye to undertake this most difficult assessment.

While many books on the subject thumb through the annals of popular psychology to understand history's most famous monsters, Dr. Hutton's latest book uses contemporary clinical knowledge, lucidly synthesizing medical complexities for all audiences.

Here Dr. Hutton undertakes a thorough medical history to elucidate a pivotal historical moment, examining how disease impacted Hitler's destructive life.

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Arleen Tuchman, "Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease" (Yale UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Arleen Marcia Tuchman’s book, Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease (Yale UP, 2020), tells the American history of a disease that continues to defy categorizations. Researchers for more than a century have worked to create distinctions between “types” of diabetes to parse people who all share the trait of high levels of sugar in their blood. Tuchman shows how efforts to divide diabetes into types tracked efforts to divide people into different types—specifically by race. For Tuchman, this move reflects an American obsession with race that too often overlooks racism as a fundamental cause of disease.

The book won the 2022 Rosen Prize from the American Association for the History of Medicine and will be of immediate interest to readers interested in Science & Technology Studies, American History, and social justice.

This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and graduate students at Vanderbilt University in the course, “American Medicine & the World.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom. Email: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu.

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Susan Burch, "Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and Beyond Institutions" (UNC Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota. But detention at the Indian Asylum, as families experienced it, was not the beginning or end of the story. For them, Canton Asylum was one of many places of imposed removal and confinement, including reservations, boarding schools, orphanages, and prison-hospitals. Despite the long reach of institutionalization for those forcibly held at the Asylum, the tenacity of relationships extended within and beyond institutional walls.

In Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and Beyond Institutions (UNC Press, 2021), Susan Burch tells the story of the Indigenous people—families, communities, and nations, across generations to the present day—who have experienced the impact of this history. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them. Committed expands the boundaries of Native American history, disability studies, and U.S. social and cultural history generally.

Susan Burch is a professor of American Studies. Before joining the Middlebury faculty in 2009, she taught at Gallaudet University, King’s College (University of Aberdeen, Scotland), and the Ohio State University. Professor Burch also has worked as a research associate at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She earned her BA degree in history and Soviet Studies from Colorado College and her MA and PhD in American and Soviet history from Georgetown University.

Shu Wan is currently matriculated as a doctoral student in history at the University at Buffalo. As a digital and disability historian, he serves in the editorial team of Digital Humanities Quarterly and Nursing Clio.

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Cristina Mejia Visperas, "Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory" (NYU, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

An abolitionist approach to STS and the history of the life sciences: this is the model that Cristina Mejia Visperas offers in her book, Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory (NYU 2022). By now, scientists’ experiments on captive men at Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison are well known, thanks to the brave and important testimony of former captive-subjects in books like Allen Hornblum’s Acres of Skin. Building on this documentary work, Visperas turns attention to the prison experiments’ “optical rationality,” the way of seeing images that came out of a space that was simultaneously prison and laboratory. For Visperas, skin is a scientific apparatus and a metaphor for what science makes visible—and what it leaves as a void, namely, the endurance of anti-Black racism in the US, from slavery to mass incarceration. At its core, the book asks “What is the relationship between science and the project of freedom?”—and it hopes towards a reparative bioethics that dismantles scientific racism and the prison nation that it upholds.

This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and graduate students at Vanderbilt University in the seminar “Critical Bioethics.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom.

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Moheb Costandi, "Body Am I: The New Science of Self-Consciousness" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

How the way we perceive our bodies plays a critical role in the way we perceive ourselves: stories of phantom limbs, rubber hands, anorexia, and other phenomena.

The body is central to our sense of identity. It can be a canvas for self-expression, decorated with clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, tattoos, and piercings. But the body is more than that. Bodily awareness, says scientist-writer Moheb Costandi, is key to self-consciousness. In Body Am I: The New Science of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press, 2022), Costandi examines how the brain perceives the body, how that perception translates into our conscious experience of the body, and how that experience contributes to our sense of self. Along the way, he explores what can happen when the mechanisms of bodily awareness are disturbed, leading to such phenomena as phantom limbs, alien hands, and amputee fetishes.

Costandi explains that the brain generates maps and models of the body that guide how we perceive and use it, and that these maps and models are repeatedly modified and reconstructed. Drawing on recent bodily awareness research, the new science of self-consciousness, and historical milestones in neurology, he describes a range of psychiatric and neurological disorders that result when body and brain are out of sync, including not only the well-known phantom limb syndrome but also phantom breast and phantom penis syndromes; body integrity identity disorder, which compels a person to disown and then amputate a healthy arm or leg; and such eating disorders as anorexia.

Wide-ranging and meticulously researched, Body Am I (the title comes from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra) offers new insight into self-consciousness by describing it in terms of bodily awareness.

Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.

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Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 2 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Life Extension Therapies

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The story of the Fountain of Youth is as old as history itself. Herodotus, the father of ancient Greek history, wrote of a mythical spring that extended the life of its bathers. Today, biotech entrepreneurs, scientists, and health influencers are still searching for that mythical spring.

Longevity and anti-aging research has recently blossomed, with a number of tantalizing discoveries. Still, this research hasn't delivered any magic bullets. Yet, that hasn't stopped a cottage industry of folks hawking a plethora of dubious supplements and bizarre health regimens.

Jay Cockburn tries to make sense of what's real, what's hype, who could benefit, and who would pay. Do we even want to live in the world the longevity researchers are looking for? Should we keep looking for that fountain?

We'll hear from: CEO of BioViva, Liz Parish, who has stepped outside of the regular drug approval process and experimented on herself; Dr. Charles Brenner, a scientist and vocal critic of the claims of life extension; and Dr. Keisha S. Ray, a bioethicist who reminds us that while the rich look for fanciful new ways to live longer, the poor lack access to basic health care.

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Declan Warde et al., "Safety As We Watch: Anaesthesia in Ireland 1847-1998" (Wordwell Books, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The discovery of anaesthesia which could be administered safely to eliminate the pain of surgery and other medical and dental procedures is widely considered to be one of the greatest developments of the nineteenth century. Yet, until now few studies have focused on anaesthesia in Ireland.

Safety As We Watch: Anaesthesia in Ireland 1847-1998 (Wordwell Books, 2022), written by three Irish anaesthetists, is the first published study of the history of anaesthesia in Ireland. Featuring fascinating vignettes of the personalities and innovators who led the development of anaesthesia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book leads readers through the history of the practice over 150 years, sketching global networks of exchange between medical practitioners and researchers. Beginning with the administration of the first general anaesthetic in Ireland on 1 January 1847, when ether was given to an 18-year-old girl undergoing an amputation under the care of Dr John MacDonnell, the book traces the debates and issues surrounding the uses and administration of anaesthesia through to the foundation of the College of Anaesthetists of Ireland in 1998. Safety as We Watch is divided into two parts: Part I focuses on the development of chloroform and ether, the mechanisms used to administer the drugs, as well as the innovators and medical professionals responsible, and Part II focuses on the organizations and academic developments in anaesthesia practice and education.

In its examination of this often-overlooked area in the history of Irish medicine Safety as We Watch offers new insight into medical organizations, as well as cultural conceptions of pain and consciousness, and the ways that anaesthesia transformed doctor-patient relationships. This book will be of great interest to medical professionals, historians of medicine, health humanities scholars and to more general readers interested in anaesthesia.

Bridget English is a scholar of Irish literature and culture, modernism, and health humanities, based at the University of Illinois Chicago. She co-convenes the Irish Studies Seminar at the Newberry Library. On Twitter.

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Heidi J. Larson, "Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start--and Why They Don't Go Away" (Oxford UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Vaccine reluctance and refusal are no longer limited to the margins of society. Debates around vaccines' necessity -- along with questions around their side effects -- have gone mainstream, blending with geopolitical conflicts, political campaigns, celebrity causes, and "natural" lifestyles to win a growing number of hearts and minds. Today's anti-vaccine positions find audiences where they've never existed previously.

Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start--and Why They Don't Go Away (Oxford UP, 2020) examines how the issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy are, more than anything, about people feeling left out of the conversation. A new dialogue is long overdue, one that addresses the many types of vaccine hesitancy and the social factors that perpetuate them. To do this, Stuck provides a clear-eyed examination of the social vectors that transmit vaccine rumors, their manifestations around the globe, and how these individual threads are all connected.

Heidi J. Larson, PhD, is Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science and is the Founding Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is also Clinical Professor of Health Metrics Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and Guest Professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

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Tracy Livecchi and Liza Morton, "Healing Hearts and Minds: A Holistic Approach to Coping Well with Congenital Heart Disease" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) is the most commonly diagnosed birth abnormality in the US. With great advances in surgery and medicine, however, survival rates have improved by 75% since the 1940s. Welcome news, of course, as only a few decades ago these birth defects were considered a death sentence, but as with any chronic condition, survival does not mean the issue is cured. With better medical care, babies born today with CHD have a good chance of surviving, but throughout their entire lives they can face surgeries, invasive treatments, lifelong monitoring, frequent medical check-ups, and significant limitations on physical activity, in addition to poor public awareness which can have an impact on social inclusion and understanding. Much attention has rightly been focused on the medical needs of these children and on providing their parents and caretakers with resources and information to navigate the complexities of this chronic condition.

Little attention, however, has been paid to the psychosocial impacts on these individuals, especially as they grow, mature, and become adults living with a serious, chronic medical condition. Prevalence rates for anxiety, depression, and PTSD are significantly higher (2-3x in some cases) for people living with CHD than the general adult population. From feeling self-conscious about scars and limitations on physical activity and sense of loss around so many of life's little normalcies, to frequent hospital visits and living in constant fear of an emergency, this condition is ever-present. Liza Morton and Tracy Livecchi are both mental health professionals who have developed a specialty in working with clients who have chronic medical conditions, and they are both themselves living with CHD.

In Healing Hearts and Minds: A Holistic Approach to Coping Well with Congenital Heart Disease (Oxford UP, 2023) they set out to provide the resources and support they have been looking for their entire adult lives. While their powerful personal stories are woven into the narrative, the book is focused on providing evidence-based coping and self-care skills for adults living with CHD.

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Derek Hanley, "Photos from the Front Lines: A Year on the Streets of Alameda County" (2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Photos from the Front Lines follows medics from Falck Alameda County ambulance during one of the most tumultuous years in recent collective memory - 2020. From a global pandemic to demonstrations to wildfires and mass vaccinations, Photos from the Front Lines provides unequalled coverage of this year and beyond from the perspective of those on the front lines every day of the crisis, with a colossal 500 original photos! The use of the term "front line" came about this year to describe personnel who were putting their lives on the line every day during the global COVID-19 pandemic, and medics were at the absolute forefront of this fight; Photos from the Front Lines takes you there with them.

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Dominique A. Tobbell, "Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

An analysis of the efforts of American nurses to establish nursing as an academic discipline and nurses as valued researchers in the decades after World War II. Nurses represent the largest segment of the US health care workforce and spend significantly more time with patients than any other member of the health care team.

Dominique A. Tobbell's book Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing (U Chicago Press, 2022) probes their history to examine major changes that have taken place in American health care in the second half of the twentieth century. The book examines the major changes in nursing education and the place of nursing in the post-war research university, revealing how federal and state health and higher education policies shaped education within health professions after World War II. Starting in the 1950s, academic nurses sought to construct a science of nursing--distinct from that of the related biomedical or behavioral sciences--that would provide the basis of nursing practice. Facing broad changes in patient care driven by the introduction of new medical innovations, they worked both to develop science-based nursing practice and to secure their roles within the post-war research university. By their efforts, academic nurses transformed nursing's labor into a valuable site of knowledge production and demonstrated how the application of this knowledge was integral to improving patient outcomes and healthcare delivery. Exploring the knowledge claims, strategies, and politics involved as academic nurses negotiated their roles and nursing's future, Dr. Nurse reveals how state-supported health centers have profoundly shaped nursing education and health care delivery.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Lee Trepanier, "Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters: Reflections of Political Theory from Antiquity to the Age of COVID" (Routledge, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Political Theorist Lee Trepanier has a new edited volume focusing on thinking about human responses to disasters and diseases. Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters: Reflections of Political Theory from Antiquity to the Age of COVID (Routledge, 2022) was clearly an opportunity for many of the contributing authors to consider how we should think about ourselves and our physical and spiritual health in context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Section I of the book is focused specifically on considerations around Covid, and how governments, institutions, individuals, religious organizations, and others all responded to the pandemic, and how many of these entities helped to lead citizens and individuals through such threats to our health and wellbeing.

Sections II and III of Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters focus on teachings and considerations by political theorists, both ancient and modern, on how humans can and do respond to disasters, plagues, diseases, and the precariousness of human existence. Contributing authors turn to Thucydides, St. Augustine, Sophocles, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau and others to find guidance and ideas about how humans not only respond to disasters and diseases, but also how these experiences may inform thinking about political, social, and religious institutions. Different examples are also considered, from the theological politics of floods in St. Augustine’s work, to the impact on John Locke of living through the plague of London and how this contributed to his thinking about the need for security and stability in political life. These two sections of the book reflect deep and thoughtful considerations of the connection between political theory and the vitality of physical, spiritual, and social life.

Finally, the fourth section of Trepanier’s edited volume focuses on disasters more so than diseases and brings literature more fully into the discussion. These chapters, mostly written by scholars of English and Communications, explore the imagined spaces where real events have been integrated into fiction, to help us wrestle with how to absorb terrible events like 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, and to find the human element within our responses to these disasters. These chapters also integrate the role of memory in how we consider and reflect on human and natural disaster and loss of life—how do we consider and re-examine these understandings within our memories and how does this contribute to how we think about the world around us.

Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters leads us through a host of perspectives and contexts to help us understand the world where plagues, disasters, diseases, and pandemics all contribute to our sense of vulnerability and precarity. We may also find some solace and guidance from the various analyses and the thoughtful interpretations of works of political theory, literature, and art.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj.

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Nadia Abu El-Haj, "Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America" (Verso, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

One of the most recognizable tropes in American society in the past few decades is the scarred war veteran, returning from foreign lands with wounds both visible and invisible. His experiences are incomprehensible to those who’ve not served, but we owe him everything, and it is our duty as American citizens to honor him with nonjudgmental empathy so that he might eventually heal and reintegrate into the national community. But this narrative, this response to combat is neither natural or the only possible way of dealing with the issue. In fact, my guest Nadia Abu El-Haj argues that it is a distinctly apolitical interpretation, one that works as a cover for the politics of American empire in her new book Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America (Verso, 2022).

Beginning her narrative in the 1960’s and 70’s with the war in Vietnam, El-Haj traces PTSD back to it’s roots as a response to extreme circumstances. In the soldiers being studied, psychologists found men who were shattered by their experiences, struggling to process them and move on when they returned home. However, key to their understanding was a sense of guilt and complicity in the war. They might’ve been damaged and in need of care to move forward with their lives, but they were still guilty of immoral and criminal acts. The diagnosis was then not just an individualized pathology but part of a broader political critique, and part of the healing process involved engaging in activism to fight the very systems the soldiers had been participants of.

Fast forward a few decades, and this political angle has almost been entirely erased. Instead, soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are no longer perpetrators but victims who bear a burden we all must honor them for. This new discourse around trauma buries the possibility of political dissent, leaving us unable to understand the decisions that produced the trauma in the first place, but also focuses so heavily on the traumatized soldier that civilians caught in the crossfire almost never factor in our understanding, in spite of the fact that they are the most numerous victims of wars in the last several decades. This combination has produced a toxic form of militarism, one incapable of sustained political critique, which helps explain why the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been able to go on so long.

Combining fields and disciplines and tying numerous disparate threads together, El-Haj’s work is a devastatingly urgent, eye-opening critique of a society that has long lost it’s capacity for critical self-reflection. It reveals many ideological traps and mazes many have been lost in, and even if it cannot bring about a more peaceful world on its own, it can point the way towards a more critical one.

Nadia Abu El-Haj is a professor of anthropology at Barnard College. She is also the author of The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology and Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society.

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Rosalynn A. Vega, "Nested Ecologies: A Multilayered Ethnography of Functional Medicine" (U Texas Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Each body is a system within a system—an ecology within the larger context of social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. This is one of the lessons of epigenetics, whereby structural inequalities are literally encoded in our genes. But our ecological embeddedness extends beyond DNA, for each body also teems with trillions of bacteria, yeast, and fungi, all of them imprints of our individual milieus. Nested Ecologies: A Multilayered Ethnography of Functional Medicine (U Texas Press, 2023) asks what it would mean to take seriously our microbial being, given that our internal ecologies are shaped by inequalities embedded in our physical and social environments.

Further, Rosalynn Vega argues that health practices focused on patients’ unique biology inadvertently reiterate systemic inequities. In particular, functional medicine—which attempts to heal chronic disease by leveraging epigenetic science and treating individual microbiomes—reduces illness to problems of “lifestyle,” principally diet, while neglecting the inability of poor people to access nutrition. Functional medicine thus undermines its own critique of the economics of health care. Drawing on novel digital ethnographies and reflecting on her own experience of chronic illness, Vega challenges us to rethink not only the determinants of well-being but also what it is to be human.

Joan Francisco Matamoros Sanin is an anthropologist dedicated to Medical Anthropology and Anthropology of Masculinities as well as public education and dissemination of anthropological knowledge. He has a MsC and a PhD in Sociomedical Sciences from Mexico's National Autonomous University. Matamoros has ample ethnographic experience in urban and rural areas in Mexico and Ecuador. You can find him on his Spotify and YouTube Platform (AnthropoMX) and in New Books Network. Currently he is a tutor in the Center for Regional Cooperation for Adult Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as a postdoctoral fellow in CIESAS-Unidad Pacífico Sur (acronym in spanish for the South Pacific Center of Research in Advance Studies in Social Anthropology).

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Toby Green and Thomas Fazi, "The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left" (Hurst, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

During the first months of the pandemic, governments worldwide agreed that ‘following the science’ with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was the best way to preserve life. But evidence is mounting that ‘the science’ was all politics and time reveals the horrific human and economic cost of these policies.

The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (Hurst, 2023) provides an internationalist-left perspective on the world’s Covid-19 response, which has had devastating consequences for democratic rights and the poor worldwide. As the fortunes of the richest soared, nationwide shutdowns devastated small businesses, the working classes, and the Global South’s informal economies.

Toby Green and Thomas Fazi argue that these policies grossly exacerbated existing trends of inequality, mediatisation and surveillance, with grave implications for the future. Rich in human detail, The Covid Consensus tackles head-on the refusal of the global political class and mainstream media to report the true extent of the erosion of democratic processes and the socioeconomic assault on the poor.

Toby Green and Thomas Fazi speak to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the emergence of a global consensus, the abject failure of the left to hold power to account, and the sometimes fine line between critique and conspiracy theorising.

Richard Seymour’s critique of the book on Politics, Theory, Other.

Toby Green is Professor of African History at King’s College London, and author of A Fistful of Shells and The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa.

Thomas Fazi is the author and co-author of several books on economic and political issues, including Reclaiming the State. His article with Toby Green for UnHerd, The Left’s Covid Failure, was translated into ten languages. He is a regular contributor to Compact.

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

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H. Yumi Kim, "Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 8 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

To fend off American and European imperialism in the nineteenth century, Japan strove to strengthen itself by drawing on the most updated ideas and practices from around the world. By the 1880s, this included the introduction of Western-derived psychiatry and its ideas about mental illness. The first Japanese psychiatrists claimed that mental illnesses required medical treatment in specialized institutions rather than confinement at home, as had been common practice. Yet the state implemented no social welfare policies to make new medical services more accessible and affordable to the public. The family, especially women, thus continued to carry the burden of caring for those considered mad.

Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan (Oxford UP, 2022) examines how the family in Japan came to be seen as the natural provider of care for those suffering from mental illnesses. It centers on the experiences of women and families, which have long been obscured by the voices of male psychiatrists, state officials, and lawmakers. H. Yumi Kim traces how women and families negotiated a dizzying array of claims about madness and its proper management across various settings. In the countryside, psychiatrists tried to refute the notion that fox spirits could cause madness, and the government regulated the use of cage-like structures inside homes. In cities, a booming medical marketplace spread ideas about feminized illnesses such as hysteria, and female defendants were evaluated for menstruation-induced disorders. As women and families navigated this shifting therapeutic landscape, they produced their own gendered approaches to madness that would take precedence over the claims of psychiatry, the law, and the state in

everyday life.

Decoupling the history of mental illness from the discipline and institutions of psychiatry, Madness in the Family reveals the power and fragilities of gender, kinship, and care in the creation of different modes of caring for and understanding mental illness that persist to this day.

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Measure for Measure Episode 7: Kinsey

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 8 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Scientist Alfred Kinsey tried to differentiate human sexualities on a seven-point scale. In so doing, he brought us the basics of bisexuality. But the scale leaves a lot to be desired. Instead of a spectrum, Special Guest Kate Sisk leads us into a gay fog.

GUEST

Kate Sisk (she/they/he) is a professional stand up comedian, amateur drag king, and co-host of the award-winning podcast, We’re Having Gay Sex.

This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman.

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Clare Griffin, "Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Erika Monahan is the author of The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell UP, 2016) and a 2023-2024 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow

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Caroline Rusterholz, "Women's Medicine: Family Planning and British Female Doctors in Transnational Perspective, 1920-70" (Manchester UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 4 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Who built the twentieth century birth control movement? In Women's Medicine: Family Planning and British Female Doctors in Transnational Perspective, 1920-70 (Manchester University Press 2020), Dr. Caroline Rusterholz highlights British female doctors' key contribution to the production and circulation of scientific knowledge around contraception, family planning and sexual disorders between 1920-70. It argues that women doctors were pivotal in developing a holistic approach to family planning and transmitting this knowledge across borders, playing a more prominent role in shaping scientific and medical knowledge than previously acknowledged.

The book locates women doctors' involvement within the changing landscape of national and international reproductive politics. Illuminating women doctors' agency in the male-dominated field of medicine, this book reveals their practical engagement with birth control and later family planning clinics in Britain, their participation in the development of the international movement of birth control and family planning and their influence on French doctors. Drawing on a wide range of archived and published medical materials, Rusterholz sheds light on the strategies British female doctors used and the alliances they made to put forward their medical agenda and position themselves as experts and leaders in birth control and family planning research and practice.

Nicole Bourbonnais is Associate Professor of International History and Politics and Co-Director of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Her research explores reproductive politics and practice from a transnational, historical perspective. Profile here.

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Elizabeth T. Hurren, "Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 3 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In Hidden Histories of the Dead: Disputed Bodies in Modern British Medical Research (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Dr. Elizabeth T. Hurren maps the post-mortem journeys of bodies, body-parts, organs, and brains, inside the secretive culture of modern British medical research after WWII as the bodies of the deceased were harvested as bio-commons. Often the human stories behind these bodies were dissected, discarded, or destroyed in death.

Hidden Histories of the Dead recovers human faces and supply-lines in the archives that medical science neglected to acknowledge. Dr. Hurren investigates the medical ethics of organ donation, the legal ambiguities of a lack of fully-informed consent and the shifting boundaries of life and re-defining of medical death in a biotechnological era. Dr. Hurren reveals the implicit, explicit and missed body disputes that took second-place to the economics of the national and international commodification of human material in global medical sciences of the Genome era.

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Nuclear Ghosts: Ryo Morimoto (EF, JP)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

John and Elizabeth, in this special Centennial episode of Recall this Book, explore spectral radiation with Ryo Morimoto, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His new book Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima's Grey Zone (University of California Press, 2023) is based on several years of fieldwork in coastal Fukushima after the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident. Ryo's book shows how residents of the region live with and through the "nuclear ghost" that resides with them.

The trio discuss ways that residents acclimatize themselves to the presence of radiation, efforts to live their lives in ways not only shaped by catastrophe and irradiation, and the Geiger counter as a critical object.

Ryo relates the astonishing--but when you stop to think unsurprising—fact that "once you have [a Geiger counter] you actually want to see higher scores."

Mentioned in this episode:

Paul Saint-Amour, Tense Future
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Roadside Picnic
Tarkovksy, Stalker (the film)
Stalker (the video game)
Haruki Murakami 1Q84
Pat Barker The Ghost Road

Read the episode here

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Arthur Kleinman, "Writing at the Margin: Discourse Between Anthropology and Medicine" (U California Press, 1997)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 1 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

One of the most influential and creative scholars in medical anthropology takes stock of his recent intellectual odysseys in this collection of essays. Arthur Kleinman, an anthropologist and psychiatrist who has studied in Taiwan, China, and North America since 1968, draws upon his bicultural, multidisciplinary background to propose alternative strategies for thinking about how, in the postmodern world, the social and medical relate.

Writing at the Margin: Discourse Between Anthropology and Medicine (U California Press, 1997). explores the border between medical and social problems, the boundary between health and social change. Kleinman studies the body as the mediator between individual and collective experience, finding that many health problems—for example the trauma of violence or depression in the course of chronic pain—are less individual medical problems than interpersonal experiences of social suffering. He argues for an ethnographic approach to moral practice in medicine, one that embraces the infrapolitical context of illness, the responses to it, the social institutions relating to it, and the way it is configured in medical ethics. Previously published in various journals, these essays have been revised, updated, and brought together with an introduction, an essay on violence and the politics of post-traumatic stress disorder, and a new chapter that examines the contemporary ethnographic literature of medical anthropology.

A copy of the transcript can be found here

Show notes:

--World Mental Health: Problems and Priorities in Low-Income Countries

--The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine

--Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples: India, China, Tibet, Japan

--How bodies remember: Social memory and bodily experience of criticism, resistance and delegitimation following China's Cultural Revolution

--The Tanner Lecture at Stanford

--Nie Jing-Bao

--Amartya Sen

Shu Cao Mo, Ed.M. can be reached at shm785@mail.harvard.edu.

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Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In the past two decades, media images of the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis abounded. But why was the crisis so white? Some argued that skyrocketing overdoses were “deaths of despair” signaling deeper socioeconomic anguish in white communities. Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America (U California Press, 2023) makes the counterintuitive case that the opioid crisis was the product of white racial privilege as well as despair.

Anchored by interviews, data, and riveting firsthand narratives from three leading experts—an addiction psychiatrist, a policy advocate, and a drug historian—Whiteout reveals how a century of structural racism in drug policy, and in profit-oriented medical industries led to mass white overdose deaths. The authors implicate racially segregated health care systems, the racial assumptions of addiction scientists, and relaxed regulation of pharmaceutical marketing to white consumers. Whiteout is an unflinching account of how racial capitalism is toxic for all Americans.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Mary Crossley, "Embodied Injustice: Race, Disability, and Health" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Black people and people with disabilities in the United States are distinctively disadvantaged in their encounters with the health care system. These groups also share harsh histories of medical experimentation, eugenic sterilizations, and health care discrimination. Yet the similarities in inequities experienced by Black people and disabled people and the harms endured by people who are both Black and disabled have been largely unexplored. To fill this gap, Embodied Injustice: Race, Disability, and Health (Cambridge UP, 2022) uses an interdisciplinary approach, weaving health research with social science, critical approaches, and personal stories to portray the devastating effects of health injustice in America.

Author Mary Crossley takes stock of the sometimes-vexed relationship between racial justice and disability rights advocates and interrogates how higher disability prevalence among Black Americans reflects unjust social structures. By suggesting reforms to advance health equity for disabled people, Black people, and disabled Black people, this book lays a crucial foundation for intersectional, cross-movement advocacy to advance health justice in America.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England.

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The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Greg Marchildon interviews David Wright of McGill University on his book SickKids: The History of The Hospital for Sick Children (University of Toronto Press) which won the Champlain Society’s Chalmers Award in 2016. This podcast was produced Hugh Bakhurst in the Allan Slaight Radio Institute at Ryerson University.

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Jonathan Herring, "The Right to Be Protected from Committing Suicide" (Hart Publishing, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Professor Jonathan Herring makes an argument that suicidal people have a right to be protected from committing suicide, and that the state should be under a duty to take reasonable steps to protect them from killing themselves. In The Right to Be Protected from Committing Suicide (Hart, 2022) Herring takes a deep dive into ideas surrounding autonomy and capacity, to draw out the tensions between these concepts and the legal and ethical debates which provide support for non-interventionist argument based on respect for a "right" to commit suicide. Going beyond the usual concerns of Euthanasia, this book challenges readers to examine suicide as a failing of society to offer support to those who need it, as opposed to an individual choice to end one's life.

Professor Jonathan Herring is a Professor of Law at Exeter College in the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford. He is the author of around 50 solo authored monographs.

Listener note: In this interview, we discuss suicide, which may be upsetting for some listeners. However, support is available. In the UK, call Samaritans on 11 61 23; the US, Suicide and Crisis Lifeline on 988; in Australia, Lifeline on 13 11 14; and Hong Kong, call Samaritans on 2896 0000.

Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK

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Lynn Cullen, "The Woman with the Cure" (Berkley Books, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The essential contribution of The Woman with the Cure (Berkley Books, 2023) can be summarized in one sentence: like most of its future readers (I assume), I had never before heard of Dorothy Horstmann and her fundamental role in the research that led to the near-eradication of polio, despite having benefited hugely from her work. Throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and into the 1960s, she devoted her considerable talents and endless hours to tracking how polio spread throughout the body, but like the other remarkable women portrayed in this novel, she was forced because of her gender to play second fiddle to Doctors Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, her academic colleagues. Their contributions, of course, were also real and worthy of acclaim, but it was Dr. Horstmann—too often dismissed as “Dottie” or “Dot,” as if she were someone’s secretary—who made the crucial discovery that early in its path from the digestive to the nervous system, the polio virus created antibodies in the blood. That finding made the polio vaccine possible by defining an entry point for medical intervention.

Reading this novel has a particular resonance at this moment, when polio outbreaks are again affecting US cities because of vaccine hesitancy and the final eradication of the disease has been deterred in certain countries by political concerns—not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic, which has changed everyone’s experience of quarantine and disease. But I would like to emphasize that this is, first and foremost, a novel, centered on complex characters, a gripping plot, and the age-old battle between science and nature. I don’t know, for example, whether Dorothy’s love interest is a real person or the author’s way of contrasting the attractions of home with the pull exerted by fulfilling work. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because The Woman with the Cure works as a story, provoking questions about the choices its heroine makes and what we might do in similar circumstances—and that’s what counts.

Lynn Cullen is the bestselling author of the historical novels The Sisters of Summit Avenue, Twain’s End, Mrs. Poe, Reign of Madness, and I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter. The Woman with the Cure is her latest book.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her next book, Song of the Storyteller, appeared in January 2023.

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Victor Roy, "Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Capitalizing a Cure: How Finance Controls the Price and Value of Medicines (U California Press, 2023) takes readers into the struggle over a medical breakthrough to investigate the power of finance over business, biomedicine, and public health. When curative treatments for hepatitis C launched in 2013, sticker shock over their prices intensified the global debate over access to new medicines. Weaving historical research with insights from political economy and science and technology studies, Victor Roy demystifies an oft-missed dynamic in this debate: the reach of financialized capitalism into how medicines are made, priced, and valued.

Roy’s account moves between public and private labs, Wall Street and corporate board rooms, and public health meetings and health centers to trace the ways in which curative medicines became financial assets dominated by strategies of speculation and extraction at the expense of access and care. Provocative and sobering, this book illuminates the harmful impact of allowing financial markets to determine who heals and who suffers and points to the necessary work of building more equitable futures.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England.

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Bioethics, Humility, and Responsibility: A Conversation with Arthur Caplan

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

For this episode we welcome Dr. Arthur Caplan, who is currently the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine in New York City. Dr. Caplan is the author or editor of 35 books and more than 800 papers in peer reviewed journals. His most recent books are Vaccination Ethics and Policy (MIT Press, 2017, with Jason Schwartz) and Getting to Good: Research Integrity in Biomedicine (Springer, 2018, with Barbara Redman). Our conversation ranges from Dr. Caplan’s own experiences with polio as a child, intellectual and epistemic humility and bioethics, the shift “customerization” of patients and students, and professor watchlists.

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How Do We Treat Opioid Addiction?

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

I spoke with Mark about his census results, as well as the history of MAT, and specifically methadone, treatment in America. You can see the full report here.

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Marvin N. Olasky and Leah Savas, "The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History, 1652-2022" (Crossway, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Abortion is an issue like no other. Our attitudes towards it and how we define when life begins determine the very words we use when discussing abortion. We don’t even agree about how many people are involved in the matter of abortion. Two people—the mother and the baby? Or only one—the mother? And here, even the word “mother” is avoided by many, who prefer “woman.” Or, in some quarters, “pregnant person.” Is it a “baby” or a “fetus?” Has abortion always had the tacit approval of most Americans and only been criminalized by powerful societal forces (which can change sides dramatically over the decades, as is the case with much of the medical establishment)? Or is it something that has been regarded as abhorrent for centuries and only very recently been treated as not only necessary but a badge of pride for the modern woman? How was abortion portrayed in the pages of American publications c. 1830, 1870, 1920 or 1940 and in the media diet of our own day?

These are among the many issues discussed in the 2023 book, The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History, 1652–2022 (Crossway, 2023) by Marvin Olasky and Leah Savas.

This book is riveting reading but is not for the fainthearted—much of the material is graphic. It will interest those in such fields as legal history, women’s history, the history of journalism, the history of medicine, political history and history in general and readers with an interest in biography and true crime.

The latter term is not inappropriate here given the book’s fascinating account of how many news stories in much of the 19th and early and mid-20th centuries reveled in lurid details of attractive young women murdered after botched abortions or accidentally killed during one and then dismembered and discovered later due to the ineptitude of the abortionist and the men who had impregnated the women and who feared scandal or marriage to the women they had seduced.

The authors also provide detailed accounts of the enormous amounts of money that some female abortionists (such as the notorious Madame Restell 1812 –1878) made and the flashy lifestyles and prison sentences that punctuated their lives. The authors show that male jurors were often reluctant to convict abortionists given many a juror’s own complicity in such events and the immense political power that the abortion trade wielded via graft.

The book tells heartrending stories of women who underwent abortions and traces how the popular press moved over the decades from referring to two victims in such cases to only the woman to eventually hardly covering at all cases when abortions created female and infant victims (as in the infamous case of the physician Kermit Gosnell), many reporters and editors preferring to stick to the narrative of female empowerment via abortion.

No matter where one stands on the issue of abortion, it cannot be denied that this book movingly, authoritatively tells the story of the women whose lives were shaped by it, as the title says, at “the street level.” It is model social history and engrossing reading for the general reader and scholar alike.

Let’s hear from one of the two authors of the book, Leah Savas.

Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher.

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Alexandre I. R. White, "Epidemic Orientalism: Race, Capital, and the Governance of Infectious Disease" (Stanford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

For many residents of Western nations, COVID-19 was the first time they experienced the effects of an uncontrolled epidemic. This is in part due to a series of little-known regulations that have aimed to protect the global north from epidemic threats for the last two centuries, starting with International Sanitary Conferences in 1851 and culminating in the present with the International Health Regulations, which organize epidemic responses through the World Health Organization. Unlike other equity-focused global health initiatives, their mission—to establish "the maximum protections from infectious disease with the minimum effect on trade and traffic"—has remained the same since their founding.

In Epidemic Orientalism: Race, Capital, and the Governance of Infectious Disease (Stanford UP, 2023), Alexandre White reveals the Western capitalist interests, racism and xenophobia, and political power plays underpinning the regulatory efforts that came out of the project to manage the international spread of infectious disease. He examines how these regulations are formatted; how their framers conceive of epidemic spread; and the types of bodies and spaces it is suggested that these regulations map onto. Proposing a modified reinterpretation of Edward Said's concept of orientalism, White invites us to consider "epidemic orientalism" as a framework within which to explore the imperial and colonial roots of modern epidemic disease control.

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The History of Teletherapy

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Hannah Zeavin, lecturer in the department of History and member of the executive committees of both the Center for New Media and the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society at University of California, Berkeley, talks about her book, The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The book tracks the history of teletherapy, which Zeavin defines as therapeutic interaction over distance, and its metamorphosis from a model of cure to one of contingent help. The book starts with letters sent through the mail and ends in our current coronavirus catastrophe. Zeavin and Vinsel also talk about the complexities and potential harms of going back fully in-person, including how it will negatively affect disabled people.

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Elizabeth Farfán-Santos, "Undocumented Motherhood: Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing" (U Texas Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Claudia Garcia crossed the border because her toddler, Natalia, could not hear. Leaving behind everything she knew in Mexico, Claudia recounts the terror of migrating alone with her toddler and the incredible challenges she faced advocating for her daughter's health in the United States. When she arrived in Texas, Claudia discovered that being undocumented would mean more than just an immigration status—it would be a way of living, of mothering, and of being discarded by even those institutions we count on to care.

Elizabeth Farfán-Santos spent five years with Claudia. As she listened to Claudia's experiences, she recalled her own mother's story, another life molded by migration, the US-Mexico border, and the quest for a healthy future on either side. Witnessing Claudia's struggles with doctors and teachers, we see how the education and medical systems enforce undocumented status and perpetuate disability. At one point, in the midst of advocating for her daughter, Claudia suddenly finds herself struck by debilitating pain. Claudia is lifted up by her comadres, sent to the doctor, and reminded why she must care for herself.

A braided narrative that speaks to the power of stories for creating connection, Undocumented Motherhood: Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing (University of Texas Press, 2022) reveals what remains undocumented in the motherhood of Mexican women who find themselves making impossible decisions and multiple sacrifices as they build a future for their families.

Elizabeth Farfán-Santos is a medical anthropologist and the author of Black Bodies, Black Rights: The Politics of Quilombolismo in Contemporary Brazil.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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Ajay Agrawal et al., "Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence" (HBR Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines describe what you can do to prepare. Banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, medical technology, retail. Artificial intelligence (AI) has made its way into many industries around the world. But the truth is, it has just begun its odyssey toward cheaper, better, and faster predictions to drive strategic business decisions--powering and accelerating business. When prediction is taken to the max, industries transform. The disruption that comes with such transformation is yet to be felt--but it is coming. How do businesses prepare?

In Prediction Machines, eminent economists Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb explained the simple yet game-changing economics of AI. Now, in Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence (HBR Press, 2022), they go further to reveal AI as a prediction technology directly impacting decision-making and to teach businesses how to identify disruptive opportunities and threats resulting from AI. Their exhaustive study of new developments in artificial intelligence and the past history of how technologies have disrupted industries highlights the striking phase we are now in: after witnessing the power of this new technology and before its widespread adoption--what they call "the Between Times." While there continue to be important opportunities for businesses, there are also threats of disruption. As prediction machines improve, old ways of doing things will be upended. Also, the process by which AI filters into the many systems involved in application is very uneven. That process will have winners and losers. How can businesses leverage, or protect, their positions? Filled with illuminating insights, rich examples, and practical advice, Power and Prediction is the must-read guide for any business leader or policy maker on how to make the coming AI disruptions work for you rather than against you.

Interviewee Avi Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Avi is also Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab and the CDL Rapid Screening Consortium, a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute and the Schwartz-Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Avi’s research focuses on the opportunities and challenges of the digital economy.

He has published academic articles in marketing, statistics, law, management, medicine, political science, refugee studies, physics, computing, and economics. Avi is a former Senior Editor at Marketing Science. His work on online advertising won the INFORMS Society of Marketing Science Long Term Impact Award. He testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on competition and privacy in digital advertising. His work has been referenced in White House reports, European Commission documents, the New York Times, the Economist, and elsewhere.

Peter Lorentzen is economics professor at the University of San Francisco. He heads USF's Applied Economics Master's program, which focuses on the digital economy. His research is mainly on China's political economy.

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Deafness “Cures” in History

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Jaipreet Virdi talks about her book Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book details the long history of attempts to “fix” deaf people, including a great deal of quackery. Towards the end of the conversation, Virdi and Vinsel also talk about what a world beyond solutionist fantasies that disability can be “cured” would look like.

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Ciara Breathnach, "Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class: Dublin City Coroner's Court, 1876-1902" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Ciara Breathnach's book Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class: Dublin City Coroner's Court, 1876-1902 (Oxford UP, 2022) focuses on the evolution of the Dublin City Coroner's Court and on Dr Louis A. Bryne's first two years in office. Wrapping itself around the 1901 census, the study uses gender, power, and blame as analytical frameworks to examine what inquests can tell us about the impact of urban living from lifecycle and class perspectives. Coroners' inquests are a combination of eyewitness testimony, expert medico-legal language, detailed minutiae of people, places, and occupational identities pinned to a moment in time. Thus they have a simultaneous capacity to reveal histories from both above and below. Rich in geographical, socio-economic, cultural, class, and medical detail, these records collated in a liminal setting about the hour of death bear incredible witness to what has often been termed 'ordinary lives'. The subjects of Dr Byrne's court were among the poorest in Ireland and, apart from common medical causes problems linked to lower socio-economic groups, this volume covers preventable cases of workplace accidents, neglect, domestic abuse, and homicide.

Roberto Mazza is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Twitter and IG: @robbyref

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Matthew Smith, "The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States" (Columbia UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Social psychiatry was a mid-twentieth-century approach to mental health that stressed the prevention of mental illness rather than its treatment. Its proponents developed environmental explanations of mental health, arguing that socioeconomic problems such as poverty, inequality, and social isolation were the underlying causes of mental illness. The influence of social psychiatry contributed to the closure of psychiatric hospitals and the emergence of community mental health care during the 1960s. By the 1980s, however, social psychiatry was in decline, having lost ground to biological psychiatry and its emphasis on genetics, neurology, and psychopharmacology.

The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States (Columbia UP, 2022) is a history of the rise and fall of social psychiatry that also explores the lessons this largely forgotten movement has to offer today. Matthew Smith examines four ambitious projects that investigated the relationship between socioeconomic factors and mental illness in Chicago, New Haven, New York City, and Nova Scotia. He contends that social psychiatry waned not because of flaws in its preventive approach to mental health but rather because the economic and political crises of the 1970s and the shift to the right during the 1980s foreclosed the social changes required to create a more mentally healthy society. Smith also argues that social psychiatry provides timely insights about how progressive social policies, such as a universal basic income, can help stem rising rates of mental illness in the present day.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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John P. Gluck, "Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals: A Primate Scientist's Ethical Journey" (U Chicago Press, 2016)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 3 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The National Institute of Health recently announced its plan to retire the fifty remaining chimpanzees held in national research facilities and place them in sanctuaries. This significant decision comes after a lengthy process of examination and debate about the ethics of animal research. For decades, proponents of such research have argued that the discoveries and benefits for humans far outweigh the costs of the traumatic effects on the animals; but today, even the researchers themselves have come to question the practice. John P. Gluck has been one of the scientists at the forefront of the movement to end research on primates, and in Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals: A Primate Scientist's Ethical Journey (U Chicago Press, 2016) he tells a vivid, heart-rending, personal story of how he became a vocal activist for animal protection.

Gluck begins by taking us inside the laboratory of Harry F. Harlow at the University of Wisconsin, where Gluck worked as a graduate student in the 1960s. Harlow’s primate lab became famous for his behavioral experiments in maternal deprivation and social isolation of rhesus macaques. Though trained as a behavioral scientist, Gluck finds himself unable to overlook the intense psychological and physical damage these experiments wrought on the macaques. Gluck’s sobering and moving account reveals how in this and other labs, including his own, he came to grapple with the uncomfortable justifications that many researchers were offering for their work. As his sense of conflict grows, we’re right alongside him, developing a deep empathy for the often smart and always vulnerable animals used for these experiments.

At a time of unprecedented recognition of the intellectual cognition and emotional intelligence of animals, Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals is a powerful appeal for our respect and compassion for those creatures who have unwillingly dedicated their lives to science. Through the words of someone who has inflicted pain in the name of science and come to abhor it, it’s important to know what has led this far to progress and where further inroads in animal research ethics are needed.

John P. Gluck is professor emeritus of psychology and a senior advisor to the president on animal research ethics and welfare at the University of New Mexico. He is also research professor of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University and coauthor of The Human Use of Animals.

Callie Smith is a poet and doctoral candidate in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

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Felicity M. Turner, "Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America" (UNC Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 1 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Examining infanticide cases in the United States from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, Felicity M. Turner's Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America (UNC Press, 2022) documents how women—Black and white, enslaved and free—gradually lost control over reproduction to male medical and legal professionals. In the first half of the nineteenth century, community-based female knowledge played a crucial role in prosecutions for infanticide: midwives, neighbors, healers, and relatives were better acquainted with an accused woman's intimate life, the circumstances of her pregnancy, and possible motives for infanticide than any man. As the century progressed, women accused of the crime were increasingly subject to the scrutiny of white male legal and medical experts educated in institutions that reinforced prevailing ideas about the inferior mental and physical capacities of women and Black people. As Reconstruction ended, the reach of the carceral state expanded, while law and medicine simultaneously privileged federal and state regulatory power over that of local institutions. These transformations placed all women's bodies at the mercy of male doctors, judges, and juries in ways they had not been before.

Reframing knowledge of the body as property, Felicity M. Turner shows how, at the very moment when the federal government expanded formal civil and political rights to formerly enslaved people, the medical profession instituted new legal regulations across the nation that restricted access to knowledge of the female body to white men.

Katrina Anderson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware.

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Seeing Truth in Picturing the Pandemic:

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Professor Sarah Willen talks about her part in creating the Pandemic Journaling Project and how that has morphed into a series of visual exhibitions that emphasis how we all can work to create new histories, shape archives, and reclaim our own creativity and power.

Learn more about the Seeing Truth exhibition at our website.

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Ed Cohen, "On Learning to Heal or, What Medicine Doesn't Know" (Duke UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

At thirteen, Ed Cohen was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease—a chronic, incurable condition that nearly killed him in his early twenties. At his diagnosis, his doctors told him that the best he could hope for would be periods of remission. Unfortunately, doctors never mentioned healing as a possibility.

In On Learning to Heal or, What Medicine Doesn't Know (Duke UP, 2022), Cohen draws on fifty years of living with Crohn’s to consider how Western medicine’s turn from an “art of healing” toward a “science of medicine” deeply affects both medical practitioners and their patients. He demonstrates that although medicine can now offer many seemingly miraculous therapies, medicine is not and has never been the only way to enhance healing. Exploring his own path to healing, he argues that learning to heal requires us to desire and value healing as a vital possibility. With this book, Cohen advocates reviving healing’s role for all those whose lives are touched by illness.

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"Medical Assistance in Dying" (MAID) in Canada

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Is medical assistance in dying, or MAID letting the government off the hook from providing what they should be providing? Should we respect people's choices on harm reduction grounds, even if those choices are severely constrained by an unjust social and political context? Should we give doctors this power over the mentally ill and disabled, given the racist and ableist nature of our crumbling health care system?

Gordon Katic debates this and more, with perspectives from either side. Professor Trudo Lemmens argues that MAID sends a disturbing message: disabled lives aren't worth living. Next, Dr. Derryk Smith (formerly of Dying with Dignity) says just the opposite: excluding certain people from this civil liberty is tantamount to stigmatization.

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Buddhist Medicine in Tibet: A Discussion with Bill McGrath

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a conference!

Resources mentioned in the pod:

Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. I have a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teach Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is also the host (with Lan Li) of the Blue Beryl podcast. Subscribe to Blue Beryl here.

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Christopher M. Palmer, "Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health" (Benbella Books, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Christopher M. Palmer's book Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health (Benbella Books, 2022) will forever change the way we understand and treat mental health. If you or someone you love is affected by mental illness, it might change your life. We are in the midst of a global mental health crisis, and mental illnesses are on the rise. But what causes mental illness? And why are mental health problems so hard to treat? Drawing on decades of research, Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Chris Palmer outlines a revolutionary new understanding that for the first time unites our existing knowledge about mental illness within a single framework: Mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain.

Brain Energy explains this new understanding of mental illness in detail, from symptoms and risk factors to what is happening in brain cells. Palmer also sheds light on the new treatment pathways this theory opens up—which apply to all mental disorders, including anxiety, depression, ADHD, alcoholism, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, autism, and even schizophrenia. Brain Energy pairs cutting-edge science with practical advice and strategies to help people reclaim their mental health. This groundbreaking book reveals: Why classifying mental disorders as “separate” conditions is misleading The clear connections between mental illness and disorders linked to metabolism, including diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, pain disorders, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, and epilepsy The link between metabolism and every factor known to play a role in mental health, including genetics, inflammation, hormones, neurotransmitters, sleep, stress, and trauma The evidence that current mental health treatments, including both medications and therapies, likely work by affecting metabolism New treatments available today that readers can use to promote long-term healing Palmer puts together the pieces of the mental illness puzzle to provide answers and offer hope. Brain Energy will transform the field of mental health, and the lives of countless people around the world.

Sine Yaganoglu trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer (PhD, ETH Zurich). She currently works in innovation management and diagnostics.

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Neurasthenia

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, Kim talks with Saronik about neurasthenia. A disease that no longer exists, neurasthenia was a nineteenth century American epidemic of energy depletion. Thinking about this diagnosis can help us understand the social functions of medical knowledge, and how that knowledge changes over time.

In the episode Kim discusses two nineteenth-century medical texts: American Nervousness: It’s Causes and Consequences (New York: Putnam, 1881) by George Miller Beard, which popularized the diagnosis, and Fat and Blood: And How to Make Them (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1877), by S. Weir Mitchell, which popularized the “rest cure” treatment. She also references three scholarly texts: Tom Lutz’s American Nervousness, 1903: An Anecdotal History (Cornell UP, 1992); Carolyn Tomas de la Pena’s The Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern American (NYU Press, 2003); and Anson Rabinbach’s The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (UC Press, 1992).

Kim Adams is one of the co-hosts of High Theory. She works as a postdoctoral fellow at the Pennsylvania State University Humanities Institute, where she is writing a book about electricity and the body in American medicine and literature. She also runs a working group on pain management as a cultural process, called Politics of the Prescription Pad. She lives in Rhode Island and has a very large dog named Tag.

This week’s image is a 1907 painting titled “On the Southern Plain” by Frederic Remington. The painting shows soldiers on horseback in the American West. Remington was diagnosed with neurasthenia and treated with the “west cure” (discussed in the episode) by S. Weir Mitchell himself.

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Hagai Boas, "The Political Economy of Organ Transplantation: Where Do Organs Come From?" (Routledge, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

This is the story of organ transplantation, told from the organ’s point of view.

Organs for transplantations come from two sources: living or post-mortem organ donations. These sources set different routes of movement from one body to another.

Postmortem organ donations are mainly sourced and allocated by state agencies, while living organ donations are the result of informal relations between donor and recipient. Each route traverses different social institutions, determines discrete interaction between donor and recipient, and is charged with moral meanings that can be competing and contrasting.

The political economy of organs for transplants is the gamut of these routes and their interconnections, and this book explains what such a political economy looks like: its features and contours, its negotiation of the roles of the state, market and the family in procuring organs for transplantations, and its ultimate moral justifications.

Drawing on Boas’ personal experiences of waiting, searching and obtaining organs, each autobiographical section of the book sheds light on a different aspect of the political economy of organs – post-mortem donations, parental donation, and organ market – and illustrates the experience of living with the fear of rejection and the intimidation of chronic shortage.

Boas combines a rigorous academic analysis of the political economy of organ supply for transplantation with autobiographical narratives that illuminate the complex experience of being an organ recipient.

The author, Hagai Boas invites your comments and questions. Contact him at Hagaib@vanleer.org.il

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Shelley Fraser Mickle, "Borrowing Life: How Scientists, Surgeons, and a War Hero Made the First Successful Organ Transplant a Reality" (Imagine, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Performed at Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1954, the first successful kidney transplant was the culmination of years of grit, compassion, and the pursuit of excellence by a remarkable medical team--Nobel Prize-winning surgeon Joseph Murray, his boss and fellow surgeon Francis Moore, and British scientist and fellow Nobel laureate Peter Medawar. Drawing on the lives of these members of the Greatest Generation, Shelley Fraser Mickle's Borrowing Life: How Scientists, Surgeons, and a War Hero Made the First Successful Organ Transplant a Reality (Imagine, 2020) creates a compelling narrative that begins in wartime and tracks decades of the ups and downs, personal and professional, of these inspiring men and their achievements, which continue to benefit humankind in so many ways.

Victoria Phillips is a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics in the Department of International History.

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Austin Ratner, "The Psychoanalyst's Aversion to Proof" (Ipbooks, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

A clear and engaging call-to-arms to Freudians everywhere and a fresh diagnosis of the major problem confronting psychoanalysis today, Austin Ratner's book The Psychoanalyst's Aversion to Proof (Ipbooks, 2018) presents exciting new ideas that could help psychoanalysis reclaim its eminent place among the mental sciences. By showing how and why Freudians have avoided proving their theories, The Psychoanalyst’s Aversion to Proof charts a new future of growth and engagement in which psychoanalysis fulfills its promise: to rescue humanity from its own irrationality.

Karyne Messina is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and am on the medical staff of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. She is the author of Resurgence of Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy (Routledge, 2022).

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Jacalyn Duffin, "Covid-19: A History" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

For two years the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the world. The physician and medical historian Jacalyn Duffin presents a global history of the virus, with a focus on Canada.

In Covid-19: A History ( McGill-Queen's UP, 2022), Duffin describes the frightening appearance of the virus and its identification by scientists in China; subsequent outbreaks on cruise ships; the relentless spread to Europe, the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere; and the immediate attempts to confront it. COVID-19 next explores the scientific history of infections generally, and the discovery of coronaviruses in particular. Taking a broad approach, the book explains the advent of tests, treatments, and vaccines, as well as the practical politics behind interventions, including quarantines, barrier technologies, lockdowns, and social and financial supports. In concluding chapters Duffin analyzes the outcome of successive waves of COVID-19 infection around the world: the toll of human suffering, the successes and failures of control measures, vaccine rollouts, and grassroots opposition to governments' attempts to limit the spread and mitigate social and economic damages. Closing with the fraught search for the origins of COVID-19, Duffin considers the implications of an "infodemic" and provides a cautionary outlook for the future.

Corinne Doria is a historian specializing in the social history of medicine. She is a lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen and teaches Disability Studies at Sciences-Po (Paris). Her work focuses on the history of ophthalmology and visual impairment in the West.

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Barbara Katz Rothman, "The Biomedical Empire: Lessons Learned from the COVID Pandemic" (Stanford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 11 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

We are all citizens of the Biomedical Empire, though few of us know it, and even fewer understand the extent of its power. In this book, Barbara Katz Rothman clarifies that critiques of biopower and the "medical industrial complex" have not gone far enough, and asserts that the medical industry is nothing short of an imperial power. Factors as fundamental as one's citizenship and sex identity—drivers of our access to basic goods and services—rely on approval and legitimation by biomedicine. Moreover, a vast and powerful global market has risen up around the empire, making it one of the largest economic forces in the world.

In The Biomedical Empire: Lessons Learned from the COVID Pandemic (Stanford UP, 2021), Katz Rothman shows that biomedicine has the key elements of an imperial power: economic leverage, the faith of its citizens, and governmental rule. She investigates the Western colonial underpinnings of the empire and its rapid intrusion into everyday life, focusing on the realms of birth and death. This provides her with a powerful vantage point from which to critically examine the current moment, when the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the power structures of the empire in unprecedented ways while sparking the most visible resistance it has ever seen.

Barbara Katz Rothman is Professor of Sociology, at the City University of New York. She has served as President of Sociologists for Women in Society; the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and the Eastern Sociological Society. Her awards include the Jesse Bernard Award of the American Sociological Association, and an award for "Midwifing the Movement" from the Midwives Alliance of North America, and a distinguished Chair in Health Sciences from the Fulbright Association. She is the author of numerous books, most recently A Bun in the Oven: How the Food and Birth Movements Resist Industrialization (2016).

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington, 2022). His general area of study is on media representations of people and place at festivals and celebrations. He is currently working on his next book where he conducted research on an annual canoeing and kayaking event that takes place on the Upper Mississippi River. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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Margaret S. Chisolm, "From Survive to Thrive: Living Your Best Life with Mental Illness" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

The term “mental illness” can itself be anxiety-inducing and depressing. There are words, though, that can counter the fears and stresses that mind-related conditions induce in most of us at some point in our lives. One of those bracing, comforting words is, “flourishing.” That welcome word abounds in the 2021 book From Survive to Thrive: Living Your Best Life with Mental Illness (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021) by Dr. Margaret S. Chisolm, a psychiatrist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. This is the ideal book if you have been struggling from everything from a bout of depression to schizophrenia or love someone who is.

This short book is just the tonic for those experiencing a range of conditions, including substance abuse or even dissatisfaction with the way their lives are going but who are uncertain what changes to make, if any. There is also some frank discussion of suicide, either of a loved one or the thoughts of ending one’s life that afflict many people at times.

Dr. Chisolm uses her own experience with postpartum depression when she was a busy young physician in a fellowship training program to illustrate how those in the throes of a mental health crisis often need to be nudged by a spouse or other family member to seek professional help.

The book delineates what that help should look like. We are introduced to the four perspectives through which all mental health concerns should be addressed, according to Dr. Chisolm. These are: disease, dimensional, behavior, and life story. She advocates for a thoroughgoing Mental Status Exam (MSE) and encourages the involvement of family members in the process given that the person in mental distress may not be equipped just then to provide crucial background and may lack awareness of worrying changes in his or her behavior.

Chisolm does not sugarcoat the grim realities of serious mental conditions. But the book is upbeat. Its tone is good-humored common sense and the message is hopeful. We are given practical advice on how to make incremental changes (such as long walks and jobs, whether for pay or volunteer) that will enhance our mental and physical health.

Along these lines, the doctor describes the four pathways associated with well-being: family, work, education, and community.

Let’s hear from Margaret Chisolm herself about the book.

Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher.

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James A. Geraghty, "Inside the Orphan Drug Revolution: The Promise of Patient-Centered Biotechnology" (Cold Springs Harbor Lab Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 6 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Advances in medicine have made possible better treatments for widespread, familiar human illnesses like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Yet there are thousands of much less common diseases, most of genetic origin, each classed as rare because it afflicts only a small number of people. These patient groups were long ignored by a pharmaceutical industry that judged them too small to provide a return on the investment needed to develop an effective remedy. Yet these orphaned diseases collectively caused misery and expense, often far greater than did more common ailments, for tens of millions of individuals and their families.

Forty years ago, a revolution that transformed the prospects of patients with rare diseases was lit by three sparks. The passage of the 1983 U.S. Orphan Drug Act resulted from public pressure brought by rare disease patients, their families, and advocates. The AIDS epidemic triggered additional activism, compounded when patients with the rare disease hemophilia became HIV-positive after infusion of tainted blood products. And the third spark was the emergence in the early 1980s of biotechnology companies like Genentech, Amgen, and Biogen employing then-new genetic engineering instead of conventional approaches to pharmaceutical development. Soon after, Genzyme became the first company to develop a treatment for a rare genetic disorder, Gaucher disease, which would come to transform the industry.

Jim Geraghty has been a passionate participant in the orphan drug revolution since its inception--a leader in the field as a strategy consultant, biotechnology executive, and venture entrepreneur. Inside the Orphan Drug Revolution: The Promise of Patient-Centered Biotechnology (Cold Springs Harbor Lab Press, 2022) is in part a history, with eyewitness accounts of advances as they occurred and portraits of the pioneering scientists and physicians, tireless activists, and visionary business leaders who made the revolution happen. And it tells deeply personal stories of patients and parents willing to risk new, untried therapies. But Geraghty also uses his exceptional experience and vantage point to look forward to the immense promise of the newest technologies like gene therapy and gene editing for the treatment of patients today and tomorrow. He concludes with thoughtful consideration of important questions. Why do drugs to treat orphan diseases cost so much? How can we ensure they are affordable? How can their effectiveness be responsibly assessed? And how can access to them be expanded internationally? This book graphically and poignantly illustrates how far an important healthcare revolution has come and reminds us that if not nurtured, it could end before its immense promise has been fulfilled.

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Cathy McClive, "The Art of Childbirth: A Seventeenth-Century Midwife's Epistolary Treatise to Doctor Vallant" (Iter Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 5 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Cathy McClive (Florida State University) offers the first full-length bilingual edition of an extraordinary treatise on childbirth written by a seventeenth-century French midwife in The Art of Childbirth: A Seventeenth-Century Midwife's Epistolary Treatise to Doctor Vallant (University of Toronto Press, 2022). In 1671, Marie Baudoin (1625-1700), head midwife and governor of the Hôtel-Dieu of Clermont-Ferrand, sent a treatise on the art of childbirth to her powerful Parisian patron, Dr. Vallant. The story of how Baudoin's knowledge and expertise as a midwife came to be expressed, recorded, and archived raises the question: Was Baudoin exceptional because she was herself extraordinary, or because her voice has reached us through Vallant's careful archival practices? Either way, Baudoin's treatise invites us to reconsider the limits of what we thought we knew midwives "could be and do" in seventeenth-century France. Grounding Marie Baudoin's text in a microanalysis of her life, work, and the Jansenist network between Paris and Clermont-Ferrand, this book connects historiographies of midwifery, Jansenism, hospital administration, public health, knowledge and record-keeping, and women's work, underscoring both Baudoin's capabilities and the archival accidents and intentions behind the preservation of her treatise in a letter.

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

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Jennifer Smith, "Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-De-Siècle Spain" (Vanderbilt UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sat, 3 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-De-Siècle Spain (Vanderbilt UP, 2021) argues that the reinterpretation of female mysticism as hysteria and nymphomania in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Spain was part of a larger project to suppress the growing female emancipation movement by sexualizing the female subject. This archival-historical work highlights the phenomenon in medical, social, and literary texts of the time, illustrating that despite many liberals' hostility toward the Church, secular doctors and intellectuals employed strikingly similar paradigms to those through which the early modern Spanish Church castigated female mysticism as demonic possession.

Author Jennifer Smith also directs modern historians to the writings of Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921) as a thinker whose work points out mysticism's subversive potential in terms of the patriarchal order. The only woman author studied here, Pardo Bazán, unlike her male counterparts, rejected the hysteria diagnosis and promoted mysticism as a path for women's personal development and self-realization.

Jennifer Smith is an associate professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Languages, Cultures, and International Trade at Southern Illinois University.

Carmen Gomez-Galisteo, Ph.D. is a lecturer at Centro de Educación Superior de Enseñanza e Investigación Educativa (CEIE).

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Wei Yu Wayne Tan, "Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity" (U Michigan Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

While the loss of sight—whether in early modern Japan or now—may be understood as a disability, blind people in the Tokugawa period (1600–1868) could thrive because of disability. The blind of the era were prominent across a wide range of professions, and through a strong guild structure were able to exert contractual monopolies over certain trades. Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity (U Michigan Press, 2022) illustrates the breadth and depth of those occupations, the power and respect that accrued to the guild members, and the lasting legacy of the Tokugawa guilds into the current moment.

The book illustrates why disability must be assessed within a particular society’s social, political, and medical context, and also the importance of bringing medical history into conversation with cultural history. A Euro-American-centric disability studies perspective that focuses on disability and oppression, the author contends, risks overlooking the unique situation in a non-Western society like Japan in which disability was constructed to enhance blind people’s power. He explores what it meant to be blind in Japan at that time, and what it says about current frameworks for understanding disability.

Glossary of foreign words/names:

Zatōichi (a blind fictional hero)
Kyokutei Bakin (a writer/author)
Heike (a genre)
Biwa (a musical instrument)
Koto< (a musical instrument)
Shamisen (a musical instrument)
Ogino Chiichi (a blind musician)

Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.

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Pierre Minn, "Where They Need Me: Local Clinicians and the Workings of Global Health in Haiti" (Cornell UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Haiti is the target of an overwhelming number of internationally funded health projects. While religious institutions sponsor a number of these initiatives, many are implemented within the secular framework of global health. In Where They Need Me: Local Clinicians and the Workings of Global Health in Haiti (Cornell UP, 2022), Pierre Minn illustrates the divergent criteria that actors involved in global health use to evaluate interventions' efficacy through examining the work of Haitian health professionals in humanitarian aid encounters.

Haitian physicians, nurses, and administrative staff are hired to carry out these global health programs, distribute or withhold resources, and produce accounts of interventions' outcomes. In their roles as intermediaries, Haitian clinicians are expected not only to embody the humanitarian projects of foreign funders and care for their impoverished patients but also to act as sources of support for their own kin networks, while negotiating their future prospects in a climate of pronounced scarcity and insecurity. Minn argues that a serious consideration of these local health care providers in the context of global health is essential to counter simplistic depictions of clinicians and patients as heroes, villains, or victims as well as to move beyond the donor-recipient dyad that has dominated theoretical work on humanitarianism and the gift.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author. She was chair of the doctoral program in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at Pacific College of Health and Science in San Diego before moving to the UK in 2021.

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Shana Kushner Gadarian et al., "Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID" (Princeton UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

None of us really want to relive our first encounters with COVID-19 and the disruptions to our lives, to say nothing of the anxiety and concern about the life-threatening nature of this virus as it spread around the globe. At the same time, Shana Kushner Gadarian, Sara Wallace Goodman, and Thomas B. Pepinsky ask us to reflect on our experiences and the responses to COVID-19 in the United States in their new book, Pandemic Politics: The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID (Princeton UP, 2022). Kushner Gadarian, Wallace Goodman, and Pepinsky were able to put sizeable surveys into the field starting as early as March 2020, as the pandemic was taking hold in the United States and as our daily lives started to “shut down.” The three authors continued to send out the same survey to the same individuals over the course of the next two years, eventually pulling together data from six waves of surveys of some 3000 Americans. The center of the research design was to try to examine individual attitudes towards COVID-19 itself, and how people responded to the pandemic threat and the mitigation efforts. Because of the capacity to survey the same individuals over time, the authors were able to see the way that people changed their thinking as COVID itself mutated and re-situated itself in different parts of the country. The conclusion from all of this data and information is that, in the United States, partisanship swamped everything else in terms of how individuals thought about, reacted to, and responded to COVID-19.

Pandemic Politics explores the way that citizens were picking up on different signals from partisan leadership because there were differing approaches to how to handle and respond to COVID-19. This was unique in the United States in comparison to other countries. Because of competing messages coming from different authoritative individuals (like the president of the United States, governors, state and local level health authorities, CDC and NIH experts, etc.) and, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, there was a significant knowledge gap as to what to do and how to keep ourselves safe, many Americans found themselves confused and concerned. As a result, the data indicates that Republicans and Democrats were hearing and seeing different information, different advice, and this continued and became more entrenched as the pandemic continued. The authors also note that the structural foundation for these partisan differences were already present before the pandemic—there were pre-existing conditions within the body politic that subsequently led to the sclerotic partisan reactions to the pandemic itself and to the efforts to mitigate the impact of COVID-19.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of the new book, The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj.

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Sri Aurobindo, the Psychic Being, and Integrative Medicine

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Sun, 27 Nov 2022 05:00:00 +0000

In this episode we meet Dr. Sangeeta Sahi, who during her medical training found that “scientifically unexplainable healing instances” lead her to formulate a framework called Integrative Medicine. Sangeeta shares how she arrived at the intersection of modern medicine and Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga to formulate alternative and holistic healing modalities. We start our discussion with a reading from Sri Aurobindo about idea of the evolutionary soul, called the psychic being, and discuss its central role in personality development, and its integral importance in the cultivation of holistic health. We discuss how one can experience Divine attributes and cosmic archetypes through cultivating yogic equanimity, and the possibilities of cultivating an intuitive knowing, as knowledge by identity, through bringing the psychic being forward in the heart center. We discuss holistic health in relation to the Buddha’s 4 noble truths, as well as how to integrally approaches other problems of our times, such as technology and the climate change crisis. The podcast concludes with Sangeeta speaking about the foundations and goals of her most recent project, the Unified Human Foundation.

Dr. Sangeeta Sahi is an Integrative Medical Doctor and Anti-aging Consultant, who graduated from the Christian Medical College in India, and Whipps Cross Hospital, London, UK. In addition, she received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from ESSEC in Paris, France. Dr. Sahi is a pioneering medical physician who combines her formal medical training with a host of dynamic complementary and alternative therapies in her practice of Integrative Medicine. She has created a specific program for individuals experiencing Cancer and autoimmune diseases using her particular integrated approach. This program is called Conscious Cancer®. Integrative Medicine reaffirms the importance of the relationship between the practitioner and patient, and emphasizes wellness and healing of the whole person. The physical, mental, social, spiritual, environmental, and other states of being are considered as primary goals. Conventional and Complementary Alternative Medical approaches are used to deliver the most comprehensive patient care. Dr. Sahi uses conventional and complementary alternative medical approaches to deliver the most appropriate and integral patient care. Individuals are made responsible and involved in their own health.

The EWP Podcast credits

East-West Psychology Podcast Website
Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook
Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP adjunct faculty, program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)
Produced by: Stephen Julich and Jonathan Kay
Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay
Introduction music: Mosaic, by Monsoon on the album Mandala
Music at the end of the episode: Ocean of Light by Jonathan Kay and Hania Luthufi, from the album Eternal Tides: A Musical Offering to the Oceans
Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra

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Christopher Willoughby, "Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools" (UNC Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be viable as experimental subjects, as cadavers, and for use in the training of medical students. By taking a hard look at the racial ideas of both northern and southern medical schools, Christopher D. E. Willoughby reveals that racist ideas were not external to the medical profession but fundamental to medical knowledge.

In this history of racial thinking and slavery in American medical schools, the founders and early faculty of these schools emerge as singularly influential proponents of white supremacist racial science. They pushed an understanding of race influenced by the theory of polygenesis—that each race was created separately and as different species—which they supported by training students to collect and measure human skulls from around the world. Medical students came to see themselves as masters of Black people's bodies through stealing Black people’s corpses, experimenting on enslaved people, and practicing distinctive therapeutics on Black patients. In documenting these practices Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools (UNC Press, 2022) charts the rise of racist theories in U.S. medical schools, throwing new light on the extensive legacies of slavery in modern medicine.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Elissa Bassist, "Hysterical: A Memoir" (Hachette, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Elissa Bassist about her memoir Hysterical: A Memoir (Hachette, 2022)

For two years author Elissa Bassist saw over twenty medical specialists for pain that none of them managed to diagnose or resolve. Some of their treatments led to other medical problems but never relief. Then an acupuncturist suggested that she simply needed to take control of her voice, and Bassist was shocked when it worked. How, as far as we think we’ve come, is it still the case that a girl born in 1984 could have so much in common with generations of women who were expected to be silent, to "get along," to accept whatever was happening even when their souls ached, their heads pounded, and their bodies withered? Bassist was accused of "being dramatic" when she experienced pain and "inappropriate" when she expressed her sadness or suffering. She said “yes,” when she meant, “no,” and accepted others’ opinions that she was too emotional, too loud, or too aggressive. In her justifiably angry voice, the one she had to take control of, Bassist shares her personal journey from broken and bleeding, scared and lonely, to acerbically funny and quick to call out nonsense. She’s straightforward and unashamed in sharing the moments she’s least proud of and the times she’d rather forget, because now she wants to teach other women that it’s okay to "look bad" in service of unmuting their own voices.

Elissa Bassist is the editor of the “Funny Women” column on The Rumpus and the author of the award-deserving memoir Hysterical. As a founding contributor to The Rumpus, she’s written cultural and personal criticism since the website launched in 2009. She also teaches humor writing at The New School, Catapult, 92NY, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and elsewhere, and she is probably her therapist’s favorite. Bassist lives in Brooklyn with her dog Benny, a very good boy, and when not writing or reading or teaching, she watches horror movies, rides roller coasters, and does light witchcraft.

G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com).

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Michael Stein, "Accidental Kindness: A Doctor’s Notes on Empathy" (UNC Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

We will all be patients sooner or later. And when we go to the doctor, when we're hurting, we tend to think in terms of cause and condemnation. We often look for relief not only from physical symptoms but also from our self-blame. We want from our doctors kindness under any of its many names: empathy, caring, compassion, humanity. We look for safety and forgiveness. But we forget that doctors, too, are often in need of forgiveness―from their patients and from themselves. No doctor enters the medical profession expecting to be unkind or to make mistakes, but because of the complexity of our current medical system and because doctors are human, they often find themselves acting much less kindly than they would like to.

Drawing on his work as a primary care physician and a behavioral scientist, Michael Stein artfully examines the often-conflicting goals of patients and their doctors. In those differences, Stein recognizes that kindness should not be a patient's forbidden or unrealistic expectation. Accidental Kindness: A Doctor’s Notes on Empathy (UNC Press, 2022) leaves us with new knowledge of, and insights into, what we might hope for and what might go wrong, or right, in the most intimate clinical moments.

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97 Buddhist Medicine and Buddhish

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Pierce Salguero comes on to discuss two of his books: Buddhish, A Guide to the 20 Most Important Buddhist Ideas for the Curious and Skeptical (Beacon Press, 2022) and A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (Columbia UP, 2022).

Pierce is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities, fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, near Philadelphia.

The major theme in his scholarship is discovering the role of Buddhism in the global transmission and local reception of knowledge about health, disease, and the body.

After graduating in 1996, he lived in Asia for four years — more than two years in Thailand, with extended stays in India, China, and Indonesia as well. During this time, he trained as a practitioner of Traditional Thai Medicine (TTM). Pierce participated in extended stays at Buddhist meditation centers and monasteries in Northeast Thailand and India, including a summer as ananāgārika (white-robed monastic resident) in a Thai Forest-tradition monastery.

Matthew O'Connell is a life coach and the host of the The Imperfect Buddha podcast. You can find The Imperfect Buddha on Facebook and Twitter (@imperfectbuddha).

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Anita Guerrini, "Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Experimentation on animals—particularly humans—is often assumed to be a uniquely modern phenomenon. But the ideas and attitudes that encourage biological and medical scientists to experiment on living creatures date from the earliest expressions of Western thought. In Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022) (Johns Hopkins UP), Anita Guerrini looks at the history of these practices and examines the philosophical and ethical arguments that justified them.

Guerrini discusses key historical episodes in the use of living beings in science and medicine, including the discovery of blood circulation, the development of smallpox and polio vaccines, and recent research in genetics, ecology, and animal behavior. She also explores the rise of the antivivisection movement in Victorian England, the modern animal rights movement, and current debates over gene therapy and genetically engineered animals. We learn how perceptions and understandings of human and animal pain have changed; how ideas of class, race, and gender have defined the human research subject; and that the ethical values of science seldom stray far from the society in which scientists live and work.

Thoroughly rewritten and updated, with new material in every chapter, the book emphasizes a broader understanding of experimentation and adds material on gene therapy, self-experimentation, and prisoners and slaves as experimental subjects. A new chapter brings the story up to the present while reflecting on the current regulatory scene, new developments in science, and emerging genomics. Experimenting with Humans and Animals offers readers a context within which to understand more fully the responsibility we all bear for the suffering inflicted on other living beings in the name of scientific knowledge.

Anita Guerrini is a historian of science and medicine, recently retired as Horning Professor in the Humanities at Oregon State University, where she's been since 2008. Before that she was a professor of History and Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was educated at Connecticut College and Oxford University and received a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University.

Callie Smith is a poet and a PhD candidate in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

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Steven N. Austad, "Methuselah's Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us about Living Longer, Healthier Lives" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Opossums in the wild don't make it to the age of three; our pet cats can live for a decade and a half; cicadas live for seventeen years (spending most of them underground). Whales, however, can live for two centuries and tubeworms for several millennia. Meanwhile, human life expectancy tops out around the mid-eighties, with some outliers living past 100 or even 110. Is there anything humans can learn from the exceptional longevity of some animals in the wild? In Methuselah's Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us about Living Longer, Healthier Lives (MIT Press, 2022), Steven Austad tells the stories of some extraordinary animals, considering why, for example, animal species that fly live longer than earthbound species and why animals found in the ocean live longest of all.

Austad--the leading authority on longevity in animals--argues that the best way we will learn from these long-lived animals is by studying them in the wild. Accordingly, he proceeds habitat by habitat, examining animals that spend most of their lives in the air, comparing insects, birds, and bats; animals that live on, and under, the ground--from mole rats to elephants; and animals that live in the sea, including quahogs, carp, and dolphins.

Humans have dramatically increased their lifespan with only a limited increase in healthspan; we're more and more prone to diseases as we grow older. By contrast, these species have successfully avoided both environmental hazards and the depredations of aging. Can we be more like them?

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Todd Meyers, "All That Was Not Her" (Duke UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

While studying caregiving and chronic illness in families living in situations of economic and social insecurity in Baltimore, anthropologist Todd Meyers met a woman named Beverly. In All That Was Not Her (Duke UP, 2022) Meyers presents an intimate ethnographic portrait of Beverly, stitching together small moments they shared scattered over months and years and, following her death, into the present. He meditates on the possibilities of writing about someone who is gone—what should be represented, what experiences resist rendering, what ethical challenges exist when studying the lives of others. Meyers considers how chronic illness is bound up in the racialized and socioeconomic conditions of Beverly’s life and explores the stakes of the anthropologist’s engagement with one subject. Even as Meyers struggles to give Beverly the final word, he finds himself unmade alongside her. All That Was Not Her captures the complexity of personal relationships in the field and the difficulty of their ending.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Ayan S. Mandal, "A Stethoscope for the Brain: Preventive Approaches to Protect the Mind" (New Degree Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Nov 2022 08:00:00 +0000

A taken-for-granted miracle occurs in doctors’ offices across the world every single day. With only a stethoscope and an inflatable cuff, a physician can check your blood pressure to predict your risk of future heart problems. These tools give you the chance to take proactive steps to reduce this risk if needed. Why don’t we have similar tools for the brain?

A Stethoscope for the Brain: Preventive Approaches to Protect the Mind (New Degree Press, 2022) is a book about proactive strategies to prevent brain diseases. Blending the stories of people affected by brain disease with the science that saves patients’ lives, neuroscientist Ayan Mandal invites readers to learn about the future of brain health.

This book tells the stories of...

A sisterhood of Catholic nuns who taught the world the secret to preventing dementia
The French patient whose legacy guides our ability to treat strokes early
Military veterans whose routine checkups led to a discovery that could prevent the most common cause of disability in young adults

New advances in medicine are proving that maladies of the mind are not inevitable. Learn what can be done to protect the brains of you and your loved ones.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Harris Solomon, "Lifelines: The Traffic of Trauma" (Duke UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Nov 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Lifelines: The Traffic of Trauma (Duke UP, 2022), Harris Solomon takes readers into the trauma ward of one of Mumbai’s busiest public hospitals, narrating the stories of the patients, providers, and families who experience and care for traumatic injuries due to widespread traffic accidents. He traces trauma’s moves after the accident: from scenes of road and railway injuries to ambulance interiors; through emergency triage, surgery, and intensive care; and from the morgue for patients who do not survive into the homes of those who do. These pathways reveal how trauma shifts inequalities, infrastructures, and institutions through the lives and labors of clinical spaces. Solomon contends that medicine itself must be understood in terms of lifelines: patterns of embodied movement that determine survival. In reflecting on the centrality of traffic to life, Lifelines explores a fundamental question: How does medicine move us?

This book is available open access. Please follow this link to access this book free completely of cost.

Sneha Annavarapu is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Yale-NUS College.

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Mikkael A. Sekeres, "Drugs and the FDA: Safety, Efficacy, and the Public's Trust" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 4 Nov 2022 08:00:00 +0000

How the FDA was shaped by public health crises and patient advocacy, told against a background of the contentious hearings on the breast cancer drug Avastin.

Food and Drug Administration approval for COVID-19 vaccines and the controversial Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm made headlines, but few of us know much about how the agency does its work. Why is the FDA the ultimate US authority on a drug's safety and efficacy? In Drugs and the FDA: Safety, Efficacy, and the Public's Trust (MIT Press, 2022), Mikkael Sekeres--a leading oncologist and former chair of the FDA's cancer drug advisory committee--tells the story of how the FDA became the most trusted regulatory agency in the world. It took a series of tragedies and health crises, as well as patient advocacy, for the government to take responsibility for ensuring the efficacy and safety of drugs and medical devices. Before the FDA existed, drug makers could hawk any potion, claim treatment of any ailment, and make any promise on a label. But then, throughout the twentieth century, the government was forced to take action when children were poisoned by contaminated diphtheria and smallpox vaccines, an early antibiotic contained antifreeze, a drug prescribed for morning sickness in pregnancy caused babies to be born disfigured, and access to AIDS drugs was limited to a few clinical trials while thousands died. Sekeres describes all these events against the backdrop of the contentious 2011 hearings on the breast cancer drug Avastin, in which he participated as a panel member. The Avastin hearings, he says, put to the test a century of the FDA's evolution, demonstrating how its system of checks and balances works--or doesn't work.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Robert Gottlieb, "Care-Centered Politics: From the Home to the Planet" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 1 Nov 2022 08:00:00 +0000

This agenda-setting book presents a framework for creating a more just and equitable care-centered world. Climate change, pandemic events, systemic racism, and deep inequalities have all underscored the centrality of care in our lives. Yet care work is, for the most part, undervalued and exploited. In Care-Centered Politics: From the Home to the Planet (MIT Press, 2022), Robert Gottlieb examines how a care economy and care politics can influence and remake health, climate, and environmental policy, as well as the institutions and practices of daily life. He shows how, through this care-centered politics, we can build an ethics of care and a society of cooperation, sharing, and solidarity.

Arguing that care is a form of labor, Gottlieb expands the ways we think about home care, child care, elder care, and other care relationships. He links them to the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, immigration, and the militarization of daily life. He also provides perspective on the events of 2020 and 2021 (including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and movements calling attention to racism and inequality) as they relate to a care politics. Care, says Gottlieb, must be universal--whether healthcare for all, care for the earth, care at work, or care for the household, shared equally by men and women. Care-centered politics is about strategic and structural reforms that imply radical and revolutionary change. Gottlieb offers a practical, mindful, yet also utopian, politics of daily life.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Mackenzie Cooley, "The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The Renaissance is celebrated for the belief that individuals could fashion themselves to greatness, but there is a dark undercurrent to this fêted era of history. The same men and women who offered profound advancements in European understanding of the human condition—and laid the foundations of the Scientific Revolution—were also obsessed with controlling that condition and the wider natural world.

Tracing early modern artisanal practice, Mackenzie Cooley shows how the idea of race and theories of inheritance developed through animal breeding in the shadow of the Spanish Empire. While one strand of the Renaissance celebrated a liberal view of human potential, another limited it by biology, reducing man to beast and prince to stud. “Race,” Cooley explains, first referred to animal stock honed through breeding. To those who invented the concept, race was not inflexible, but the fragile result of reproductive work. As the Spanish empire expanded, the concept of race moved from nonhuman to human animals. Cooley reveals how, as the dangerous idea of controlled reproduction was brought to life again and again, a rich, complex, and ever-shifting language of race and breeding was born.

Adding nuance and historical context to discussions of race and human and animal relations, The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance (U Chicago Press, 2022) provides a close reading of undertheorized notions of generation and its discontents in the more-than-human world.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author. Before moving to the UK in 2021 she was chair of the doctoral program in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at Pacific College of Health and Science in San Diego.

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Sian E. Harding, "The Exquisite Machine: The New Science of the Heart" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Your heart is a miracle in motion, a marvel of construction unsurpassed by any human-made creation. It beats 100,000 times every day--if you were to live to 100, that would be more than 3 billion beats across your lifespan. Despite decades of effort in labs all over the world, we have not yet been able to replicate the heart's perfect engineering. But, as Sian Harding shows us in The Exquisite Machine: The New Science of the Heart (MIT Press, 2022), new scientific developments are opening up the mysteries of the heart. And this explosion of new science--ultrafast imaging, gene editing, stem cells, artificial intelligence, and advanced sub-light microscopy--has crucial, real-world consequences for health and well-being.

Harding--a world leader in cardiac research--explores the relation between the emotions and heart function, reporting that the heart not only responds to our emotions, it creates them as well. The condition known as Broken Heart Syndrome, for example, is a real disorder than can follow bereavement or stress. The Exquisite Machine describes the evolutionary forces that have shaped the heart's response to damage, the astonishing rejuvenating power of stem cells, how we can avoid heart disease, and why it can be so hard to repair a damaged heart. It tells the stories of patients who have had the devastating experiences of a heart attack, chaotic heart rhythms, or stress-induced acute heart failure. And it describes how cutting-edge technologies are enabling experiments and clinical trials that will lead us to new solutions to the worldwide scourge of heart disease.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Krystale E. Littlejohn, "Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics" (U California Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The average person concerned about becoming pregnant spends approximately thirty years trying to prevent conception. People largely do so alone using prescription birth control, a situation often taken for granted in the United States as natural and beneficial.

In Just Get On the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics (University of California Press, 2021), a keenly researched and incisive examination, Krystale Littlejohn investigates how birth control becomes a fundamentally unbalanced and gendered responsibility. She uncovers how parents, peers, partners, and providers draw on narratives of male and female birth control methods to socialize cisgender women into sex and ultimately into shouldering the burden for preventing pregnancy. Littlejohn draws on extensive interviews to document this gendered compulsory birth control—a phenomenon in which people who give birth are held accountable for preventing and resolving pregnancies in gender-constrained ways. She shows how this gendered approach encroaches on reproductive autonomy and poses obstacles for preventing disease. While diverse cisgender women are the focus, Littlejohn shows that they are not the only ones harmed by this dynamic. Indeed, gendered approaches to birth control also negatively impact trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming people in overlooked ways. In tracing the divisive politics of pregnancy prevention, Littlejohn demonstrates that the gendered division of labor in birth control is not natural. It is unjust.

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Ayurveda and Alchemy: A Conversation with Dagmar Wujastyk

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

A candid conversation with Dr. Dagmar Wujastyk about her fascinating work at the intersection of yoga, Ayurveda, and alchemy.

Dr. Wujastyk’s online course “Ayurveda, Yoga and Alchemy."

Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis, "Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis's book Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility (Rutgers UP, 2020) focuses on an understudied dimension of the war on terror: the fight against bioterrorism. This component of the war enlisted the biosciences and public health fields to build up the U.S. biodefense industry and U.S. global disease control. The book argues that U.S. imperial ambitions drove these shifts in focus, aided by gendered and racialized discourses on terrorism, disease, and science. These narratives helped rationalize American research expansion into dangerous germs and bioweapons in the name of biodefense and bolstered the U.S. rationale for increased interference in the disease control decisions of Global South nations. Bio-Imperialism is a sobering look at how the war on terror impacted the world in ways that we are only just starting to grapple with.

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Jay Baruch, "Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

To be an emergency room doctor is to be a professional listener to stories. Each patient presents a story; finding the heart of that story is the doctor’s most critical task. More technology, more tests, and more data won’t work if doctors get the story wrong. Empathy, creativity, and imagination are the cornerstones of clinical care. In Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER (MIT Press, 2022), ER physician Jay Baruch offers a series of short, powerful, and affecting essays that capture the stories of ER patients in all their complexity and messiness.

Patients come to the ER with lives troubled by scales of misfortune that have little to do with disease or injury. ER doctors must be problem-finders before they are problem-solvers. Cheryl, for example, whose story is a chaos narrative of “and this happened, and then that happened, and then, and then and then and then,” tells Baruch she is "stuck in a tornado of life.” What will help her, and and what will help Mr. K., who seems like a textbook case of post-combat PTSD but turns out not to be? Baruch describes, among other things, the emergency of loneliness (invoking Chekhov, another doctor-writer); his own (frightening) experience as a patient; the patient who demanded a hug; and emergency medicine during COVID-19. These stories often end without closure or solutions. The patients are discharged into the world. But if they’re lucky, the doctor has listened to their stories as well as treated them.

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Anita Wohlmann, "Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Metaphor in Illness Writing: Fight and Battle Reused (Edinburgh UP, 2022) argues that even when a metaphor appears problematic and limiting, it need not be dropped or dismissed. Metaphors are not inherently harmful or beneficial; instead, they can be used in unexpected and creative ways. This book analyses the illness writing of contemporary North American writers who reimagine and reappropriate the supposedly harmful metaphor 'illness is a fight' and shows how Susan Sontag, Audre Lorde, Anatole Broyard, David Foster Wallace and other writers turn the fight metaphor into a space of agency, resistance, self-knowledge and aesthetic pleasure. It joins a conversation in Medical Humanities about alternatives to the predominance of narrative and responds to the call for more metaphor literacy and metaphor competence.

Wohlman has developed the vade mecum for Metaphor Method. You can find it here (in the right column). For the PDF file, click here.

Anita Wohlmann is an associate professor in the Department for the Study of Culture at SDU.

Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies.

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Suicide Prevention: Grassroots Intervention for High-Risk Groups

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 4 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Suicide has been on the rise in recent years, most frighteningly among young people. Suicide is second leading cause of death for people ages 10-14 and 25-34. Gay, lesbian, and transgender youth are at particular risk.

Every year in the U.S., more people die by suicide than in car accidents, and more suicide deaths occur than homicide and AIDS deaths combined.

In this episode Renee Garfinkel and Hannah Rothstein discuss the myths and facts about suicide, its warning signs, and how friends and family, teachers and others can help.

Hannah Rothstein, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Management at Baruch College, City University of New York, Crisis Counselor for the Trevor Project.

If you’re thinking about suicide or you’re in crisis right now,

In U.S. call or text 988 or contact 988lifeline.org to talk with someone online.

In Israel: call suicide hotline *1201 (press 3 for languages, then select English).

Hannah Rothstein, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Management at Baruch College, City University of New York, Crisis Counselor for the Trevor Project.

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The Psychedelic World of Hollywood Hospital

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 3 Oct 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Erika Dyck on the book she co-authored with Jesse Donaldson on an unusual chapter in Canada’s medical history. Entitled The Acid Room: The Psychedelic Trials and Tribulations of Hollywood Hospital, this book was published by Vancouver’s Anvil Press in 2021. This is a history of a private hospital in greater Vancouver which specialized in treatments for alcoholism, trauma and other conditions using LSD, mescalin and other psychotropic substances from the late 1950s until it shut down in the early 1970s. Erika Dyck is professor of History and Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan.

This interview was produced with the support of The Champlain Society. The mission of The Champlain Society is to increase public awareness of, and accessibility to, Canada’s rich store of historical records.

Gregory P. Marchildon is the Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy and System Design with the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

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Michael Slouber, "Early Tantric Medicine: Snakebite, Mantras, and Healing in the Garuda Tantras" (Oxford UP, 2016)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Michael Slouber's Early Tantric Medicine: Snakebite, Mantras, and Healing in the Garuda Tantras (Oxford UP, 2016) looks at a traditional medical system that flourished over 1,000 years ago in India. The volume brings to life this rich tradition in which knowledge and faith are harnessed in complex visualizations accompanied by secret mantras to an array of gods and goddesses; this religious system is combined with herbal medicine and a fascinating mixof lore on snakes, astrology, and healing. The book's appendices include an accurate, yet readable translation of ten chapters of the most significant Tantric medical text to be recovered: the Kriyakalagunottara.

Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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Wendy Simonds, "Hospital Land USA: Sociological Adventures in Medicalization" (Routledge, 2016)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Hospital Land USA: Sociological Adventures in Medicalization (Routledge, 2016), Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences, culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hospital Land adventures and draws on a wide range of U.S. cultural representations — from memoirs to medical mail, from hospital signs to disaster movies — in order to urge critical thinking about conventional notions of care, health, embodiment, identity, suffering, and mortality.

This book is intended for general readers, medical practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students in courses on medical sociology, medicine, medical ethics, nursing, public health, carework, visual culture, cultural studies, and gerontology.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington, 2022). His general area of study is on media representations people and place at festivals and celebrations. His next book project is on research that he conducted about a canoeing and kayaking event that occurs annually on the Upper Mississippi River. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

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Kathryn Harkup, "Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions – shock, sadness, fear – that they did more than 400 years ago when these plays were first performed. But how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the knowledge to back them up?

In the Bard's day death was a part of everyday life. Plague, pestilence and public executions were a common occurrence, and the chances of seeing a dead or dying body on the way home from the theatre were high. It was also a time of important scientific progress. Shakespeare kept pace with anatomical and medical advances, and he included the latest scientific discoveries in his work, from blood circulation to treatments for syphilis. He certainly didn't shy away from portraying the reality of death on stage, from the brutal to the mundane, and the spectacular to the silly.

Elizabethan London provides the backdrop for Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts (Bloomsbury, 2020), as Dr. Kathryn Harkup turns her discerning scientific eye to the Bard and the varied and creative ways his characters die. Was death by snakebite as serene as Shakespeare makes out? Could lack of sleep have killed Lady Macbeth? Can you really murder someone by pouring poison in their ear? Dr. Harkup investigates what actual events may have inspired Shakespeare, what the accepted scientific knowledge of the time was, and how Elizabethan audiences would have responded to these death scenes. Death by Shakespeare will tell you all this and more in a rollercoaster of Elizabethan carnage, poison, swordplay and bloodshed, with an occasional death by bear-mauling for good measure.

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Martin Halliwell, "American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics" (U California Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 19:00:00 +0000

Despite enormous advances in medical science and public health education over the last century, access to health care remains a dominant issue in American life. U.S. health care is often hailed as the best in the world, yet the public health emergencies of today often echo the public health emergencies of yesterday: consider the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 and COVID-19, the displacement of the Dust Bowl and the havoc of Hurricane Maria, the Reagan administration’s antipathy toward the AIDS epidemic and the lack of accountability during the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Spanning the period from the presidency of Woodrow Wilson to that of Donald Trump, American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics (University of California Press, 2021) illuminates how—despite the elevation of health care as a human right throughout the world—vulnerable communities in the United States continue to be victimized by structural inequalities across disparate geographies, income levels, and ethnic groups. Martin Halliwell views contemporary public health crises through the lens of historical and cultural revisionings, suturing individual events together into a narrative of calamity that has brought us to our current crisis in health politics. American Health Crisis considers the future of public health in the United States and, presenting a reinvigorated concept of health citizenship, argues that now is the moment to act for lasting change.

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John Richens, "Tik Merauke: An Epidemic Like No Other" (Melbourne UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

A medical doctor with an inquisitive mind and a traveling spirit, John Richens thought he had hit upon an exemplary public health case study – the story of donovanosis among the Marind people of early-twentieth-century New Guinea. The rare, sexually transmitted disease, locally known as “tik Merauke,” rose to epidemic level after the ruling Dutch moved to quash the Marind practice of headhunting. The intensive treatment campaign that followed was successful, at least insofar as curing the infection.

However, medical outcomes are only one aspect of the complex history of the Marind’s encounter with imperial power, as Richens recounts in Tik Merauke: An Epidemic Like No Other (Melbourne UP, 2022). He introduces us to a cast of characters drawn, for varying reasons, to New Guinea – among them anthropologists, bird hunters, film directors, and missionaries – through whom Western knowledge of the Marind has been filtered. Along the way, he exposes the “darker side of imperialism” which still afflicts the Marind today.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author. Before moving to the UK in 2021 she was chair of the doctoral program in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at Pacific College of Health and Science in San Diego.

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Rick Strassman, "The Psychedelic Handbook: A Practical Guide to Psilocybin, LSD, Ketamine, MDMA, and DMT/Ayahuasca" (Ulysses Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Entering the world of psychedelic drugs can be challenging, and many aren't sure where to start. As research continues to expand and legalization looms on the horizon for psychedelics like psilocybin, you may need a guide to navigate what psychedelics are, how they work, and their potential benefits and risks.

The Psychedelic Handbook: A Practical Guide to Psilocybin, LSD, Ketamine, MDMA, and DMT/Ayahuasca (Ulysses Press, 2022) is a complete manual that is accessible to anyone with an interest in these "mind-manifesting" substances. Packed with information on psilocybin, LSD, DMT/ayahuasca, mescaline/peyote, ketamine, MDMA, ibogaine, 5-methoxy-DMT ("the toad"), and Salvia divinorum/salvinorin A, this book is your ultimate reference for understanding the science and history of psychedelics; discovering their potential to treat depression, PTSD, substance abuse, and other disorders, as well as to increase wellness, creativity, and meditation; learning how to safely trip and explaining what we know about microdosing; and recognizing and caring for negative reactions to psychedelics.

Clinical research psychiatrist, founding figure of the American psychedelic research renaissance, and best-selling author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Dr. Rick Strassman shares his experience and perspectives as neither advocate nor foe of psychedelics in order to help readers understand the effects of these remarkable drugs.

Geert Slabbekoorn works as an analyst in the field of public security. In addition he has published on different aspects of dark web drug trade in Belgium. Find him on twitter, tweeting all things drug related @GeertJS.

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Sanjiv Chopra, "Coffee the Magical Elixir: Facts That Will Astound and Perk You Up" (Bookbaby, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Sanjiv Chopra about his book Coffee the Magical Elixir: Facts That Will Astound and Perk You Up (Bookbaby, 2021)

2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed globally everyday. Coffee has a myriad of health benefits the overwhelming majority are which not known to the lay public and even physicians. There has been a plethora of research published in peer reviewed scientific journals attesting to the health benefits of coffee. They are mechanistic explanations and often a dose dependent benefit. Coffee drinkers have a lower risk of seven common cancers, cirrhosis of the liver, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's Disease, and many other common ailments. Astoundingly coffee drinkers, both women and men have lower total and cause specific mortality. Telomeres are caps at the end of our chromosomes that protect the chromosomes from sticking to each other and from fraying. Shorten telomere length implies accelerated cellular aging and is seen in mothers of chronically disabled children and care givers of folks with Alzheimer's Dementia. Longer telomere length is seen in individuals who exercise, meditate, are on the Mediterranean diet and those who drink coffee. Here is a mind boggling fact. Increase caffeine intake is linked with shortened telomeres, while increased coffee intake is linked with longer telomeres. Coffee has thousands of constituents and it is not caffeine that confers the health benefits.

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Sarah Lamb, "Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession" (Rutgers UP, 2017)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 9 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In recent decades, the North American public has pursued an inspirational vision of successful aging—striving through medical technique and individual effort to eradicate the declines, vulnerabilities, and dependencies previously commonly associated with old age. On the face of it, this bold new vision of successful, healthy, and active aging is highly appealing. But it also rests on a deep cultural discomfort with aging and being old.

The contributors to Sarah Lamb's Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession (Rutgers UP, 2017) explore how the successful aging movement is playing out across five continents. Their chapters investigate a variety of people, including Catholic nuns in the United States; Hindu ashram dwellers; older American women seeking plastic surgery; aging African-American lesbians and gay men in the District of Columbia; Chicago home health care workers and their aging clients; Mexican men foregoing Viagra; dementia and Alzheimer sufferers in the United States and Brazil; and aging policies in Denmark, Poland, India, China, Japan, and Uganda. This book offers a fresh look at a major cultural and public health movement of our time, questioning what has become for many a taken-for-granted goal—aging in a way that almost denies aging itself.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Georg Striedter, "Model Systems in Biology: History, Philosophy, and Practical Concerns" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 7 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Biomedical research using various animal species and in vitro cellular systems has resulted in both major successes and translational failure. In Model Systems in Biology: History, Philosophy, and Practical Concerns (MIT Press, 2022), comparative neurobiologist Georg Striedter examines how biomedical researchers have used animal species and in vitro cellular systems to understand and develop treatments for human diseases ranging from cancer and polio to Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. Although there have been some major successes, much of this “translational” research on model systems has failed to generalize to humans. Striedter explores the history of such research, focusing on the models used and considering the question of model selection from a variety of perspectives—the philosophical, the historical, and that of practicing biologists.

Striedter reviews some philosophical concepts and ethical issues, including concerns over animal suffering and the compromises that result. He traces the history of the most widely used animal and in vitro models, describing how they compete with one another in a changing ecosystem of models. He examines how therapies for bacterial and viral infections, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and neurological disorders have been developed using animal and cell culture models—and how research into these diseases has both taken advantage of and been hindered by model system differences. Finally, Striedter argues for a “big tent” biology, in which a diverse set of models and research strategies can coexist productively.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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The Tamiflu Trials: Profit and Public Health

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 2 Sep 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Before Remdesivir and Hydroxycloroquin there was Tamiflu.

To prepare for Swine Flu and Bird Flu, governments spent billions stockpiling this drug called Tamiflu. You’d think governments used the best evidence-based advice, but the story of Tamiflu raises questions about how money shaped the process.

On this episode of Cited, Darts and Letters predecessor, we open up the black box of pharmaceutical and public health expertise. We tell the story of a drug, from its days as middling flu treatment through its meteoric rise to international blockbuster. How do experts decide what makes a good drug, and how do pharmaceutical companies make billions from pandemic panic?

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The Heroin Clinic

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 1 Sep 2022 04:00:00 +0000

At Crosstown Clinic, doctors are turning addiction treatment on its head: they’re prescribing heroin-users the very drug they’re addicted to. This is the story of one clinic’s quest to remove the harms of addiction, without removing the addiction itself.

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Merlin Chowkwanyun, "All Health Politics Is Local: Community Battles for Medical Care and Environmental Health" (UNC Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Health care is political. It entails fierce battles over the allocation of resources, arguments over the imposition of regulations, and the mediation of dueling public sentiments—all conflicts that are often narrated from a national, top-down view. In All Health Politics Is Local: Community Battles for Medical Care and Environmental Health (UNC Press, 2022), Merlin Chowkwanyun shifts our focus, taking us to four very different places—New York City, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and central Appalachia—to experience a national story through a regional lens. He shows how racial uprisings in the 1960s catalyzed the creation of new medical infrastructure for those long denied it, what local authorities did to curb air pollution so toxic that it made residents choke and cry, how community health activists and bureaucrats fought over who'd control facilities long run by insular elites, and what a national coal boom did to community ecology and health. In a country riven by regional differences, All Health Politics Is Local shatters the notion of a shared national health agenda. It shows that health has always been political and shaped not just by formal policy but also by grassroots community battles.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Pathological: The Work of Dr. Charles Smith

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Dr. Charles Smith performed autopsies at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, ON. The cops kept turning to him with new corpses, and he kept claiming that these deaths were the result of foul play. He was thought of as a God in his field–few people were willing to question his work. That is until a 2008 inquiry, which found evidence of errors in 20 of the 45 autopsies they reviewed. Dr. Smith’s judgements played a role in 13 wrongful convictions. On this episode, we tell one of those stories.

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Sandra Eder, "How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

An eye-opening exploration of the medical origins of gender in modern US history. Today, a world without "gender" is hard to imagine. Gender is at the center of contentious political and social debates, shapes policy decisions, and informs our everyday lives. Its formulation, however, is lesser known: Gender was first used in clinical practice. How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea (U Chicago Press, 2022) tells the story of the invention of gender in American medicine, detailing how it was shaped by mid-twentieth-century American notions of culture, personality, and social engineering.

Sandra Eder shows how the concept of gender transformed from a pragmatic tool in the sex assignment of children with intersex traits in the 1950s to an essential category in clinics for transgender individuals in the 1960s. Following gender outside the clinic, she reconstructs the variable ways feminists integrated gender into their theories and practices in the 1970s. The process by which ideas about gender became medicalized, enforced, and popularized was messy, and the route by which gender came to be understood and applied through the treatment of patients with intersex traits was fraught and contested. In historicizing the emergence of the sex/gender binary, Eder reveals the role of medical practice in developing a transformative idea and the interdependence between practice and wider social norms that inform the attitudes of physicians and researchers. She shows that ideas like gender can take on a life of their own and may be used to question the normative perceptions they were based on. Illuminating and deeply researched, the book closes a notable gap in the history of gender and will inspire current debates on the relationship between social norms and medical practice.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Sarah Neville, "Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, works of botany underwent a radical change in the English book trade. A genre that was once produced in smaller cheaper formats became lavishly produced, authoritative editions. But as Early Modern Herbals and the Book Trade (Cambridge UP, 2022) shows, the relationships between making, producing, and consuming of botanical and medical knowledge was much more fluid. Today I am discussing this new book with the author Sarah Neville. Sarah Neville is Associate Professor of English and Creative Director of Lord Denney's Players at Ohio State University. Sarah serves as an assistant editor of the New Oxford Shakespeare and an associate coordinating editor of the Digital Renaissance Editions, as well as the writer/producer/director of the documentary Looking for Hamlet, 1603, available on Youtube.

John Yargo is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Boston College. He recently received his PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in the environmental humanities and early modern culture. His articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies, Studies in Philology, Early Theatre, and Shakespeare Studies.

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Mélissa Mialon, "Big Food & Co" (Thierry Souccar Editions, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In the 1960s and 1970s, the exposure of Big Tobacco’s aggressive lobbying and internal efforts to obscure science showcasing the harmful effects of smoking changed U.S. public opinion of the industry and of product safety protocols, both of which had largely obscured these harms from public view for decades. Public awareness grew, triggering regulation on disclosure related to political influencing strategies, marketing tactics, and transparency regarding the devastating toll of tobacco products on many communities, including and especially children. As similar approaches to assessing the public health impacts of Big Oil and Big Pharma, among other industries, have gained traction in recent decades, Dr. Mélissa Mialon’s new book, Big Food & Co (Thierry Souccar Editions, 2021), adds the amalgamation of multinationals and transnational supply chains that make up Big Food, to that list.

Rising health inequities across race, class, and geography are subtle, yet central themes throughout Dr. Mialon’s meticulous accounting of a complex puzzle in which the marketing and distribution strategies of soft drink companies and ultra-processed food manufacturers are quietly but steadily ushering in a new globalized era of related public health crises – measured by increasing rates of of diabetes, cancers, and heart disease, etc– a crisis that has long been felt in the United States.

Whether branding t-shirts and games at summer camps in France for underprivileged children or blanketing entire streets in Mauritius with the unmistakable bright red and white flag of Coca-Cola, Dr. Mialon describes a taxonomy of commercial determinants of health common to nearly every example – whether multinational food companies’ policy advocacy in Colombia, public-private partnerships in Brazil, or culturally responsive branding for holidays in Southern Africa.

Between academic research and investigative journalism, the survey of trends in Big Food’s operation, marketing, and regulatory capture, offered throughout the book are additionally grounds for laying out a policy roadmap with public health indicators at the center of a wide range of potential reforms including campaign finance and heightened disclosure protocols for public-private partnerships to mitigating conflicts of interest in scientific studies related to food, agriculture, and health, among many others.

Dr. Mélissa Mialon is Associate Professor at Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland. She is a food engineer with a PhD in nutrition and co-coordinates the « Governance, Ethics and Conflicts of Interest in Public Health » (GECI-PH) network, based out of the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. Her research focuses on commercial determinants of health, and particularly on the practices used by corporations to influence public health policy, research and practice.

Anna Levy researches and teaches on emergency, crisis, and development practice & politics at Fordham & New York Universities. She is the founder and principal of Jafsadi.works, a research collective focused on advancing structural and participatory accountability in non-profit, movement, multilateral, city, and policy strategies. You can follow her @politicoyuntura.

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Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, "From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Before 1973's landmark Roe v. Wade decision, abortion in California was illegal for both doctors performing and women seeking the procedure. In From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969 (U Nebraska Press, 2020), Dr. Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, an associate professor of history at La Sierra University, examines the experiences of doctors and patients in southern California during the mid-twentieth century. For doctors, performing abortions carried a good deal of risk, including extensive sentences of jail time. For women, the procedure was often safe, but not always, and carried risk of infection and even death. Women could use resources like the Pacific Coast Abortion Ring, a network of doctors willing to perform abortions, or even cross the border into Mexico, but every aspect of illegal reproductive medicine carried risks, moreso if patient or doctor were Black or poor. This is a relevant book and Gutierrez provides a window not just into the past, but into a post-Dobbs American future.

Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

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Plague Robbers--Nothing Spreads Like Greed: The Pandemic Profiteers Who Made the Crisis Worse

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Has the pandemic taught us anything? As we look forward and imagine what the future might look like, we like to think ‘next time will be different.’ But, if we don’t take a serious look back, it won’t. Not as long as the people who made this pandemic so bad face zero consequences. In this episode of Darts and Letters, John Nichols says it’s time for a COVID reckoning. His new book is Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Profiteers: Accountability for Those Who Caused the Crisis. Nichols, who is also national affairs correspondent of the Nation, retraces his reporting – revealing how so many suffered while others made out like gangbusters. Plus, we ask: could it have been different?

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Lindy S. F. Hern, "Single Payer Healthcare Reform: Grassroots Mobilization and the Turn Against Establishment Politics in the Medicare for All Movement" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Single Payer Healthcare Reform: Grassroots Mobilization and the Turn Against Establishment Politics in the Medicare for All Movement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Lindy Hern provides a comprehensive history of the grassroots Movement for Health Care Reform in the United States from within the Single Payer Movement. Hern discusses the role that narrative (constructions of opportunity) plays in grassroots mobilization, which builds on existing social movement theory. She examines the turn against “politics as usual” and establishment politicians that began in progressive social movements long before the election of Donald Trump.

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Katherine L. Carroll, "Building Schools, Making Doctors: Architecture and the Modern American Physician" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 9 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In the late nineteenth century, medical educators intent on transforming American physicians into scientifically trained, elite professionals recognized the value of medical school design for their reform efforts. Between 1893 and 1940, nearly every medical college in the country rebuilt or substantially renovated its facility. In Building Schools, Making Doctors: Architecture and the Modern American Physician (U Pittsburgh Press, 2022), Katherine Carroll reveals how the schools constructed during this fifty-year period did more than passively house a remodeled system of medical training; they actively participated in defining and promoting an innovative pedagogy, modern science, and the new physician.

Interdisciplinary and wide ranging, her study moves architecture from the periphery of medical education to the center, uncovering a network of medical educators, architects, and philanthropists who believed that the educational environment itself shaped how students learned and the type of physicians they became. Carroll offers the first comprehensive study of the science and pedagogy formulated by the buildings, the influence of the schools’ donors and architects, the impact of the structures on the urban landscape and the local community, and the facilities’ privileging of white men within the medical profession during this formative period for physicians and medical schools.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Daniel Bergner, "The Mind and the Moon: My Brother's Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search for Our Psyches" (Ecco, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 4 Aug 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In The Mind and the Moon: My Brother’s Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search for Our Psyches (Ecco, 3033), Daniel Bergner examines these and other by describing three riveting case studies in the context of the history of psychiatry and psychopharmacology. Alongside the story of his brother Bob’s struggle with bipolar disorder, we learn about Caroline, who is besieged by the hallucinations of psychosis, and David, an attorney who is engulfed by anxiety and depression. In telling their stories while describing the frontiers of brain research, Bergner shows how the pharmaceutical industry has played a key role in perpetuating a biological view of the mind and drug-based cures for its disorders – despite mediocre drug effectiveness, many challenging side effects, and questionable patient outcomes. The Mind and the Moon addresses fundamental issues of selfhood and identity in ways that will challenge basic beliefs about who we are and who we might be.

Steve Beitler’s work in the history of medicine focuses on how pain has been understood, treated, experienced, and represented. His recently published articles examined the history of opiates in American football and surveyed the history of therapeutic drugs. He can be reached at steve@stevebeitler.com.

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Culturally Competent Health Care, Equality in Health Care: The Case of Muslims and Jews in the UK

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The health care sector frequently emphasizes “Cultural competence”, an elastic concept that stretches from the simplest recognition of diversity of patient populations, to include policy implications of patients’ overall worldviews re the body, health, and decision-making.

The issue, highlighted again in the recent U.S. Supreme Court abortion decision, gained prominence during Covid-19 pandemic, with the challenge of so-called marginal groups’ access to and compliance with vaccination programs.

Legislation for equality impacts minority health care. It has brought both benefits and unintended consequences.

We will talk about these important issues with today’s guest, Ben Kasstan, Ph.D., an anthropologist at the University of Bristol and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His research explores public health, specifically, what health protection means and according to whom. Ben’s published works on public health issues include maternity care, childhood vaccinations, and sexuality education.

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Gonçalo Santos, "Chinese Village Life Today: Building Families in an Age of Transition" (U Washington Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Today I had the pleasure of talking to Professor Gonçalo Santos (University of Coimbra), about his new book, Chinese Village Life Today: Building Families in an Age of Transition, which was published in 2021 by University of Washington Press.

Chinese Village Life Today is based on more than twenty years of Gonçalo Santos’s field research. The book paints a richly detailed portrait of a rural township in Guangdong Province, north of the industrialized Pearl River Delta region, to consider the intimate choices that village families make in the face of larger forces of modernization. Filled with vivid anecdotes and keen observations, the book offers a fresh perspective on China’s urban-rural divide and a grounded theoretical approach to understand how China’s rural transformation is changing the ways that local people shape their intimate daily lives - from marriage, childbirth, and childcare to personal hygiene and public sanitation.

I highly recommend the book for anyone who wants to understand village life in China today, and more broadly for those interested in studies on medical anthropology and the workings of technocratic frameworks of governance.

Dr. Suvi Rautio is an anthropologist of China.

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Jay Baruch, "Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Lisa Jean Moore, "Our Transgenic Future: Spider Goats, Genetic Modification, and the Will to Change Nature" (NYU Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The process of manipulating the genetic material of one animal to include the DNA of another creates a new transgenic organism. Several animals, notably goats, mice, sheep, and cattle are now genetically modified in this way. In Our Transgenic Future: Spider Goats, Genetic Modification, and the Will to Change Nature (NYU Press, 2022), Lisa Jean Moore wonders what such scientific advances portend. Will the natural world become so modified that it ceases to exist? After turning species into hybrids, can we ever get back to the original, or are they forever lost? Does genetic manipulation make better lives possible, and if so, for whom?

Moore centers the story on goats that have been engineered by the US military and civilian scientists using the DNA of spiders. The goat’s milk contains a spider-silk protein fiber; it can be spun into ultra-strong fabric that can be used to manufacture lightweight military body armor. Researchers also hope the transgenically produced spider silk will revolutionize medicine with biocompatible medical inserts such as prosthetics and bandages. Based on in-depth research with spiders in Florida and transgenic goats in Utah, Our Transgenic Future focuses on how these spider goats came into existence, the researchers who maintain them, the funders who have made their lives possible, and how they fit into the larger science of transgenics and synthetics. This book is a fascinating story about the possibilities of science and the likely futures that may come.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Rachael Pells, "Genomics: How Genome Sequencing Will Change Healthcare" (Random House, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Genome sequencing is one of the most exciting scientific breakthroughs of the past thirty years. But what precisely does it involve and how is it developing?

In Genomics: How Genome Sequencing Will Change Healthcare (Random House, 2022), Rachael Pells explains the science behind genomics. She analyses its practical applications in medical diagnosis and the treatment of conditions that range from cancer to severe allergic reactions to cystic fibrosis. She considers its potential to help with advances in agriculture and environmental science. She explores the ethics of genetic modification and the dangers involved when humans 'play God'. And she addresses the fundamental question: to what extent will future advances transform human longevity and the quality of life.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Elena Conis, "How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT" (Bold Type Books, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The story of DDT as you’ve never heard it before: a fresh look at the much-maligned chemical compound as a cautionary tale of how powerful corporations have stoked the flames of science denialism for their own benefit In the 1940s, DDT helped the Allies win the Second World War by wiping out the insects that caused malaria, with seemingly no ill effects on humans. After the war, it was sprayed willy-nilly across fields, in dairy barns, and even in people's homes. Thirty years later the U.S. would ban the use of DDT—only to reverse the ban in the 1990s when calls arose to bring it back to fight West Nile and malaria. What changed?

How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT (Bold Type Books, 2022) traces the surprising history of DDT’s rapid rise, infamous fall, and controversial revival to reveal to show that we’ve been taking the wrong lesson from DDT’s cautionary tale. Historian Elena Conis uncovers new evidence that it was not the shift in public opinion following the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring that led to the ban but in fact the behind-the-scenes political machinations of Big Business. She makes a compelling case that the real threat was not DDT itself but the prioritization of profits over public health. If we don't change the ways we make decisions about new scientific discoveries and technologies, Conis argues, we’re doomed to keep making the same mistakes and putting people at risk—both by withholding technologies that could help them and by exposing them to dangerous chemicals without their knowledge or consent. In an age when corporations and politicians are shaping our world behind closed doors and deliberately stoking misinformation around public health issues, from pesticides to vaccines to COVID-19 to climate change, we need greater transparency and a new way of communicating about science—as a discipline of discovery that's constantly evolving, rather than a finite and immutable collection of facts—in order to combat the war on facts and protect ourselves and our environment.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Jennifer J. Hill, "Birthing the West: Mothers and Midwives in the Rockies and Plains" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Childbirth defines families, communities, and nations. In Birthing the West, Jennifer J. Hill fills the silences around historical reproduction with copious new evidence and an enticing narrative, describing a process of settlement in the American West that depended on the nurturing connections of reproductive caregivers and the authority of mothers over birth.

Economic and cultural development depended on childbirth. Hill’s expanded vision suggests that the mantra of cattle drives and military campaigns leaves out essential events and falls far short of an accurate representation of American expansion. The picture that emerges in Birthing the West presents a more complete understanding of the American West: no less moving or engaging than the typical stories of extraction and exploration but concurrently intriguing and complex.

Birthing the West: Mothers and Midwives in the Rockies and Plains (U Nebraska Press, 2022) unearths the woman-centric practice of childbirth across Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming, a region known as a death zone for pregnant women and their infants. As public health entities struggled to establish authority over its isolated inhabitants, they collaborated with physicians, eroding the power and control of mothers and midwives. The transition from home to hospital and from midwife to doctor created a dramatic shift in the intimately personal act of birth.

Jennifer J. Hill is an associate teaching professor of American studies at Montana State University and serves as the executive director of the Women’s Reproductive History Alliance, a digital museum dedicated to educating the public on reproductive history.

Troy A. Hallsell is the 341st Missile Wing Historian at Malmstrom AFB, Montana. The ideas represented in this podcast do not reflect the 341st Missile Wing, United States Air Force, or the Department of Defense.

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Reshaping the Politics of Science: Bioscience Governance in Indonesia

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The last few years have brought to the fore the brilliant work of scientists as they worked to find a vaccine for Covid-19. But have you ever stopped to think about the role of biological materials in this and other science- and health-related research?

In this episode of SSEAC Stories, Dr Natali Pearson is joined by Associate Professor Sonja van Wichelen to take a close look at the complex world of global health governance, with a particular focus on biotechnology and bioscience governance in Indonesia. They discuss the crucial role of biological materials exchange for scientific research, what rules govern their use, and the history of inequality that has underpinned scientific use of biological materials. Taking Indonesia’s recent efforts to gain leverage in the uneven space of the global bioeconomy, they explore how bioscience governance mechanisms can perpetuate, or sometimes help address, global power inequalities in the way biological material is used.

About Sonja van Wichelen:

Sonja van Wichelen is Associate Professor with the School for Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. She researches the social implications of biotechnology and law and has focused on reproductive technologies in previous projects. More recently she is examining bioscience governance in Southeast Asia. Focusing on Indonesia, she is particularly interested in the relationship between regulatory frameworks and global inequality. She is the author of Legitimating Life: Adoption in the Age of Globalization and Biotechnology (Rutgers University Press, 2019), and Religion, Gender, and Politics in Indonesia: Disputing the Muslim Body (Routledge, 2010).

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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Martin Abrahamson and Sanjiv Chopra, "Conquer Your Diabetes: Prevention, Control, Remission" (2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Managing diabetes often feels daunting and challenging. Conquer Your Diabetes comprehensively covers the best approaches to prevention, control and remission of this condition, and provides a roadmap for people with diabetes to live rewarding and fulfilling lives.

Drs. Abrahamson and Chopra are renowned master clinicians and teachers at Harvard Medical School, with decades of extensive clinical experience.

The global epidemic of diabetes and prediabetes afflicts more than 1 billion people. Sadly, more than 50% of people with diabetes do not achieve their desired glucose control. Moreover, less than 25% achieve their blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose goals.

In 25 succinct chapters, the authors put all the pieces of the diabetes puzzle together, including a concise history of the disease, underlying types and causes, prediabetes, obesity, weight loss, pregnancy, mental health, type 2 diabetes prevention and remission, and latest treatments.

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“Vaccine: The Human Story”: A Chat with Historian and Podcaster Annie Kelly

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

“Vaccine: The Human Story” is a podcast and video series that tells the story of the global fight against smallpox, from its earliest history as a folk demon, to the birth of the anti-vax movement, through to its eradication in the 1960s. It is written and hosted by Dr. Annie Kelly.

Dr. Kelly, a specialist in antifeminism, conspiracy theories and the far right, earned her doctorate in American Studies in 2020 from the University of East Anglia. Her dissertation is entitled: “Fear, Hate and Countersubversion: American Antifeminism Online”. She specializes in research related to contemporary social movements, digital discourse analysis and their relation to race, gender and sexuality in American politics. Her writings have appeared in The New York Times and since 2019 she has been the UK correspondent for “QAnon Anonymous”, which The Washington Post named “Podcast of the Year”. Dr. Kelly is currently a postdoctoral researcher with “Everything Is Connected: Conspiracy Theories in the Age of the Internet”.

You can also find "Vaccine: A Human Story" on YouTube.

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Matthew Clark, "Botanical Ecstasies: Psychoactive Plant Formulas in India and Beyond" (Psychedelic Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 7 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Botanical Ecstasies: Psychoactive Plant Formulas in India and Beyond, Dr Matthew Clark proposes that soma/hoama is instead an ayahuasca-like plant complex made from many different species.

He discusses a range of candidates that reliably grow in the right areas and which in combination might produce an effect similar to the so-called 'classic' psychedelics. These early ecstatic experiences, he suggests, contributed to the emergent concept and ritual techniques of mysticism.

Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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Sarah Fox, "Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England" (U London Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 7 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Sarah Fox's fascinating new book Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England (U London Press, 2022) rewrites all that we know about eighteenth-century childbirth by placing women’s voices at the center of the story. Examining childbirth from the perspective of the birthing woman, this research offers new perspectives on the history of the family, the social history of medicine, community and neighborhood studies, and the study of women’s lives in eighteenth-century England.

From “quickening” through to “confinement,” “giving caudle,” delivery, and “lying-in,” birth was once a complex ritual that involved entire communities. Drawing on an extensive and under-researched body of materials, such as letters, diaries, and recipe books, this book offers critical new perspectives on the history of the family, community, and the lives of women in the coming age of modern medicine. It unpacks the rituals of contemporary childbirth—from foods traditionally eaten before and after birth, birthing clothing, and how a woman’s relationship with her family, husband, friends, and neighbors changed during and after pregnancy. In this important and deeply moving study, we are invited onto a detailed and emotional journey through motherhood in an age of immense socio-cultural and intellectual change.

Hannah Smith is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She can be reached at smit9201@umn.edu.

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Elsa L. Fan, "Commodities of Care: The Business of HIV Testing in China" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 4 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Commodities of Care: The Business of HIV Testing in China (U Minnesota Press, 2021) examines the unanticipated effects of global health interventions, ideas, and practices as they unfold in communities of men who have sex with men (MSM) in China. Targeted for the scaling-up of HIV testing, Elsa L. Fan examines how the impact of this initiative has transformed these men from subjects of care into commodities of care: through the use of performance-based financing tied to HIV testing, MSM have become a source of economic and political capital.

In ethnographic detail, Fan shows how this particular program, ushered in by global health donors, became the prevailing strategy to control the epidemic in China in the late 2000s. Fan examines the implementation of MSM testing and its effects among these men, arguing that the intervention produced new markets of men, driven by the push to meet testing metrics.

Fan shows how men who have sex with men in China came to see themselves as part of a global MSM category, adopting new selfhoods and socialities inextricably tied to HIV and to testing. Wider trends in global health programming have shaped national public health responses in China and, this book reveals, have radically altered the ways health, disease, and care are addressed.

Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com.

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Daniel M. Davis, "The Secret Body: How the New Science of the Human Body Is Changing the Way We Live" (Princeton UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 1 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Imagine knowing years in advance whether you are likely to get cancer or having a personalized understanding of your individual genes, organs, and cells. Imagine being able to monitor your body's well-being, or have a diet tailored to your microbiome. The Secret Body reveals how these and other stunning breakthroughs and technologies are transforming our understanding of how the human body works, what it is capable of, how to protect it from disease, and how we might manipulate it in the future.

Taking readers to the cutting edge of research, Daniel Davis shows how radical new possibilities are becoming realities thanks to the visionary efforts of scientists who are revealing the invisible and secret universe within each of us. Focusing on six important frontiers, Davis describes what we are learning about cells, the development of the fetus, the body's immune system, the brain, the microbiome, and the genome--areas of human biology that are usually understood in isolation. Bringing them together here for the first time, Davis offers a new vision of the human body as a biological wonder of dizzying complexity and possibility.

Written by an award-winning scientist at the forefront of this adventure, The Secret Body: How the New Science of the Human Body Is Changing the Way We Live (Princeton UP, 2022) is a gripping drama of discovery and a landmark account of the dawning revolution in human health.

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Christina Ramos, "Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment" (UNC Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 1 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment (UNC Press, 2022), Cristina Ramos tells us the story of Mexico city’s oldest public institution for the insane, the Hospital de San Hipólito. This institution, founded in 1567, was the first mental hospital in the New World. Remarkable as this fact may be, this book is not simply about the singularity of this institution––though by placing this institution au pair with similar ones in the European context Ramos reframes traditional narratives in the history of psychiatry. What makes this book truly remarkable is that Ramos presents San Hipólito as both a microcosm and a colonial laboratory of the Hispanic Enlightenment. According to Ramos, during the late eighteenth-century madness became understood in increasingly medical terms, and San Hipólito served as a site of care, confinement, and knowledge production.

Heeding the call of scholars who ask that histories of medicine take a more complex view of religion, Ramos traces the medicalization of madness that took place under the Hispanic Enlightenment and shows that the main agents of medicalization were not philosophers or physicians, but the clergy and more surprisingly still, inquisitors. Transcending the walls of the hospital, Ramos takes us to other colonial institutions such as the Holy Office and the criminal secular courts and shows us the stories of the individuals who were taken to San Hipólito. Inquisitors were fundamental actors in this story because, in their purpose of establishing veracity, they were at the forefront of devising new models for undertaking the complexities of human reasoning and the nuances of intent. Bedlam in the New World is a book beautifully written and poignantly argued and will captive listeners who are interested in histories of medicine, madness, colonialism, and religion!

Lisette Varón-Carvajal is a PhD Candidate at Rutgers University. You can tweet and suggest books at @LisetteVaron

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Claire L. Wendland, "Partial Stories: Maternal Death from Six Angles" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

A close look at stories of maternal death in Malawi that considers their implications in the broader arena of medical knowledge.

By the early twenty-first century, about one woman in twelve could expect to die of a pregnancy or childbirth complication in Malawi. Specific deaths became object lessons. Explanatory stories circulated through hospitals and villages, proliferating among a range of practitioners: nurse-midwives, traditional birth attendants, doctors, epidemiologists, herbalists. Was biology to blame? Economic underdevelopment? Immoral behavior? Tradition? Were the dead themselves at fault?

In Partial Stories: Maternal Death from Six Angles (U Chicago Press, 2022), Claire L. Wendland considers these explanations for maternal death, showing how they reflect competing visions of the past and shared concerns about social change. Drawing on extended fieldwork, Wendland reveals how efforts to legitimate a single story as the authoritative version can render care more dangerous than it might otherwise be. Historical, biological, technological, ethical, statistical, and political perspectives on death usually circulate in different expert communities and different bodies of literature. Here, Wendland considers them together, illuminating dilemmas of maternity care in contexts of acute change, chronic scarcity, and endemic inequity within Malawi and beyond.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Susan H. Brandt, "Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In her eighteenth-century medical recipe manuscript, the Philadelphia healer Elizabeth Coates Paschall asserted her ingenuity and authority with the bold strokes of her pen. Paschall developed an extensive healing practice, consulted medical texts, and conducted experiments based on personal observations. As British North America’s premier city of medicine and science, Philadelphia offered Paschall a nurturing environment enriched by diverse healing cultures and the Quaker values of gender equality and women’s education. She participated in transatlantic medical and scientific networks with her friend, Benjamin Franklin. Paschall was not unique, however. Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022) recovers numerous women of European, African, and Native American descent who provided the bulk of health care in the greater Philadelphia area for centuries.

Although the history of women practitioners often begins with the 1850 founding of Philadelphia’s Female Medical College, the first women’s medical school in the United States, these students merely continued the legacies of women like Paschall. Remarkably, though, the lives and work of early American female practitioners have gone largely unexplored. While some sources depict these women as amateurs whose influence declined, Susan Brandt documents women’s authoritative medical work that continued well into the nineteenth century. Spanning a century and a half, Women Healers traces the transmission of European women’s medical remedies to the Delaware Valley where they blended with African and Indigenous women’s practices, forming hybrid healing cultures.

Drawing on extensive archival research, Brandt demonstrates that women healers were not inflexible traditional practitioners destined to fall victim to the onward march of Enlightenment science, capitalism, and medical professionalization. Instead, women of various classes and ethnicities found new sources of healing authority, engaged in the consumer medical marketplace, and resisted physicians’ attempts to marginalize them. Brandt reveals that women healers participated actively in medical and scientific knowledge production and the transition to market capitalism.

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Bharat Jayram Venkat, "At the Limits of Cure" (Duke UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Can a history of cure be more than a history of how disease comes to an end? In 1950s Madras, an international team of researchers demonstrated that antibiotics were effective in treating tuberculosis. But just half a century later, reports out of Mumbai stoked fears about the spread of totally drug-resistant strains of the disease. Had the curable become incurable?

Through an anthropological history of tuberculosis treatment in India, Bharat Jayram Venkat examines what it means to be cured, and what it means for a cure to come undone. At the Limits of Cure (Duke UP, 2021) tells a story that stretches from the colonial period—a time of sanatoria, travel cures, and gold therapy—into a postcolonial present marked by antibiotic miracles and their failures. Venkat juxtaposes the unraveling of cure across a variety of sites: in idyllic hill stations and crowded prisons, aboard ships and on the battlefield, and through research trials and clinical encounters. If cure is frequently taken as an ending (of illness, treatment, and suffering more generally), Venkat provides a foundation for imagining cure otherwise in a world of fading antibiotic efficacy.

Garima Jaju holds a Ph.D. in international development from Oxford University and is currently a post-doc in sociology at Cambridge University.

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Dayna Bowen Matthew, "Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America" (NYU Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Emma R. Handschke assisted in the production of this podcast.

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David M. Greer, "Successful Leadership in Academic Medicine" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Good leadership in medicine is crucial, but unfortunately, often woefully inadequate. Those chosen to lead often have limited experience in leadership themselves, or worse, are appointed because of achievements that have nothing to do with their ability to lead. Serving as a guide for those in, or considering, leadership positions in medicine, Successful Leadership in Academic Medicine (Cambridge UP, 2022) demonstrates how to play to one's strengths and effectively recognise and overcome weaknesses. Describing how to form a functional team, and align your goals with those of upper leadership, advice is applicable to all disciplines and hierarchy structures.

The author, David Greer, is a renowned clinician and educator, and has held department chair positions in several prestigious institutions, positioning him perfectly to educate on the qualities of a successful leader. Readers will learn how to work within a team, manage unforeseen crises and to embrace mistakes as opportunities for growth. Good leadership in medicine is crucial, but unfortunately, often woefully inadequate. Those chosen to lead often have limited experience in leadership themselves, or worse, are appointed because of achievements that have nothing to do with their ability to lead. Serving as a guide for those in, or considering, leadership positions in medicine, this book demonstrates how to play to one's strengths and effectively recognise and overcome weaknesses. Describing how to form a functional team, and align your goals with those of upper leadership, advice is applicable to all disciplines and hierarchy structures. The author, David Greer, is a renowned clinician and educator, and has held department chair positions in several prestigious institutions, positioning him perfectly to educate on the qualities of a successful leader. Readers will learn how to work within a team, manage unforeseen crises and to embrace mistakes as opportunities for growth.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Natalie Lira, "Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s" (U California Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Mirelsie Velázquez (Associate Professor & Rainbolt Family Endowed Presidential Professor, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Natalie Lira (Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) about Lira’s recent book, Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s (University of California Press, 2021).

Over 20,000 residents of California were sterilized in the first half of the twentieth century. A vast archive of the sterilization request records provides chilling evidence of the identities and family resources of these people. Furthermore, the documents explain why physicians and social workers deemed reproductive intervention to be in the interests of the state. Using the records from the Pacific Colony institution, Lira investigates why young women and men of Mexican origin were disproportionately detained, narrates their experiences of confinement and sterilization, and traces diverse strands testifying to widespread individual and familial resistance. In this conversation, Lira and Velázquez dig deeper into some of the themes addressed in Lira’s book, and reflect broadly on the cultural and racialist assumptions that fuel carceral and sterilization strategies a century ago and in the present day.

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Tehmton S. Mistry, "The 24th Mile: An Indian Doctor's Heroism in War-torn Burma" (HarperCollins, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The story of India and Indians in World War II has been overshadowed by other historical events of the 1940s, a busy decade that included such historical watersheds as Indian independence (and the anti-colonial nationalist movement that led to it), as well as the partition of the Indian subcontinent. Indeed, many in Europe and North America, and even many in India, probably know very little about how crucial India was to the outcome of World War II. India and Indians were a very important part of World War II, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the role of India and Indians was indispensable in securing the victory of the British and Allied powers against Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. The stories of Indians in World War II have often been forgotten in popular accounts and memories of the conflict, but that is now changing, as more authors and scholars cover this subject.

Through highlighting the remarkable life and career of Jehangir Anklesaria, a heroic Parsi (Indian Zoroastrian) doctor who lived in Rangoon at the outbreak of the conflict, Dr. Tehmton S. Mistry’s The 24th Mile: An Indian Doctor’s Heroism in War-torn Burma (Harper Collins, 2021) makes a major contribution to our memory of World War II with the unique story of one individual during the most devastating conflict in human history. When the Japanese invaded Burma in December 1941, Jehangir sent his wife and daughter by ship to India, but feeling duty-bound, he decided to stay back in Burma. He joined the war effort and worked tirelessly to quell a cholera epidemic. He then found himself one of thousands on the trek through the treacherous jungle and mountains towards safety in northeastern India. The book reminds us of the difference a single individual’s foresight and leadership can make in bringing about better outcomes, even amidst war and disease.

The 24th Mile is a work of creative non-fiction, which means that although the storyline abides by the historical narrative of the period and follows historical figures, the author has taken the creative license to create secondary fictional characters, write descriptions, and recreate dialogues among the characters. The author, Tehmton Mistry, is part of the extended family and next generation of the protagonist’s family, and he successfully and evocatively recreates the story of Jehangir’s grit and heroism in a death-defying journey to safety in a major theater of World War II.

Tehmton S. Mistry is a retired obstetrician and gynaecologist who practiced in St. Louis, Missouri. Born and raised in Mumbai (Bombay), Dr. Mistry moved to the United States from India in the early 1970s, together with his wife – whom he met when he studied at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. The protagonist of The 24th Mile, Dr. Jehangir Anklesaria, was his wife’s uncle and a key influence on their early life. Now retired and living in California, Dr. Mistry enjoys writing, among other hobbies.

Shatrunjay Mall is a PhD candidate at the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He works on transnational Asian history, and his dissertation explores intellectual, political, and cultural intersections and affinities that emerged between Indian anti-colonialism and imperial Japan in the twentieth century.

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Robert N. Wiedenmann and J. Ray Fisher, "The Silken Thread: Five Insects and Their Impacts on Human History" (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Insects are seldom mentioned in discussions surrounding human history, yet they have dramatically impacted today's societies. The Silken Thread: Five Insects and Their Impacts on Human History (Oxford UP, 2021) places them front and center, offering a multidisciplinary view of their significance.

Diseases vectored by insects have killed more people than all weapons of war. Fleas are common pests, but some can transmit illnesses such as the bubonic plague. In fact, three pandemics can be traced back to them. Epidemics of typhus have been caused by lice. Conversely, humans have also benefitted from insects for millennia. Silk comes from silkworms and honey comes from bees. Despite the undeniably powerful effects of insects on humans, their stories are typically left out of our history books.

In The Silken Thread, entomologists Robert. N. Wiedenmann and J. Ray Fisher link the history of insects to the history of empires, cultural exchanges, and warfare. The book narrows its focus to just five insects: a moth, a flea, a louse, a mosquito, and a bee. The authors explore the impact of these insects throughout time and the common threads connecting them. Using biology to complement history, they showcase these small creatures in a whole new light.

On every page, the authors thoughtfully analyze the links between history and entomology. The book begins with silkworms, which have been farmed for centuries. It then moves to fleas and their involvement in the spread of the plague before introducing the role lice played in the Black Death, wars, and immigration. The following section concerns yellow fever mosquitos, emphasizing the effects of yellow fever in the Americas and the connection to sugar and slavery. After discussing the importance of western honey bees, the authors tie these five insects together in an exciting closing chapter.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Marga Vicedo, "Intelligent Love: The Story of Clara Park, Her Autistic Daughter, and the Myth of the Refrigerator Mother" (Beacon Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In the early 1960s, Massachusetts writer and homemaker Clara Park and her husband took their 3-year-old daughter, Jessy, to a specialist after noticing that she avoided connection with others. Following the conventional wisdom of the time, the psychiatrist diagnosed Jessy with autism and blamed Clara for Jessy's isolation. Experts claimed Clara was the prototypical "refrigerator mother," a cold, intellectual parent who starved her children of the natural affection they needed to develop properly.

Refusing to accept this, Clara decided to document her daughter's behaviors and the family's engagement with her. In 1967, she published her groundbreaking memoir challenging the refrigerator mother theory and carefully documenting Jessy's development. Clara's insights and advocacy encouraged other parents to seek education and support for their autistic children. Meanwhile, Jessy would work hard to expand her mother's world, and ours.

Drawing on previously unexamined archival sources and firsthand interviews, science historian Marga Vicedo illuminates the story of how Clara Park and other parents fought against medical and popular attitudes toward autism while presenting a rich account of major scientific developments in the history of autism in the US. Intelligent Love: The Story of Clara Park, Her Autistic Daughter, and the Myth of the Refrigerator Mother (Beacon Press, 2021) is a fierce defense of a mother's right to love intelligently, the value of parents' firsthand knowledge about their children, and an individual's right to be valued by society.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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A. J. Lees, "Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology" (Notting Hill Editions, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

As a trainee doctor, A. J. Lees was enthralled by his mentors: esteemed neurologists who combined the precision of mathematicians, the scrupulosity of entomologists, and the solemnity of undertakers in their diagnoses and treatments. For them, there was no such thing as an unexplained symptom or psychosomatic problem--no difficult cases, just interesting ones--and it was only a matter of time before all disorders of the brain would be understood in terms of anatomical, electrical, and chemical connections.

Today, this kind of "holistic neurology" is on the brink of extinction as a slavish adherence to protocols and algorithms--plus a worship of machines--runs the risk of destroying the key foundational clinical skills of listening, observation, and imagination that have been at the heart of the discipline for more than 150 years.

In Brainspotting: Adventures in Neurology (Notting Hill Editions, 2022), Lees takes us on a kind of Sherlock Holmes tour of neurology, giving the reader insight into--and a defense of--the deep analytical tools that the best neurologists still rely on to diagnose patients: to heal minds and to fix brains.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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R. John Aitken, "The Infertility Trap: Why Life Choices Impact your Fertility and Why We Must Act Now" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

A potential crisis in human fertility is brewing. As societies become more affluent, they experience changes that have a dramatic impact on reproduction. As average family sizes fall, the selection pressure for high-fertility genes decreases; exacerbated by the IVF industry which allows infertility-linked genes to pass into the next generation. Male fertility rates are low, for many reasons including genetics and exposure to environmental toxins. So, a perfect storm of factors is contriving to drive fertility rates down at unprecedented rates. If we do not recognize the reality of our situation and react accordingly, an uncontrollable decline in population numbers is likely, which we'll be unable to reverse. R. John Aitken's book The Infertility Trap: Why Life Choices Impact your Fertility and Why We Must Act Now (Cambridge UP, 2022) addresses, in a unique and multi-faceted way, how the consequences of modern life affects fertility, so that we can consider behavioural, social, medical and environmental changes which could reduce the severity of what is about to come.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Danya Glabau, "Food Allergy Advocacy: Parenting and the Politics of Care" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

A detailed exploration of parents' fight for a safe environment for their kids, interrogating how race, class, and gender shape health advocacy The success of food allergy activism in highlighting the dangers of foodborne allergens shows how illness communities can effectively advocate for the needs of their members.

In Food Allergy Advocacy: Parenting and the Politics of Care (U Minnesota Press, 2022), Danya Glabau follows parents and activists as they fight for allergen-free environments, accurate labeling, the fair application of disability law, and access to life-saving medications for food-allergic children in the United States. At the same time, she shows how this activism also reproduces the culturally dominant politics of personhood and responsibility, based on an idealized version of the American family, centered around white, middle-class, and heteronormative motherhood. By holding up the threat of food allergens to the white nuclear family to galvanize political and scientific action, Glabau shows, the movement excludes many, including Black women and disabled adults, whose families and health have too often been marginalized from public health and social safety net programs. Further, its strategies are founded on the assumption that market-based solutions will address issues of social exclusion and equal access to healthcare. Sharing the personal experiences of a wide spectrum of people, including parents, support group leaders, physicians, entrepreneurs, and scientists, Food Allergy Advocacy raises important questions about who controls illness activism. Using critical, intersectional feminism to interrogate how race, class, and gender shape activist priorities and platforms, it shows the way to new, justice-focused models of advocacy.

Danya Glabau is a medical anthropologist and science and technology studies scholar who researches patient activism, the political economy of the global pharmaceutical industry, and feminist cybercultures. She is a faculty member at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the Director of the Science and Technology Studies Program.

Autumn Wilke works in higher education as an ADA coordinator and diversity officer and am also an author and doctoral candidate with research/topics related to disability and higher education.

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Timothy J. Jorgensen, "Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life" (Princeton UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

When we think of electricity, we likely imagine the energy humming inside our home appliances or lighting up our electronic devices--or perhaps we envision the lightning-streaked clouds of a stormy sky. But electricity is more than an external source of power, heat, or illumination. Life at its essence is nothing if not electrical.

The story of how we came to understand electricity's essential role in all life is rooted in our observations of its influences on the body--influences governed by the body's central nervous system. Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life (Princeton UP, 2021) explains the science of electricity from this fresh, biological perspective. Through vivid tales of scientists and individuals--from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk--Timothy Jorgensen shows how our views of electricity and the nervous system evolved in tandem, and how progress in one area enabled advancements in the other. He explains how these developments have allowed us to understand--and replicate--the ways electricity enables the body's essential functions of sight, hearing, touch, and movement itself.

Throughout, Jorgensen examines our fascination with electricity and how it can help or harm us. He explores a broad range of topics and events, including the Nobel Prize-winning discoveries of the electron and neuron, the history of experimentation involving electricity's effects on the body, and recent breakthroughs in the use of electricity to treat disease.

Filled with gripping adventures in scientific exploration, Spark offers an indispensable look at electricity, how it works, and how it animates our lives from within and without.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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David B. Goldstein, "The End of Genetics: Designing Humanity's DNA" (Yale UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 6 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Since 2010 it has been possible to determine a person's genetic makeup in a matter of days at an accessible cost for many millions of people. Along with this technological breakthrough there has emerged a movement to use this information to help prospective parents "eliminate preventable genetic disease." As the prospect of systematically excluding the appearance of unwanted mutations in our children comes within reach, David B. Goldstein examines the possible consequences from these types of choices.

Engaging and accessible, The End of Genetics: Designing Humanity's DNA (Yale UP, 2022) is a clarion call for responsible and informed stewardship of the human genome provides an overview of what we do and do not know about human genetics and looks at some of the complex, yet largely unexplored, issues we must be most careful about as we move into an era of increasing numbers of parents exercising direct control over the genomes of their children.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Andrew Bickford, "Chemical Heroes: Pharmacological Supersoldiers in the US Military" (Duke UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 3 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Chemical Heroes: Pharmacological Supersoldiers in the US Military (Duke UP, 2021), Andrew Bickford analyzes the US military's attempts to design performance enhancement technologies and create pharmacological "supersoldiers" capable of withstanding extreme trauma. Bickford traces the deep history of efforts to biologically fortify and extend the health and lethal power of soldiers from the Cold War era into the twenty-first century, from early adoptions of mandatory immunizations to bio-protective gear, to the development and spread of new performance enhancing drugs during the global War on Terrorism. In his examination of government efforts to alter soldiers' bodies through new technologies, Bickford invites us to contemplate what constitutes heroism when armor becomes built in, wired in, and even edited into the molecular being of an American soldier. Lurking in the background and dark recesses of all US military enhancement research, Bickford demonstrates, is the desire to preserve US military and imperial power.

Dr. Bickford is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Georgetown University. You can learn more about his work here.

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Jason Sion Mokhtarian, "Medicine in the Talmud: Natural and Supernatural Therapies Between Magic and Science" (U California Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 2 Jun 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Despite the Talmud being the richest repository of medical remedies in ancient Judaism, this important strain of Jewish thought has been largely ignored – even as the study of ancient medicine has exploded in recent years. In a comprehensive study of this topic, Jason Sion Mokhtarian recuperates this obscure genre of Talmudic text, which has been marginalized in the Jewish tradition since the Middle Ages, to reveal the unexpected depth of the rabbis' medical knowledge. Medicine in the Talmud: Natural and Supernatural Therapies Between Magic and Science (U California Press, 2022) argues that these therapies represent a form of rabbinic scientific rationality that relied on human observation and the use of nature while downplaying the role of God and the Torah in health and illness. Drawing from a wide range of both Jewish and Sasanian sources – from the Bible, the Talmud, and Maimonides to texts written in Akkadian, Syriac, and Mandaic, as well as the incantation bowls – Mokhatarian offers rare insight into how the rabbis of late antique Babylonia adapted the medical knowledge of their time to address the needs of their community. In the process, he narrates an untold chapter in the history of ancient medicine.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Steven G. Epstein, "The Quest for Sexual Health: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 30 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Since the 1970s, health professionals, researchers, governments, advocacy groups, and commercial interests have invested in the pursuit of something called “sexual health.” Under this expansive banner, a wide array of programs have been launched, organizations founded, initiatives funded, products sold—and yet, no book before this one asks: What does it mean to be sexually healthy? When did people conceive of a form of health called sexual health? And how did it become the gateway to addressing a host of social harms and the reimagining of private desires and public dreams?

Conjoining “sexual” with “health” changes both terms: it alters how we conceive of sexuality and transforms what it means to be healthy, prompting new expectations of what medicine can provide. Yet the ideal of achieving sexual health remains elusive and open-ended, and the benefits and costs of promoting it are unevenly distributed across genders, races, and sexual identities. Rather than a thing apart, sexual health is intertwined with nearly every conceivable topical debate—from sexual dysfunction to sexual violence, from reproductive freedom to the practicalities of sexual contact in a pandemic.

In The Quest for Sexual Health: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life (U Chicago Press, 2022), Steven Epstein analyzes the rise, proliferation, uptake, and sprawling consequences of sexual health activities, offering critical tools to assess those consequences, expand capacities for collective decision making, and identify pathways that promote social justice.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Andrew Doig, "This Mortal Coil: A History of Death" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 27 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Causes of death have changed irrevocably across time. In the course of a few centuries we have gone from a world where disease or violence were likely to strike anyone at any age, and where famine could be just one bad harvest away, to one where in many countries excess food is more of a problem than a lack of it. Why have the reasons we die changed so much? How is it that a century ago people died mainly from infectious disease, while today the leading causes of death in industrialised nations are heart disease and stroke? And what do changing causes of death reveal about how previous generations have lived?

University of Manchester Professor Andrew Doig provides an eye-opening portrait of death throughout history, looking at particular causes – from infectious disease to genetic disease, violence to diet – who they affected, and the people who made it possible to overcome them. Along the way we hear about the long and torturous story of the discovery of vitamin C and its role in preventing scurvy; the Irish immigrant who opened the first washhouse for the poor of Liverpool, and in so doing educated the public on the importance of cleanliness in combating disease; and the Church of England curate who, finding his new church equipped with a telephone, started the Samaritans to assist those in emotional distress.

This Mortal Coil: A History of Death (Bloomsbury, 2022) is a thrilling story of growing medical knowledge and social organisation, of achievement and, looking to the future, of promise.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Timmen Cermak, "Marijuana on My Mind: The Science and Mystique of Cannabis" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 24 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Few substances have been researched as extensively, and debated as fiercely, as cannabis. In Marijuana on My Mind: The Science and Mystique of Cannabis (Cambridge University Press, 2022), psychiatrist Timmen Cermak offers a balanced, science-based analysis of how marijuana affects people physiologically, psychologically, and spiritually. Cermak draws on current understandings of the brain and nervous system to describe how cannabis achieves its effects as well as how it can pose risks to some individuals. Cermak believes that most people can enjoy cannabis safely as long as they apply sensible guidelines and precautions. Far different in tone from the heated polemics that cannabis can inspire, Marijuana on My Mind is a deeply informed assessment of what we know about cannabis and how people can deploy that knowledge wisely.

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Emily Mendenhall, "Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji" (Vanderbilt UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji (Vanderbilt UP, 2022) is the story of what happened in Okoboji, a small Iowan tourist town, when a collective turn from the coronavirus to the economy occurred in the COVID summer of 2020. State political failures, local negotiations among political and public health leaders, and community (dis)belief about the virus resulted in Okoboji being declared a hotspot just before the Independence Day weekend, when an influx of half a million people visit the town. The story is both personal and political. Author Emily Mendenhall, an anthropologist at Georgetown University, grew up in Okoboji, and her family still lives there. As the events unfolded, Mendenhall was in Okoboji, where she spoke formally with over 100 people and observed a community that rejected public health guidance, revealing deep-seated mistrust in outsiders and strong commitments to local thinking. Unmasked is a fascinating and heartbreaking account of where people put their trust, and how isolationist popular beliefs can be in America's small communities.

Professor Emily Mendenhall is a medical anthropologist and Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She was awarded the George Foster Award for Practicing Medical Anthropology by the Society for Medical Anthropology in 2017. She is Editor-in-Chief of Social Science and Medicine-Mental Health and leads the office of Medical Anthropology and Critical Social Science. She has served as Honorary Faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand for the past decade. At Georgetown, she leads the global health concentration in the Science, Technology, and International Affairs (STIA) Program in the School of Foreign Service.

Austin Clyde is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science. He researches artificial intelligence and high-performance computing for developing new scientific methods. He is also a visiting research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Science, Technology, and Society program, where my research addresses the intersection of artificial intelligence, human rights, and democracy.

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Jim Downs, "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine" (Harvard UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 23 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of London's 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading to the birth of epidemiology. Florence Nightingale's contributions to the care of soldiers in the Crimean War revolutionized medical hygiene, transforming hospitals from crucibles of infection to sanctuaries of recuperation. Yet histories of individual innovators ignore many key sources of medical knowledge, especially when it comes to the science of infectious disease.

Reexamining the foundations of modern medicine, Jim Downs shows that the study of infectious disease depended crucially on the unrecognized contributions of nonconsenting subjects--conscripted soldiers, enslaved people, and subjects of empire. Plantations, slave ships, and battlefields were the laboratories in which physicians came to understand the spread of disease. Military doctors learned about the importance of air quality by monitoring Africans confined to the bottom of slave ships. Statisticians charted cholera outbreaks by surveilling Muslims in British-dominated territories returning from their annual pilgrimage. The field hospitals of the Crimean War and the US Civil War were carefully observed experiments in disease transmission.

The scientific knowledge derived from discarding and exploiting human life is now the basis of our ability to protect humanity from epidemics. Boldly argued and eye-opening, Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine (Harvard UP, 2021) gives a full account of the true price of medical progress.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Martin Abrahamson and Sanjiv Chopra, "Conquer Your Diabetes: Prevention, Control, Remission" (2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 17 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The global epidemic of diabetes and prediabetes afflicts more than 1 billion people. And sadly, more than 50% of people with the disease do not achieve their desired glucose control. In Conquer Your Diabetes: Prevention, Control, Remission, Drs. Martin Abrahamson and Sanjiv Chopra, two Harvard Medical School professors and master clinicians, provide a roadmap for people with diabetes to manage their condition and live rewarding and fulfilling lives.

Sine Yaganoglu trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer (PhD, ETH Zurich). She currently works in innovation management and diagnostics.

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Suman Seth, "Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 13 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Before the nineteenth century, travelers who left Britain for the Americas, West Africa, India and elsewhere encountered a medical conundrum: why did they fall ill when they arrived, and why - if they recovered - did they never become so ill again? The widely accepted answer was that the newcomers needed to become 'seasoned to the climate'.

In his book Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge UP, 2020), Suman Seth explores forms of eighteenth-century medical knowledge, including conceptions of seasoning, showing how geographical location was essential to this knowledge and helped to define relationships between Britain and her far-flung colonies. In this period, debates raged between medical practitioners over whether diseases changed in different climes. Different diseases were deemed characteristic of different races and genders, and medical practitioners were thus deeply involved in contestations over race and the legitimacy of the abolitionist cause. In this innovative and engaging history, Seth offers dramatically new ways to understand the mutual shaping of medicine, race, and empire.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Michael G. Flaherty and K. C. Carceral, "The Cage of Days: Time and Temporal Experience in Prison" (Columbia UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Prisons operate according to the clockwork logic of our criminal justice system: we punish people by making them “serve” time. The Cage of Days: Time and Temporal Experience in Prison (Columbia UP, 2022) combines the perspectives of K. C. Carceral, a formerly incarcerated convict criminologist, and Michael G. Flaherty, a sociologist who studies temporal experience. Drawing from Carceral’s field notes, his interviews with fellow inmates, and convict memoirs, this book reveals what time does to prisoners and what prisoners do to time.

Carceral and Flaherty consider the connection between the subjective dimensions of time and the existential circumstances of imprisonment. Convicts find that their experience of time has become deeply distorted by the rhythm and routines of prison and by how authorities ensure that an inmate’s time is under their control. They become obsessed with the passage of time and preoccupied with regaining temporal autonomy, creating elaborate strategies for modifying their perception of time. To escape the feeling that their lives lack forward momentum, prisoners devise distinctive ways to mark the passage of time, but these tactics can backfire by intensifying their awareness of temporality. Providing rich and nuanced analysis grounded in the distinctive voices of diverse prisoners, The Cage of Days examines how prisons regulate time and how prisoners resist the temporal regime.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Guy Beiner, "Pandemic Re-Awakenings: The Forgotten and Unforgotten 'Spanish' Flu Of 1918-1919" (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 12 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Pandemic Re-Awakenings: The Forgotten and Unforgotten 'Spanish' Flu Of 1918-1919 (Oxford UP, 2021), edited by Guy Beiner, offers a multi-level and multi-faceted exploration of a century of remembering, forgetting, and rediscovering the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, arguably the greatest catastrophe in human history. Twenty-three researchers present original perspectives by critically investigating the hitherto unexplored vicissitudes of memory in the interrelated spheres of personal, communal, medical, and cultural histories in different national and transnational settings across the globe. The volume reveals how, even though the Great Flu was overshadowed by the commemorative culture of the Great War, recollections of the pandemic persisted over time to re-emerge towards the centenary of the 'Spanish' Flu and burst into public consciousness following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapters chart historiographical neglect (while acknowledging the often-unnoticed dialogues between scientific and historical discourses), probe silences, and trace vestiges of social and cultural memories that long remained outside of what was considered collective memory.

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Pandemic Perspectives 10: Covid and the Art of Science Communication

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 11 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to John Tregoning, Imperial College respiratory infections researcher and author of the acclaimed book Infectious: Pathogens and How We Fight Them.

Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Nicole Charles, "Suspicion: Vaccines, Hesitancy, and the Affective Politics of Protection in Barbados" (Duke UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 10 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In 2014 Barbados introduced a vaccine to prevent certain strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) and reduce the risk of cervical cancer in young women. Despite the disproportionate burden of cervical cancer in the Caribbean, many Afro-Barbadians chose not to immunize their daughters. In Suspicion: Vaccines, Hesitancy, and the Affective Politics of Protection in Barbados (Duke University Press, 2022), Nicole Charles reframes Afro-Barbadian vaccine refusal from a question of hesitancy to one of suspicion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, black feminist theory, transnational feminist studies and science and technology studies, Charles foregrounds Afro-Barbadians' gut feelings and emotions and the lingering trauma of colonial and biopolitical violence. She shows that suspicion, far from being irrational, is a fraught and generative affective orientation grounded in concrete histories of mistrust of government and coercive medical practices foisted on colonized peoples. By contextualizing suspicion within these longer cultural and political histories, Charles troubles traditional narratives of vaccine hesitancy while offering new entry points into discussions on racialized biopolitics, neocolonialism, care, affect, and biomedicine across the Black diaspora.

Nicole Charles is Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies in Culture and Media, University of Toronto, Mississauga.

Reighan Gillam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California.

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Mark Henick, "So-Called Normal: A Memoir of Family, Depression and Resilience" (HarperCollins, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 9 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

When Mark Henick was a teenager in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, he was overwhelmed by depression and anxiety that led to a series of increasingly dangerous suicide attempts. One night, he climbed onto a bridge over an overpass and stood in the wind, clinging to a girder. Someone shouted, "Jump, you coward!" Another man, a stranger in a brown coat, talked to him quietly, calmly and with deep empathy. Just as Henick's feet touched open air, the man in the brown coat encircled his chest and pulled him to safety. This near-death experience changed Henick's life forever.

So-Called Normal: A Memoir of Family, Depression and Resilience (HarperCollins, 2021) is Henick's memoir about growing up in a broken home and the events that led to that fateful night on the bridge. It is a vivid and personal account of the mental health challenges he experienced in childhood and his subsequent journey toward healing and recovery.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Pandemic Perspectives 9: Covid, 'Scientism,' and the Betrayal of the Enlightenment

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 4 May 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to bestselling author and University of Oxford law professor Charles Foster on how the coronavirus pandemic reveals how so many of us—including so many scientists—have replaced rigorous scientific skepticism with an alarming cult of "scientism."

Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details.

Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Ellen S. More, "The Transformation of American Sex Education: Mary Calderone and the Fight for Sexual Health" (NYU Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Mid-century America had a problem talking about sex. Dr. Mary Calderone first diagnosed this condition and, in 1964, led the uphill battle to de-stigmatize sex education. Supporters hailed her as the “grandmother of modern sex education” while her detractors painted her as an “aging libertine,” but both could agree that she was quickly shaping the way sex was discussed in the classroom.

Part biography, part social history, The Transformation of American Sex Education: Mary Calderone and the Fight for Sexual Health (NYU Press, 2022) for the first time situates Dr. Mary Calderone at the center of decades of political, cultural, and religious conflict in the fight for comprehensive sex education. Ellen S. More examines Americans’ attempts to come to terms with the vexed subject of sex education in schools from the late 1940s to the early twenty-first century. Using Mary Calderone’s life and career as a touchstone, she traces the origins of modern sex education in the United States from the work of a group of reformers who coalesced around Calderone to create the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) in 1964, to the development and use of the competing approaches known as “abstinence-based” and “comprehensive” sex education from the 1980s into the twenty-first century.

A fascinating and timely read, The Transformation of American Sex Education provides a substantial contribution to the history of one of America’s most intense and protracted culture wars, and the first account of the woman who fought those battles.

Jane Scimeca is Professor of History at Brookdale Community College.

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Anthony Hatch, "Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

It’s no secret that the United States has the most expansive prison system of any nation in the world. And the US carceral system overwhelmingly and unjustly impacts Black and Brown individuals and communities. With postwar efforts to dismantle Jim Crow policies, our era of mass incarceration reproduced the old logics of white supremacism that uphold racist capitalism in this new setting. These are the things we know.

But in his book, Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America (U Minnesota Press, 2019), Professor Anthony Hatch observes a feature of mass incarceration essential to its everyday function that many of us had never considered: the large-scale, persistent use of psychotropic drugs, including antipsychotics and antidepressants, not for medical care but rather to control the behavior of incarcerated people. Making a persuasive claim drawn from his training in STS and sociology, Hatch observes how the drugs are used at the level of individual brain chemistry to commit “soul murder” with enormous systemic implications and political stakes. What’s more, the carceral elites’ use of psychotropic drugs for the purposes of pacification, not care, of their wards extends to other (often state-backed) settings of “captive America,” including the military, foster care, elder care, and international detention centers. “Is it possible for the US carceral state to exist without psychotropics,” Hatch asks. “I think we can say the answer is no.”

Silent Cells accomplishes more than the (important) tasks of documentation and analysis. It is a work of liberatory social science. The book is of a piece with Hatch’s abolitionist agenda that he pursues through his generous and generative scholarly and activist engagements, including his work as director of the Black Box teaching laboratory and chair of the Program in Science in Society at Wesleyan University.

This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and students at Vanderbilt University in the course “Prison.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about the collaborative interview process: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu .

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Anthony Cerulli, "The Practice of Texts: Education and Healing in South India" (U California Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In this interdisciplinary study, Anthony Cerulli probes late- and postcolonial reforms in ayurvedic education, the development of the ayurvedic college, and the impacts of the college curriculum on ways that ayurvedic physicians understand and use the Sanskrit classics in their professional work today. By interrogating the politics surrounding the place of the Sanskrit classics in ayurvedic curricula, The Practice of Texts: Education and Healing in South India (U California Press, 2022) reveals a spectrum of views about the history and tradition of Ayurveda in modern India.

Raj Balkaran is a scholar, online educator, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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Rana A. Hogarth, "Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840" (UNC Press, 2017)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Medicine and slavery went hand-in-hand. But what was the nature of this vile partnership? In Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840 (UNC Press, 2017), Rana Hogarth shows that familiar histories, though excellent, fail to explain how and why medicine and slavery became fused in the first place.

No doubt, defenders of slavery used medicine to justify the corrupt practice once it was under threat. But Hogarth shows how science and medicine grafted during times and in places where slavery was secure—where white elites had no need to justify the violent practice with medical ideas because slavery was taken for granted. How and why did medicine and slavery fuse, Hogarth asks, in the Atlantic World of the newly invented United States and ascendant imperial Britain? Understanding the answer helps us grasp the valences and impacts of racialized national and social identities, then as well as today.

White physicians inflated their value—financial as well as reputational—by locating medical reasons for already existing racist tropes. Circa 1800, white physicians were a disreputable and loosely aligned lot. They had many rivals (Black healers), rich skeptics (plantation owners), and no professional organization until the mid-nineteenth century under which they could rally. Before then, a wide-spread, active white belief in an innate difference between Black and white bodies was the foregone conclusion that white physicians worked to explain in order to appear of use. White physicians in the English-speaking Caribbean developed medical theories of innate difference in the etiology, progress and experience of illness in Black and white bodies—evidence to the contrary be damned. As a consequence, they ignored immense Black suffering, exposed Black workers to deadly diseases, and policed Black people through the hospital system, all the while seeing Black people as appropriate for service in the military and as objects for teaching dissection, that is to say, in projects of imperial and professional expansion.

Medicalizing Blackness broadens the story of medicine in the Atlantic World with a lens that perceives more than the institution of slavery. It also demonstrates the emergence of the Caribbean as a locus—not an outpost—of trustworthy medical knowledge circulated through an array of genres, journals articles, plantation guides, hospital advertisements, and other media of “textual subjugation” that Hogarth reads with great insight. In short, medicine needed the racist logics of slavery in order to gain power before slavery needed racist medicine to defend its own might.

July 2022 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the exposure of the abusive and unethical Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments in the US media. Engaging the roots of white supremacist ideas and practices is essential for better understanding and for stronger political action against racism, as important fifty years ago as it is in our ongoing racialized pandemic.

This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and students at Vanderbilt University in the course “American Medicine & the World.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about the collaborative interview process: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu.

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Pandemic Perspectives 8: Covid and the Embrace of the Biological World

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to renowned UC San Diego neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland about the importance of communicating science, the wonders of the biological world and the dangers of wishful thinking.

Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Jennifer K. Seman, "Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo" (U Texas Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Recent global events have unmasked inequitable healthcare systems that disproportionately affect poor Latinx populations along the U.S-Mexico border. Professor Jennifer K. Seman’s recent publication offers a brief insight into these inequities by approaching borderlands modes of care from a historical perspective to reveal how two vital practitioners of curanderismo – “An earth-based healing practice that blends elements of Indigenous medicine with folk Catholicism” (1) – served their communities to heal physical and societal ills at the turn of the twentieth century. Borderlands Curanderos: The Worlds of Santa Teresa Urrea and Don Pedrito Jaramillo (University of Texas Press, 2021) follows the biographies of these two Mexican folk healers as they traverse borders during a moment of increased nation-building, as they are implicated in the world of the spiritualist movement, and stand firm in their faith as they are wedged against professional modern medicine.

Seman grounds the history of curanderismo in the cross-cultural exchange between European, Native American, and African heritages and practices that depend largely on the belief that there is a connectedness between the mind, body, and spirit. By utilizing institutional and non-institutional archives, newspaper accounts, and built environments in which Santa Teresa and Don Pedrito traversed and are memorialized, Borderlands Curanderos offers a detailed look at their lives. One major thread linking the curanderos is how they negotiated the state and state power during the early 20th century in Mexico and the United States. “It was their extraordinary responses to the failure of institutions that made Santa Teresa and Don Pedro threats – and, in some cases, assets — to the states and institutional authority,” (4) writes Seman. In other words, their medicine did not come from the state, the church, or professional medicine, as argued in her book, but rather from a distinct cultural practice that revitalized the sick. These two healers took on the insurmountable task of tending to people and geographies who were experiencing the aftermath unleashed by settler colonialism and enslavement; or, as Seman would argue, the generational susto brought on by conquerors and settlers (9).

Jonathan Cortez is currently the 2021-2023 César Chávez Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter @joncortz

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Nicole Elizabeth Barnes, "Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937-1945" (U California Press, 2018)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

When China’s War of Resistance against Japan began in July 1937, it sparked an immediate health crisis throughout China. In the end, China not only survived the war but emerged from the trauma with a more cohesive population.

Nicole Elizabeth Barnes’s book, Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937-1945 (University of California Press, 2018), argues that women who worked as military and civilian nurses, doctors, and midwives during this turbulent period built the national community, one relationship at a time. In a country with a majority illiterate, agricultural population that could not relate to urban elites’ conceptualization of nationalism, these women used their work of healing to create emotional bonds with soldiers and civilians from across the country. These bonds transcended the divides of social class, region, gender, and language.

This book has won two major awards, William H. Welch Award by American Association for the History of Medicine in 2020, and Joan Kelly Memorial Prize by American Historical Association in 2019.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Nicole Elizabeth Barnes is Assistant Professor of History and Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Duke University.

Linshan Jiang is Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests are modern and contemporary literature, film, and popular culture in mainland China, Taiwan and Japan; trauma and memory studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer studies; as well as comparative literature and translation studies.

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Rod Tanchanco, "First Patients: The Incredible True Stories of Pioneer Patients" (First Hawk, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

When Dr. Rod Tanchanco, a busy internist and clinical researcher, began digging into old journals looking for a deeper history of renowned medical innovations, he wasn’t planning to write a book; he just liked writing, and the process of digging into “treasure troves” of overlooked or unknown medical lore. Most of all, he liked finding the human stories behind trumpeted technical or pharmaceutical advances.

Out of this pleasurable – if time-and-energy-consuming – pursuit came First Patients: The Incredible True Stories of Pioneer Patients (First Hawk, 2022). The histories-behind-the-histories of ten prominent medical narratives, the book offers new angles from which to understand how we came by such advancements as blood transfusions, the pacemaker, and the identification of mosquitos as the vector for yellow fever. Tanchanco centers his stories on the individuals who were sufficiently curious, persistent, or self-sacrificing (exposing themselves to infected mosquitos or dosing themselves with ulcer-inducing bacteria) to break old barriers.

As Tanchanco explains in our interview, there are parallels to medical breakthroughs today, including the development of the mRNA vaccine against covid-19. While technology moves ever forward, human nature remains both resistant to, and eager for, change – particularly when it comes to vexatious matters of disease and death.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Pandemic Perspectives 7: Covid 19 Political Lessons from Portugal

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Portuguese Member of Parliament and internationally renowned biologist Alexandre Quintanilha about the many valuable lessons Portugal's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic could teach all of us, if only we'd take the time to pay attention.

Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Jeff Sebo, "Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and Other Catastrophes" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In 2020, COVID-19, the Australia bushfires, and other global threats served as vivid reminders that human and nonhuman fates are increasingly linked. Human use of nonhuman animals contributes to pandemics, climate change, and other global threats which, in turn, contribute to biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and nonhuman suffering. Jeff Sebo argues that humans have a moral responsibility to include animals in global health and environmental policy. In particular, we should reduce our use of animals as part of our pandemic and climate change mitigation efforts and increase our support for animals as part of our adaptation efforts. Applying and extending frameworks such as One Health and the Green New Deal, Sebo calls for reducing support for factory farming, deforestation, and the wildlife trade; increasing support for humane, healthful, and sustainable alternatives; and considering human and nonhuman needs holistically. Sebo also considers connections with practical issues such as education, employment, social services, and infrastructure, as well as with theoretical issues such as well-being, moral status, political status, and population ethics. In all cases, he shows that these issues are both important and complex, and that we should neither underestimate our responsibilities because of our limitations, nor underestimate our limitations because of our responsibilities.

Both an urgent call to action and a survey of what ethical and effective action requires, Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and Other Catastrophes (Oxford UP, 2022) is an invaluable resource for scholars, advocates, policy-makers, and anyone interested in what kind of world we should attempt to build and how.

Jeff Sebo is currently Clinical Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, and Director of the Animal Studies M.A. Program at New York University. He is also on the executive committee at the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection and the advisory board for the Animals in Context series at NYU Press.

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Maia Szalavitz, "Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction" (Hachette, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction (Hachette Go, 2021) tells a long-running, but largely unknown, story of how a few people and groups – propelled at first by the AIDS pandemic -- swam against one of the most powerful policy tides in America – our nation’s 50-year war on drugs. Maia Szalavitz’s book is a personal and political history of the idea of harm reduction, which is a philosophy, a set of health practices, and a call to action. Harm reduction is a powerful alternative to virtually all of the “conventional wisdom” about drugs and drug policy. Harm reduction starts by asserting that the health and safety of drug users, their families, and their communities should be the top priority of drug policy. Undoing Drugs is a global story, with stops in Liverpool, Amsterdam, the San Francisco Bay Area, Vancouver, Glasgow, and New York. By giving life to the saying that “the personal is political,” Szalavitz shows how America might still turn away from the massive failures of the drug war to embrace an approach that seeks to put people first.

Steve Beitler’s work in the history of medicine focuses on how pain has been understood, treated, experienced, and represented. Recently published articles examined the history of opiates in American football and surveyed the history of therapeutic drugs. He can be reached at noelandsteve@gmail.com.

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Robert A Jacobs, "Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha" (Yale UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Robert Jacob’s book Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha (Yale UP, 2022) re‑envisions the history of the Cold War as a slow nuclear war, fought on remote battlegrounds against populations powerless to prevent the contamination of their lands and bodies. Jacobs’s book put these “nuclear bodies” and the legacy of our eighty years history of nuclear weapon and power use at the center of his inquiry. The contaminated bodies of the hibakusha and the contaminated grounds on which they live (or in many cases lived. As many lost their homes), Jacobs argues, are largely invisible because of the colonial and post -colonial power relations that made these communities a target to begin with. Nuclear weapon tests and power stations usually were set at remote places, and the harm was done to people with no political power. Furthermore, it is not just contemporary communities that were harmed, but also future generations. “Plutonium will remain dangerous for over two hundred thousand years, and uranium particles for more than one million years”. Eighty years of tests and nuclear power have saddled our future descendants with radiative waste, most of which is still not safely stored, “a global legacy currently sitting in spent fuel pools and dry storage casks, waiting.” The invisibility of the problem and people affected by it, Jacobs argues, is manufactured in science and politics. Furthermore, the way we study the problem historically further obscured its scope. Different sites have been studied through different national historical “silos,” Jacobs, however, takes a global approach, and look at sites from Nevada to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Kazakhstan to Xinjian, and the various Pacific sites that were sites of nuclear tests and accidents since 1945 to make the invisible global hibakusha visible.

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The Future of Life Expectancy: A Discussion with Angus Deaton

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In 2015, Professor Angus Deaton of Princeton University and his wife Professor Anne Case published a paper highlighting the rising mortality rate among middle-aged white non-Hispanic Americans. They described "deaths of despair" which were often related to drug and alcohol poisoning and suicide. They followed up with a widely read book: Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton UP, 2020). In this podcast Owen Bennett-Jones discusses the issue of life expectancy and asks what trends relating to life expectancy are likely to occur in the future.

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Marcus Kaiser, "Changing Connectomes: Evolution, Development, and Dynamics in Network Neuroscience" (MIT Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 8 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The human brain undergoes massive changes during its development, from early childhood and the teenage years to adulthood and old age. Across a wide range of species, from C. elegans and fruit flies to mice, monkeys, and humans, information about brain connectivity (connectomes) at different stages is now becoming available. New approaches in network neuroscience can be used to analyze the topological, spatial, and dynamical organization of such connectomes. In Changing Connectomes: Evolution, Development, and Dynamics in Network Neuroscience (MIT Press, 2020), Marcus Kaiser provides an up-to-date overview of the field of connectomics and introduces concepts and mechanisms underlying brain network changes during evolution and development.

Drawing on a range of results from experimental, clinical, and computational studies, Kaiser describes changes during healthy brain maturation and during brain network disorders (including such neurodevelopmental conditions as schizophrenia and depression), brain injury, and neurodegenerative disorders including dementia. He argues that brain stimulation is an area where understanding connectome development could help in assessing the long-term effects of interventions. Changing Connectomes is a suitable starting point for researchers who are new to the field of connectomics, and also for researchers who are interested in the link between brain network organization and brain and cognitive development in health and disease. Matlab/Octave code examples available at the MIT Press website will allow computational neuroscience researchers to understand and extend the shown mechanisms of connectome development.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Zeynep Pamuk, "Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society" (Princeton UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Our ability to act on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from pandemics and climate change to artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons, depends on knowledge provided by scientists and other experts. Meanwhile, contemporary political life is increasingly characterized by problematic responses to expertise, with denials of science on the one hand and complaints about the ignorance of the citizenry on the other.

Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society (Princeton University Press, 2021) offers a new model for the relationship between science and democracy, rooted in the ways in which scientific knowledge and the political context of its use are imperfect. Zeynep Pamuk starts from the fact that science is uncertain, incomplete, and contested, and shows how scientists' judgments about what is significant and useful shape the agenda and framing of political decisions. The challenge, Pamuk argues, is to ensure that democracies can expose and contest the assumptions and omissions of scientists, instead of choosing between wholesale acceptance or rejection of expertise. To this end, she argues for institutions that support scientific dissent, proposes an adversarial "science court" to facilitate the public scrutiny of science, reimagines structures for funding scientific research, and provocatively suggests restricting research into dangerous new technologies.

Through rigorous philosophical analysis and fascinating examples, Politics and Expertise moves the conversation beyond the dichotomy between technocracy and populism and develops a better answer for how to govern and use science democratically.

Zeynep Pamuk is assistant professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin).

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The Future of Delusions: A Discussion with Lisa Bortolotti

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 5 Apr 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The accusation “you’re deluded” is often used as something of a cheap shot intended to silence an opponent in debate. But what is the nature of a delusion and how can we assess rationality and irrationality? In this podcast, Owen Bennett-Jones talks to Professor Lisa Bortolotti who studies the philosophy of psychology and psychiatry at Birmingham University and is the author of among many other things, Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (Oxford UP, 2010) and most recently edited Delusions in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

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Pandemic Perspectives 4: Science, Societal Values and COVID

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Lorraine Daston, director emerita of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin about a number of hugely relevant issues at the intriguing overlap between science and societal values.

Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Rachel E. Gross, "Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage" (W. W. Norton, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

A camera obscura reflects the world back but dimmer and inverted. Similarly, science has long viewed woman through a warped lens, one focused narrowly on her capacity for reproduction. As a result, there exists a vast knowledge gap when it comes to what we know about half of the bodies on the planet.

That is finally changing. Today, a new generation of researchers is turning its gaze to the organs traditionally bound up in baby-making—the uterus, ovaries, and vagina—and illuminating them as part of a dynamic, resilient, and ever-changing whole. Welcome to Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage (W.W. Norton, 2022), an odyssey into a woman’s body from a fresh perspective, ushering in a whole new cast of characters.

In Boston, a pair of biologists are growing artificial ovaries to counter the cascading health effects of menopause. In Melbourne, a urologist remaps the clitoris to fill in crucial gaps in female sexual anatomy. Given unparalleled access to labs and the latest research, journalist Rachel E. Gross takes readers on a scientific journey to the center of a wonderous world where the uterus regrows itself, ovaries pump out fresh eggs, and the clitoris pulses beneath the surface like a shimmering pyramid of nerves.

This paradigm shift is made possible by the growing understanding that sex and gender are not binary; we all share the same universal body plan and origin in the womb. That’s why insights into the vaginal microbiome, ovarian stem cells, and the biology of menstruation don’t mean only a better understanding of female bodies, but a better understanding of male, non-binary, transgender, and intersex bodies—in other words, all bodies.

By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, and shocking, Vagina Obscura is a powerful testament to how the landscape of human knowledge can be rewritten to better serve everyone.

Sine Yaganoglu: Having trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer, I switched to industry following my PhD at ETH Zurich and have been working in innovation management and diagnostics. Besides reading about science, innovation and entrepreneurship, I have become interested in the scientific and cultural aspects of parenting and motherhood since welcoming my first child.

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Natali Valdez, "Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era" (U California Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era (University of California Press, 2022), Natali Valdez examines research trials that enroll pregnant people in the United States and England. These research trials aim to lower the health risks to future generations by intervening in and studying the diet and exercise of pregnant people. As an ethnographer, Valdez enrolled pregnant participants into the studies, met with them to administer the intervention, and observed the processes of the trials. Valdez argues that these studies focus on the pregnant individual without accounting for the social, cultural, economic, and environmental factors that present risk factors to their pregnancies. Structural factors such as racism, pollution, and poverty are not acknowledged, studied, or tracked. And this focus on the individual forecloses addressing issues, such as unstable housing, childcare, immigration, and racism. In the book, Valdez discusses how pregnancy trials have changed very little since the 1950s, the politics of recruiting participants to the trials, and how they handle racial diversity. Valdez asserts that these trials use race as an unstable and inconsistent marker of identifying participants, but they do not address racism, which is an underlying cause of health disparities. In the episode we discuss Valdez’s arguments, ethnographic work, and experience of writing the book. Weighing the Future would be of interest to those in medical anthropology, science and technology studies, as well as women and gender studies. Weighing the Future is the first book of its kind, and it contributes much to our understandings of the increasingly salient issues of maternal health, research, and race.

Natali Valdez is an Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College.

Reighan Gillam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California.

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Alexander Zaitchik, "Owning the Sun: A People's History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines" (Counterpoint, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Although the dividing line between private life and public responsibilities can never be definite and clear, there is a moral threshold which is crossed both by those who assume power to change the lives of many men through public action and by those who undertake to represent in a public role the will and interests of many other men. A new responsibility, and even a new kind of responsibility, and new moral conflicts, present themselves.

– Stuart Hampshire, foreword to Public and Private Morality (1978)

Hampshire’s thoughts help articulate the inherent tensions underlying an institutionalized system of monopoly medicine that has commandeered the myth of free-market ideology in an ongoing and highly successful effort to profit from pharmaceutical patents generated by U.S. government-funded scientific research. This is the broader thesis of investigative journalist Alexander Zaitchik’s latest book, Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 published by Counterpoint in March of 2022.

Zaitchik highlights the politics and players from founding fathers to the FDA’s Francis Kelsey to Hayek and the Chicago School in an engaging and well-researched narrative laying bare the situational ethics across the professional domains of the pharmaceutical industry, publicly-funded university research, and medicine more broadly while highlighting the public-private tension baked into our ‘free market’ political economy and its reification of knowledge through patent and intellectual property law.

Zaitchik’s narrative deftly outlines how generations of public health and science advocates have attempted to hold the line against pharmaceutical special interests and their allies in government while documenting privatized medicine’s evolution in the U.S. and its globalizing effects. From the controversial arrival of patent-seeking German chemical companies in the late nineteenth century to present-day coordination between industry and philanthropic organizations—including the influential Gates Foundation—that defeated efforts to loosen intellectual property restrictions for countries to produce vaccines against COVID-19. Relevant and smartly written with a disturbing message for everyone who cares about the cost and access of medicine.

Listeners will find the book and Zaitchik’s observations in this interview engaging as well as his 2018 article in The New Republic that previews part of the book’s larger thesis:

Complement and expand the topic focus with these recent NBN segments:

1) Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (2022) written by Peter S. Goodman and

interviewed by Caleb Zakarin.

2) Disorder: A History of Reform, Reaction, and Money in American Medicine (2021) written by Peter

S. Swanson and interviewed by Stephen Pimpare.

Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance journalist and contributor to Atlantic magazine, The New Republic, The Nation and Foreign Policy among others, and has authored four books including this latest just published by Counterpoint Press in Berkeley.

Keith Krueger lectures at the SILC Business School in Shanghai University.

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Lucy Ward, "The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus" (ONEWorld, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Within living memory, smallpox was a dreaded disease. Over human history, it has killed untold millions. In the eighteenth century, as epidemics swept Europe, the first rumours emerged of effective treatment: a mysterious method called inoculation.

But a key problem remained: convincing people to accept the preventative remedy, the forerunner of vaccination. Arguments raged over risks and benefits, and public resistance ran high. As smallpox ravaged her empire and threatened her court, Catherine the Great took the momentous decision to summon the Quaker physician Thomas Dimsdale from Hertford to St Petersburg to carry out a secret mission that would transform both their lives. In The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus (ONEworld, 2022), Lucy Ward expertly unveils the extraordinary story of Enlightenment ideals, female leadership and the fight to promote science over superstition.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Pandemic Perspectives 3: A Conversation with Samuel Moyn

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Samuel Moyn, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence and Professor of History at Yale University, about neoliberalism, human rights and what our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about our true values.

Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Howard Burton, "Pandemic Perspectives: A Filmmaker's Journey in 10 Essays" (Open Agenda, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Howard Burton has been talking to very wise people for decades--scientists, historians, political thinkers, philosophers, etc. When Covid "hit" he was, like many of us, puzzled. Where did it come from? How should we respond to it? What does it say about us? So he did what he does: Had conversations with 32 very wise people about Covid. He filmed the discussions, and you can watch them here. Some of them will be released as podcasts on the Ideas Roadshow Podcast, which you can find here. He also wrote a book about his conversations: Pandemic Perspectives: A Filmmaker's Journey in 10 Essays (Open Agenda, 2022). You can buy it here.

Today I talked to Howard about the book, and what he learned in his discussions with these people. Enjoy.

Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com.

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Understanding the Drivers of Vaccine Acceptance in Southeast Asia

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Vaccines have controlled or even eradicated some of the world’s most serious diseases. Throughout the last century and up until recently with the COVID-19 pandemic, the development of successful vaccines has widely been heralded a triumph to combat devastating virus outbreaks.

The success of immunisations, however, has always been limited by issues of public acceptance. Understanding why people are or aren’t vaccinated is crucial to public health responses to diseases like measles and, of course, COVID-19. Many are concerned about the impact of anti-vaccination activism and misinformation on vaccine programs. But is vaccine hesitancy always due to misinformation, and how do we go about measuring it?

Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, Dr Kerrie Wiley unpacks some of these issues, and discusses the various drivers of vaccine acceptance in Southeast Asia.

About Kerrie Wiley:

Dr Kerrie Wiley is a Senior Research Fellow with the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, in the Faculty of Medicine and Health. Kerrie’s research focuses on the social and behavioural aspects of immunisation and other preventive health behaviours, and their implications for policy and practice. Kerrie is a member of the World Health Organization ‘Measuring Behavioural and Social Drivers of Vaccination’ (BeSD) Working Group, and a founding member of the Collaboration of Social Science in Immunisation.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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Pardis Sabeti and Lara Salahi, "Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Crisis and the Next Epidemic, With a New Preface and Epilogue" (Harvard UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

As we saw with the Ebola outbreak--and the disastrous early handling of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic--a lack of preparedness, delays, and system-wide problems with the distribution of critical medical supplies can have deadly consequences. Yet after every outbreak, the systems put in place to coordinate emergency responses are generally dismantled.

One of America's top biomedical researchers, Dr. Pardis Sabeti, and her Pulitzer Prize-winning collaborator, Lara Salahi, argue that these problems are built into the ecosystem of our emergency responses. With an understanding of the path of disease and insight into political psychology, they show how secrecy, competition, and poor coordination plague nearly every major public health crisis and reveal how much more could be done to safeguard the well-being of caregivers, patients, and vulnerable communities. A work of fearless integrity and unassailable authority, Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Crisis and the Next Epidemic (Harvard UP, 2021) seeks to ensure that we make some urgently needed changes before the next pandemic.

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Carl Erik Fisher, "The Urge: Our History of Addiction" (Penguin, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding—let alone addressing effectively. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine.

A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge: Our History of Addiction (Penguin, 2022) illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues—our successes and our failures—can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.

Carl Erik Fisher is an addiction physician and bioethicist. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, where he works in the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry. He also maintains a private psychiatry practice focusing on complementary and integrative approaches to treating addiction.

Thomas Kingston is currently a Huayu Enrichment Scholar, studying Mandarin Chinese at National Cheng Kung University, as he finds himself in post MPhil and pre PhD limbo. He holds an MA in Pacific Asian Studies from SOAS, University of London and an MPhil in Philosophy from Renmin University of China. His research interests focus on the political and intellectual histories of nationalism(s), imaginaries and colonialism in the East and Southeast Asian context.

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Pandemic Perspectives 2: A Conversation with Stephen Scherer

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Stephen Scherer, Chief of Research at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, about how lessons learned from the pandemic might be best harnessed to increase the likelihood of future breakthroughs in biomedical research.

Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Annabel Streets, "52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 08:00:00 +0000

52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time (G. P. Putnam’s Sons; On Sale February 22, 2022), is a first-of-its-kind guide that blends cutting-edge research with an avid walker’s pragmatic how-to advice. This is the book for everyone—new walkers, seasoned walkers, and anyone who wants to boost the benefits of a daily constitutional.

Inspirational and grounded in science, 52 Ways to Walk delivers the best kept secrets of healthy and happy walkers—people who have learned that you actually can get more from life, one footstep at a time. Welcoming and wise, it’s a one-stop resource to enhance and maximize any kind of walk, from a ten-minute stroll on rain-splashed urban streets to a long rural ramble beside a river or through the woods.

Sine Yaganoglu trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer (PhD, ETH Zurich). She currently works in innovation management and diagnostics.

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Maryam Ziaee, "Big Data Analytics Adoption in Pharmaceutical Advanced Manufacturing"

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Dr. Maryam Ziaee is a University Lecturer at Victoria University in Australia teaching and researching Operations and Supply Chain Management. Dr. Ziaee has developed a cutting-edge model for big data analytics adoption in Australia’s pharmaceutical manufacturers that has garnered more attention in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic which has thrown the global supply chain into disarray. Manufacturing organisations around the globe are transitioning to big data analytics models to ramp up production and minimise manufacturing disruptions and uncertainties which can sometimes have adverse bearings on our social fabric. The shortage of critical goods and medicines in the last two years has shown how vital the role is the new oil in the current global market, but understanding and using data still remains a challenge. This is particularly more important when people’s lives and health are at stake. Dr. Ziaee’s research project provides a model that can be applied globally in manufacturing industries to improve their demand forecasting models and develop smart and data-driven decision-making.

Dr. Maryam Ziaee is a lecturer at Victoria University. Her research interests and interdisciplinary expertise are artificial intelligence adoption and implementation in the advanced manufacturing industry, optimisation of manufacturing performance, improving supply chain processes and resilience, implementation of quality management in manufacturing practices and products, sustainable engineering systems, and lean & agile manufacturing.

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Pandemic Perspectives 1: A Conversation with Miguel Nicolelis

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In this first Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis who became trapped in his native Brazil when the pandemic exploded in early 2020 and found himself returning to his epidemiological roots, becoming co-leader of an impromptu scientific committee to advise 9 Brazilian Governors.

Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com.

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Carly D. McKay, "The Mental Impact of Sports Injury" (Routledge, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Much is known about the physical strain that athletes’ bodies are subjected to, but until recently, the role of psychological factors in risk and rehabilitation has been poorly understood. In The Mental Impact of Sports Injury (Routledge, 2021), Dr. Carly McKay bridges the gap between academic research and practical settings in an informative, yet easy to follow guide to the psychology of sports injury. Addressing risk, rehabilitation, and prevention, it outlines key considerations for researchers and practitioners across all levels of sport. Alongside the fundamentals of injury psychology, emerging areas of importance are also discussed, including training load monitoring and the technological advances that are shaping modern sport medicine. Targeted examples highlight the challenges of preventing and managing injury in grassroots, elite, and professional contexts, with chapters dedicated to the under-served communities of youth and Para sport athletes. Stepping away from traditional texts, this unique book presents the landmark literature, major concepts, and athlete insights into sports injury psychology from a totally new perspective.

This interview was conducted by Jolie Ho, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology whose research focuses on social support-seeking within the context of social anxiety and anxiety disorders. Outside of research, Jolie is a follower of figure skating and tennis who has long been fascinated by the unique challenges and dynamics faced by elite athletes in high-performance environments.

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Kile M. Ortigo, "Beyond the Narrow Life: A Guide to Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration" (Synergetic Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Kile M. Ortigo's Beyond the Narrow Life: A Guide to Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration (Synergetic Press, 2021) addresses major issues that arise from the psychospiritual and therapeutic use of psychedelics. It describes a core structure that psychedelic journeys exhibit, and share, with classic mythologies; religious traditions; and spiritual practices. Its method is to integrate findings from cognitive-behavioral therapy, Jungian depth psychology, existential philosophy, compassion and mindfulness practices, comparative mythology, pop culture, film, and scientific understandings of the cosmos. The book also includes exercises designed to guide readers through the profound questions raised by diverse individual journeys of change and growth.

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Jessie Singer, "There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster—Who Profits and Who Pays the Price" (Simon and Schuster, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But, as Jessie Singer argues convincingly in There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster—Who Profits and Who Pays the Price (Simon and Schuster, 2022), there are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of mishaps are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer uncovers how the term “accident” protects those in power and leaves the most vulnerable in harm’s way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators.

As the rate of accidental death skyrockets in America, the poor and people of color end up bearing the brunt of the violence and blame, while the powerful use the excuse of the “accident” to avoid consequences for their actions. Born of the death of her best friend, and those who insisted it was an accident, this book is a moving investigation of the sort of tragedies that are all too common, and all too commonly ignored.

In this revelatory book, Singer tracks accidental death in America from turn-of-the-century factories and coal mines to today’s urban highways, rural hospitals, and Superfund sites. Drawing connections between traffic accidents, accidental opioid overdoses, and accidental oil spills, Singer illustrates how what we call accidents are hardly random. Rather, who lives and dies by an accident in America is defined by money and power. She also presents a variety of actions we can take as individuals and as a society to stem the tide of “accidents”—saving lives and holding the guilty to account.

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The Future of Sleep: A Discussion with Derk-Jan Dijk

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 1 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Many people, at some stage of their life, worry about sleep: are they getting enough of it? Or even, too much? Derk-Jan Dijk is Professor of Sleep and Physiology at University of Surrey. His current research interests include the contribution of sleep to brain function in healthy ageing and dementia; the role of circadian rhythms in sleep regulation; negative effects of sleep loss; understanding age and sex related differences in sleep physiology and developing tests to monitor sleep. In this podcast he discusses these issues and the future direction of the discipline with Owen Bennett-Jones.

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Piers Gooding, "A New Era for Mental Health Law and Policy: Supported Decision-Making and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities" (Cambridge UP, 2017)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

This book cuts new ground by applying a human rights lens of analysis to domestic mental health laws. It makes a timely contribution into the discourse regarding mental health, supported decision-making and disability rights in the post CRPD era. In A New Era for Mental Health Law and Policy: Supported Decision-Making and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Cambridge University Press, 2017) Research Fellow Dr Piers Gooding challenges law makers to bring domestic laws into compliance with the CRPD. At the same time, Gooding confronts the pragmatic concerns which continue to shape these same laws, such as the case where a person's mental impairment is perceived as a risk to self or others.

I had a great chat with Dr. Gooding in this hour; we spoke about arguments for and against coercive interventions, the right to and meaning of autonomy, tensions between rights based legalism and clinical governance, and more. We spoke about how domestic mental health laws have evolved since the 1980s, and especially since the introduction of the CRPD, and where to go from here.

Some of the scholarship mentioned in our conversation included that of Tina Minkowitz, John Fanning, and the collaborative work of Piers himself with Bernadette McSherry, Cath Roper, and Flick Grey.

Dr Piers Gooding is a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Social Equity Institute and Melbourne Law School, and is currently an Open Science Fellow at the Mozilla Foundation. His work focuses on the law and politics of disability and mental health, with a special interest in issues of legal capacity, decision-making, technology, and human rights.

Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK

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Marissa Mika, "Africanizing Oncology: Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda" (Ohio UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Thousands of stories are given voice by Marissa Mika in Africanizing Oncology: Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda (Ohio UP, 2021), a fearless, warm, and humane history of the Uganda Cancer Institute’s first half century. Mika treads carefully but surely through the fields of colonial and post-colonial medical research and politics while never losing sight of the individuals who worked, planned, improvised, suffered, survived and died at the UCI. The book is a fascinating contrast to the global north history of pediatric oncology as told, for example, by former National Cancer Institute director Vincent DeVita Jr. in The Death of Cancer. As Mika makes abundantly clear, there is no such wild optimism surrounding cancer in Uganda. There is, though, resourcefulness, commitment, and an ability to adapt to extraordinary circumstances on a daily basis. This richly researched book undoubtedly has significant academic merit in fields including, but not limited to, the history of medicine. It should appeal equally to global health activists who want to understand better the challenges and incremental accomplishments of work on the ground.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Sara Manning Peskin, "A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain" (Norton, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Our brains are the most complex machines known to humankind, but they have an Achilles heel: the very molecules that allow us to exist can also sabotage our minds. Here are gripping accounts of unruly molecules and the diseases that form in their wake.

A college student cannot remember if she has eaten breakfast. By dinner, she is strapped to a hospital bed, convinced she is battling zombies. A man planning to propose marriage instead becomes violently enraged, gripped by body spasms so severe that he nearly bites off his own tongue. One after another, poor farmers in South Carolina drop dead from a mysterious epidemic of dementia.

With an intoxicating blend of history and intrigue, Sara Manning Peskin invites readers to play medical detective, tracing each diagnosis from the patient to an ailing nervous system. Along the way, Peskin entertains with tales of the sometimes outlandish, often criticized, and forever devoted scientists who discovered it all.

Peskin never loses sight of the human impact of these conditions. Alzheimer's Disease is more than the gradual loss of a loved one; it can be a family's multigenerational curse. The proteins that abound in every cell of our bodies are not simply strings of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon; they are the building blocks of our personalities and relationships. A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain (Norton, 2022) is an unputdownable journey into the deepest mysteries of our brains.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Carl Erik Fisher, "The Urge: Our History of Addiction" (Penguin, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, since 2000, the United States has experienced over 700,000 deaths due to drug overdose. Addiction and substance use disorders are at the root of this enormous loss, and about half of people who struggle with substance use disorder will experience some mental health disorder during their life. And vice versa—many individuals struggling with mental health disorders also struggle with various forms of addiction.

Carl Erik Fisher, author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction (Penguin Press, 2022), has expertise in law, ethics, and policy related to psychiatry and neuroscience. His personal struggle with addiction in combination with his professional expertise converges to help us understand the forces that have shaped addiction throughout our history. On this episode of POTC, Carl and Yael discuss the social contingencies and historical contexts that lead to addiction, substance use disorder, and co-morbid mental health issues. Join us in this episode to learn more about commonly held beliefs about addiction, prescribers’ blind spots to certain medications, and much much more!

Yael Schonbrun is a licensed clinical psychologist who wears a number of professional hats: she a small private practice specializing in evidence-based relationship therapy, she’s an assistant professor at Brown University, and she writes for nonacademic audiences about working parenthood.

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In Science We Trust?: An insider Conversation with Health Policy Reporter, Fran Kritz

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Americans are deeply polarized on many issues, including science and medicine. Where once was widespread agreement, today the differences are sharp: on one hand, posters announce, “I believe in science!” and on the other hand, dramatic videos show ICU patients affirming their anti-vax beliefs with their final breaths.

What is going on?

Science is supposed to be based on reason, not faith. We get into a pile of metal – our cars – every day without fear because we trust the engineers, who built cars based on science. Science is characterized by observation, empirical findings, and replication. At least that’s the way it is supposed to be. Not long ago, Americans and most people around the world trusted the integrity of science. But that trust has been in decline for years, to our collective detriment.

Why did science lose so much of the public trust?

How does that loss relate to the decline of trust in other institutions?

What are the trust-related issues for minorities?

What can the scientific enterprise do to regain our trust?

Fran Kritz is a passionate journalist who has covered health and health policy for decades. Her reporting experience gives her a unique view of the changes in the relationship between the public and its medical and scientific experts. She has written for NPR, the Washington Post, Kaiser Health News, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il

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Rachel Pagones, "Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love" (Brevis, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Many in the global West have heard something about acupuncture as a treatment for pain relief; they may even have learned of its use in treating opioid addiction. But few know that, in the early 1970s, acupuncture was employed as a means of social and political revolution by Black, Latinx, and radical left-wing activists, inspired by the barefoot doctors of Mao Zedong's Communist revolution. Led by Mutulu Shakur, a charismatic member of the Republic of New Afrika, these young and idealistic people learned to apply acupuncture in the gritty confines of Lincoln Hospital, in the South Bronx of New York. The derelict public hospital, long known as "the Butcher Shop," became an unlikely source of energy and hope as the activists successfully helped people from the community recover from heroin addiction. The acupuncturists - some of them recovering from heroin addiction themselves - employed a combination of needling points in the ear with counseling and "political education"; for instance, taking clients to witness the trials of political prisoners (people imprisoned for their political beliefs or activities). By the late 1970s, the activists' radical approach led to their forced removal from Lincoln. But Shakur and others formed the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America (BAAANA) and founded a college to train a new generation of acupuncturists in the fine art of traditional Chinese medicine.

The fundamental principle was healthcare as a human right. The goal was the liberation of people oppressed by racism. The college had a short life; it was closed after an FBI raid in connection with the lethal armed robbery of a Brink's truck. Yet over three decades, the spirit of revolutionary acupuncture did not die, and neither did the issues that forced its rise, including drug addiction, racism, and social and health care inequities. Inspired by the radical acupuncturists of the 1970s, another group - the People's Organization of Community Acupuncture - founded the community acupuncture movement and took up the mantle of revolution. They, too, proclaim health care as a human right for people marginalized by society - and seek to give back that right through the art of inserting fine needles. Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press Limited, 2021) highlights a little-known intersection of acupuncture, leftist movements of the 1970s, and the global influence on the healthcare of Mao's Communist revolution - and shows how the legacy of that explosive meeting lives on today.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Retraction Watch: A Discussion with Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Listen to this interview of Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, cofounders of Retraction Watch. We talk about lots of things, retracting very few.

Ivan Oransky : "Accountability in science certainly does not come down to only retracting papers, because there are just lots of issues. And by the way, just to remind everyone, science is very much a human endeavor. It doesn't exist outside of humans doing the science. I mean, facts exist, and there is truth out there, and we'd very much appear to be getting close and closer to it — that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the actual process, like, how do we learn these things. How — as this podcast more generally looks at — how does knowledge get known. Basically, epistemology. But that requires human beings. It requires human beings interpreting, talking and listening, collaborating, and so that's one part of science that is really critical. Therefore, of course, the issue of accountability is multifactorial."

The Retraction Watch database is here. You might also be interested in this article: "Repeat Offenders: When Scientific Fraudsters Slip Through the Cracks." You can learn more about retraction here.

Watch Daniel edit your science here. Contact Daniel at writeyourresearch@gmail.com.

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Aubrey Clayton, "Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science" (Columbia UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

There is a logical flaw in the statistical methods used across experimental science. This fault is not a minor academic quibble: it underlies a reproducibility crisis now threatening entire disciplines. In an increasingly statistics-reliant society, this same deeply rooted error shapes decisions in medicine, law, and public policy with profound consequences. The foundation of the problem is a misunderstanding of probability and its role in making inferences from observations.

Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the seventeenth-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics. Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it. He highlights how influential nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures developed a statistical methodology they claimed was purely objective in order to silence critics of their political agendas, including eugenics.

Clayton provides a clear account of the mathematics and logic of probability, conveying complex concepts accessibly for readers interested in the statistical methods that frame our understanding of the world. He contends that we need to take a Bayesian approach--that is, to incorporate prior knowledge when reasoning with incomplete information--in order to resolve the crisis. Ranging across math, philosophy, and culture, Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science (Columbia UP, 2021) explains why something has gone wrong with how we use data--and how to fix it.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Liz P. Y. Chee, "Mao's Bestiary: Medicinal Animals and Modern China" (Duke UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Controversy over the medicinal uses of wild animals in China has erupted around the ethics and efficacy of animal-based drugs, the devastating effect of animal farming on wildlife conservation, and the propensity of these practices to foster zoonotic diseases. In Mao's Bestiary: Medicinal Animals and Modern China (Duke UP, 2021), Liz P. Y. Chee – Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute and Lecturer at Tembusu College, both at the National University of Singapore – traces the history of the use of medicinal animals in modern China. While animal parts and tissue have been used in Chinese medicine for centuries, Chee demonstrates that the early Communist state expanded and systematized their production and use to compensate for drug shortages, generate foreign investment in high-end animal medicines, and facilitate an ideological shift toward legitimating folk medicines. Among other topics, Chee investigates the craze for chicken blood therapy during the Cultural Revolution, the origins of deer antler farming under Mao and bear bile farming under Deng, and the crucial influence of the Soviet Union and North Korea on Chinese zootherapies. In the process, Chee shows Chinese medicine to be a realm of change rather than a timeless tradition, a hopeful conclusion given current efforts to reform its use of animals.

Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021.

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Karen Derris, "Storied Companions: Trauma, Cancer, and Finding Guides for Living in Buddhist Narratives" (Wisdom Publications, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Karen Derris—professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner—instinctually turned to books. By rereading ancient Buddhist stories with fresh questions and a new purpose in mind, she discovered evolving ways to make them immediate and real. Storied Companions interweaves Karen’s memoir of her lived experiences of trauma and terminal illness with stories from Buddhist literary traditions, sharing with the reader how she found ways to live fully even with the reality that she won’t live as long as she needs—or wants.

Using her knowledge, practice, and imagination, Karen illustrates how placing yourself within narratives can turn them from distant and static sources into companions, and from companions into guides. Reading along with her, you’ll realize how this practice of reading and these ancient narratives can help us come to terms with impermanence, develop empathy and compassion, and realize our own interconnectedness.

Honest, powerful, and insightful, Storied Companions: Trauma, Cancer, and Finding Guides for Living in Buddhist Narratives (Wisdom Publications, 2021) itself becomes an invaluable companion, guiding the reader to discover new ways of facing and experiencing life, death, and impermanence.

Natasha Heller is an associate professor of Chinese Religion and Buddhism at the University of Virginia. Find her on Twitter @nheller.

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Sydney A. Halpern, "Dangerous Medicine: The Story Behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis" (Yale UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 9 Feb 2022 05:00:00 +0000

From 1942 through 1972, American biomedical researchers deliberately infected people with hepatitis. Government-sponsored researchers were attempting to discover the basic features of the disease and the viruses causing it, and develop interventions that would quell recurring outbreaks. Drawing from extensive archival research and in-person interviews, Sydney Halpern traces the hepatitis program from its origins in World War II through its expansion during the initial Cold War years, to its demise in the early 1970s amid outcry over research abuse. The subjects in hepatitis studies were members of stigmatized groups--conscientious objectors, prison inmates, and developmentally disabled adults and children. Dangerous Medicine: The Story Behind Human Experiments with Hepatitis (Yale UP, 2021) reveals how researchers invoked military and scientific imperatives and the rhetoric of common good to win support for the experiments and access to potential recruits. Halpern examines consequences of participation for subjects' long-term health, and raises troubling questions about hazardous human experiments aimed at controlling today's epidemic diseases.

Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine.

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Rudolf Ramm, "Medical Jurisprudence and Rules of the Medical Profession [1942]" (Springer, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 8 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

This is the first translation in English of Rudolf Ramm’s textbook Ärztliche Rechts- und Standeskunde: Der Arzt als Gesundheitserzieher, translated and introduced by Melvin Wayne Cooper. Medical Jurisprudence and Rules of the Medical Profession (Springer, 2019) has been reported to be an influential manual for medical ethics in Nazi Germany and is commonly quoted as representing the Nazi viewpoint of the position and responsibilities of the physician in the National Socialist society. It interprets the National Socialist Weltanschauung, i.e. the National Socialist Philosophical Worldview, and makes explicit how this world view was to be actuated by the true National Socialist physician. It is a good text to attempt to see the National Socialist medical world view from the perspective of its practitioners. Ramm’s text could be viewed as being analogous to an Army Field Manual for the practicing National Socialist physician. It dictates the specific applications of the legal values and rules which emanate from this Weltanschauung to the developing medical students and practicing National Socialist physicians. According to some scholars Ramm’s book, which was written not only for students but also for postgraduates, and which received positive reviews in German medical journals, is the most important known historical source pertaining to the instruction of Nazi medical ethics. The 1942 edition sold out within a year, and a second edition published in 1943 included an extended appendix of medical laws. Through this book Ramm’s unique text is now available for an English language audience, thanks to the thorough translation and accessible introduction by Melvin Wayne Cooper.

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Ben Westhoff, "Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic" (Grove Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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Paul A. Offit, "You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation" (Basic Book, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Mon, 7 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Every medical decision—whether to have chemotherapy, an X-ray, or surgery—is a risk, no matter which way you choose. In You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation (Basic Book, 2021), physician Paul A. Offit argues that, from the first blood transfusions four hundred years ago to the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine, risk has been essential to the discovery of new treatments. More importantly, understanding the risks is crucial to whether, as a society or as individuals, we accept them.

Told in Offit’s vigorous and rigorous style, You Bet Your Life is an entertaining history of medicine. But it also lays bare the tortured relationships between intellectual breakthroughs, political realities, and human foibles. Our pandemic year has shown us, with its debates over lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, how easy it is to get everything wrong. You Bet Your Life is an essential read for getting the future a bit more right.

Sine Yaganoglu trained as a neuroscientist and bioengineer (PhD, ETH Zurich). She currently works in innovation management and diagnostics.

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Charles Vidich, "Germs at Bay: Politics, Public Health, and American Quarantine" (Praeger, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

"Quarantine, as an invention of man, is the most primitive and universal instrument of defense against contagious disease epidemics. Almost universally maligned or ignored by historians, quarantine is like an iceberg with 90 percent of its secrets hidden from view in inaccessible archives of the government."

In Germs at Bay: Politics, Public Health, and American Quarantine (Praeger/ABC-Clio, 2021), Charles Vidich explores the surprisingly rich history of quarantine in America. It's gone through five different stages and has, at times, played a key role in the American revolutionary war, the development of immigration policy, and even spawned its own code language to prevent panic from breaking out among the public. When quarantine works well, it can save lives -- but, as Vidich argues, a number of factors have to work in sync for it to be successful, and that is rarely the case.

This book is for anyone seeking to understand the challenges of controlling the spread of COVID-19, and will help readers internalize the lessons that are being demonstrated through the handling of this pandemic. Replete with primary data from years of archival exploration, Germs at Bay demonstrates the United States' long reliance on quarantine practice, and the political, social, and economic factors at all levels of government that have influenced--and been influenced by--them.

Christopher S. Rose is a social historian of medicine focusing on Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th century. He currently (spring 2022) teaches History at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas, and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Lina Zeldovich, "The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste Into Wealth and Health" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 3 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

The average person produces about four hundred pounds of excrement a year. More than seven billion people live on this planet. Holy crap!

Because of the diseases it spreads, we have learned to distance ourselves from our waste, but the long line of engineering marvels we've created to do so--from Roman sewage systems and medieval latrines to the immense, computerized treatment plants we use today--has also done considerable damage to the earth's ecology. Now scientists tell us: we've been wasting our waste. When recycled correctly, this resource, cheap and widely available, can be converted into a sustainable energy source, act as an organic fertilizer, provide effective medicinal therapy for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, and much more.

In The Other Dark Matter: The Science and Business of Turning Waste Into Wealth and Health (U Chicago Press, 2021), Lina Zeldovich documents the massive redistribution of nutrients and sanitation inequities across the globe. She profiles the pioneers of poop upcycling, from startups in African villages to innovators in American cities that convert sewage into fertilizer, biogas, crude oil, and even life-saving medicine. She breaks taboos surrounding sewage disposal and shows how hygienic waste repurposing can help battle climate change, reduce acid rain, and eliminate toxic algal blooms. Ultimately, she implores us to use our innate organic power for the greater good. Don't just sit there and let it go to waste.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Kenneth Anderson, "Strychnine and Gold: The Untold History of Addiction Treatment in the United States" (2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Wed, 2 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Kenneth Anderson is the author of Strychnine and Gold, a two-volume history of the “untold story of addiction treatment in the United States.” Anderson knows what he’s talking about when he discusses substance use and treatment–he holds multiple master’s degrees, including one in psychology and substance use disorders, and has worked in the field of addiction treatment for over twenty years as the founder and CEO of the HAMS Harm Reduction Network, the first worldwide harm reduction-based support group specifically for people who drink alcohol. The author of two previous books about alcohol harm reduction, Anderson is a regular presenter at the National Harm Reduction Conference, and has been a guest speaker at the Harlem Hospital Harm Reduction Program, the New School for Social Research, NYU, and the Drug Policy Conference, among other venues.

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Daniel Groll, "Conceiving People: Genetic Knowledge and the Ethics of Sperm and Egg Donation" (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Tue, 1 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In the United States, tens of thousands of children are conceived every year with donated gametes. When people decide to create a child with donated gametes, they’ll typically have to make a moral decision about whether the identity of the donor will be available to the resulting person. This quickly raises additional moral and even existential questions about the value of knowing about the circumstances of our own conception.

In Conceiving People: Genetic Knowledge and the Ethics of Sperm and Egg Donation (Oxford UP, 2021) Daniel Groll argues that because donor-conceived persons are likely to develop a significant and worthwhile interest in knowing the identity of their genetic progenitor, their intended parents have an obligation to use a non-anonymous donor.

Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

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Carla Yanni, "The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States" (U Minnesota Press, 2007)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Elaborately conceived, grandly constructed insane asylums—ranging in appearance from classical temples to Gothic castles—were once a common sight looming on the outskirts of American towns and cities. Many of these buildings were razed long ago, and those that remain stand as grim reminders of an often cruel system. For much of the nineteenth century, however, these asylums epitomized the widely held belief among doctors and social reformers that insanity was a curable disease and that environment—architecture in particular—was the most effective means of treatment.

In The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States (U Minnesota Press, 2007), Carla Yanni tells a compelling story of therapeutic design, from America’s earliest purpose—built institutions for the insane to the asylum construction frenzy in the second half of the century. At the center of Yanni’s inquiry is Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, a Pennsylvania-born Quaker, who in the 1840s devised a novel way to house the mentally diseased that emphasized segregation by severity of illness, ease of treatment and surveillance, and ventilation. After the Civil War, American architects designed Kirkbride-plan hospitals across the country.

Before the end of the century, interest in the Kirkbride plan had begun to decline. Many of the asylums had deteriorated into human warehouses, strengthening arguments against the monolithic structures advocated by Kirkbride. At the same time, the medical profession began embracing a more neurological approach to mental disease that considered architecture as largely irrelevant to its treatment.

Generously illustrated, The Architecture of Madness is a fresh and original look at the American medical establishment’s century-long preoccupation with therapeutic architecture as a way to cure social ills.

Bryan Toepfer, AIA, NCARB, CAPM is the Principal Architect for TOEPFER Architecture, PLLC, an Architecture firm specializing in Residential Architecture and Virtual Reality. He has authored two books, “Contractors CANNOT Build Your House,” and “Six Months Now, ARCHITECT for Life.” He is an Assistant Professor at Alfred State College and has served as the Director of Education for the AIA Rochester Board of Directors. Always eager to help anyone understand the world of Architecture, he can be reached by sending an email to btoepfer@toepferarchitecture.

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Christopher Kemp, "Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation" (Norton, 2022)

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Speaking Bones: Unearthing Ancient Stories of Illness and Disease

marshallpoe@gmail.com (Marshall Poe) — Fri, 21 Jan 2022 09:00:00 +0000

From mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue to chronic bacterial infections such as yaws, Southeast Asia is home to a wide range of tropical diseases. For a long time, the arrival in the region of these and other dangerous tropical diseases was believed to be connected to the introduction of agriculture. But how long have these diseases really been around for? How are they connected to the region’s fluctuating social and environmental conditions? And how have they impacted the human populations of Southeast Asia over time?

Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, bioarchaeologist Dr Melandri Vlok sheds light on the complex science of paleoepidemiology and its use of advanced analytical practices such as DNA ancestry, skeletal studies, and teeth calculus to uncover ancient stories of illness and disease. She explains that far from being mere remnants of the past, archaeological human remains can help us understand the evolution and spread of pathogens, and inform strategies to curb the spread of infectious diseases in human populations.

About Melandri Vlok:

Dr Melandri Vlok is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. Melandri specialises in palaeopathology/ bioarchaeology and researches the implications for migration and trade on the presence of infectious and nutritional diseases in past populations in Asia. Melandri's work, funded by grant bodies including National Geographic and the Royal Society of New Zealand, has involved the analysis of human skeletal remains from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand and the Philippines. She is also involved with repatriation efforts focused on returning Māori and Moriori ancestral remains to iwi and imi (tribes) in New Zealand.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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New Books in Medicine

Building Better Scientific Teams through Team Science and TeamMAPPS

Ben Westhoff ed.,"Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy" (﻿Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026)

Erin Maglaquel "Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body" (Astra House, 2026)

Ketil Slagstad, "Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer et al eds., "Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Janaka Jayawickrama and Jerome Wright, "Under the Gaze of Global Mental Health: A Critical Reflection" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

Leah Kim, "Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Linguistic Unease in Healthcare

Encore - Shai Lavi, "Bioethics and Biopolitics in Israel: Socio-legal, Political and Empirical Analysis" (Cambridge UP, 2019)

Emile Chabal, "The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Ting Hui Lau, "Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Mark Solms, "The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing" (Pegasus, 2026)

The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine with Jonathan Fuller

Thomas F. Rzeznik, "A Monument of Charity: St. Vincent’s Hospital and Catholic Health Care in New York City" (NYU Press, 2026)

Adam Barsouk, "Outsmarting Cancer: Risk Reduction and the Power of Prevention" (JHU Press, 2026)

Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe

Khiara Bridges, "Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans" (MIT Press, 2026)

Philippa Gander, "Life in Sync: The Science of Internal Clocks and How We’re Disrupting Them" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Sara Farhan, "Medical Education and the Making of Iraqi Doctors, 1869–1959" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

Nicholas Freudenberg, "Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since The 1960s" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Nyck Walsh, "Neurodivergent Somatics in Therapy: An Anti-Oppressive Model for Whole Person Care" (Norton, 2026)

Elizabeth Cotton, "UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health" (Policy Press, 2025)

Hilary R. Buxton, "Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body in First World War Britain" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity

Robert W. Snyder, "When the City Stopped: Stories from New York's Essential Workers" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Geraldine Fela, "Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia's AIDS Crisis" (UNSW Press, 2024)

Gloria Sibson Ayob, "The Concept of Emotional Disorder" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Matthew L. Reznicek, "Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale" (Liverpool UP, 2026)

Kristin LaFollette, "Rehumanizing People of the Past: Bioarchaeology, Medical Museums and Archives, and the Human Remains Trade" (SUNY Press, 2026)

Tara Mulder, "A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome" (U California Press, 2026)

Kira Ganga Kieffer, "Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Katie Batza, "AIDS in the Heartland: How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics" (UNC Press, 2025)

Empathy Takes Action: An Autistic Therapist on the Radical Work of Connection

William R. Brody, "Uncommon Sense: Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

Masud Husain, "Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain" (Canongate, 2025)

David Blumenthal and James A. Morone, "Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science" (Yale UP, 2026)

Jim Downs, "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine" (Harvard UP, 2023)

Matthew P. Romaniello, "Europe's Laboratory: Climate and Health in Eighteenth-Century Russia" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Karen O'Brien-Kop and Suzanne Newcombe eds., "Religion, Spirituality and Public Health" (British Academy, 2025)

Culturally Safe Healthcare: Addressing Racism and Rebuilding Trust with guest Dr Shingisai Chando

Lindsay Rae Smith Privette, "The Surgeon's Battle: How Medicine Won the Vicksburg Campaign and Changed the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2025)

Katherine Harvey, "The Medieval Guide to Healthy Living" (Reaktion, 2026)

Steffan Blayney, "Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body" (Activist Studies of Science, 2022)

Steffan Blayney, "Health and Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body" (Activist Studies of Science, 2022)

John Oakes, "The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without" (Avid Reader, 2024)

Susannah B. Mintz, "Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story" (Reaktion, 2026)

Maud Anne Bracke, "Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980 (Oxford UP, 2025)

Helen Redmond, "Liquid Handcuffs: Policing and Punishment in Methadone Clinics and the Future of Opioid Addiction Treatment" (North Atlantic Books, 2026)

Alan J. McComas, "Consciousness: The Road to Reductionism" (American Scientist, 2025)

Kola Tytler: Sneakerhead, Entrepreneur, and Medical Doctor

Hanna Pickard, "What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing But Cocaine?: A Philosophy of Addiction" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Ashely Alker, "99 Ways to Die: And How to Avoid Them" (St. Martin's Press, 2026)

Anne Mendelson, "Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood" (Columbia UP, 2023)

Vanessa Rampton, "Making Medical Progress: History of a Contested Idea" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Howard Alan Israel, "Nazi Anatomy Lessons: A Dissection of Evil" (Vallentine Mitchell, 2026)

Andreas Killen, "Nervous Systems: Brain Science in the Early Cold War" (Harper, 2023)

Stephen Bezruchka, "Born Sick in the USA: Improving the Health of a Nation" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Olivia Weisser, "The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Jonathan Gleason, "Field Guide to Falling Ill" (Yale UP, 2026)

Lesly-Marie Buer, "RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky" (Haymarket, 2020)

How Do We Treat Opioid Addiction?

Elizabeth Kelly Gray, "Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Bruno J. Strasser and Thomas Schlich, "The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air" (Yale UP, 2025)

Clare Griffin, "Mixing Medicines: The Global Drug Trade and Early Modern Russia" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)

Linda Eckert, "Enough: Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Alison Bashford, "Decoding the Hand: A History of Science, Medicine, and Magic" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023)

Kate Clancy, "Period: The Real Story of Menstruation" (Princeton UP, 2023)

Donna J. Drucker, "Fertility Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)

Mark Deuze, "Well-Being and Creative Careers: What Makes You Happy Can Also Make You Sick" (Intellect Books, 2025)

Joseph L Graves, "Why Black People Die Sooner: What Medicine Gets Wrong about Race and How to Fix It" (Columbia UP, 2025)

The Nursing Clio Editorial Collective, "The Nursing Clio Reader: Histories of Sex, Reproduction, and Justice" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

Daniel Skinner et al., "The City and the Hospital: The Paradox of Medically Overserved Communities" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

Jonathan S. Jones, "Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis" (UNC Press, 2025)

Taylor McCall, "The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

Deborah Carr, "Aging in America" (U California Press, 2023)

Karen Weingarten, "Pregnancy Test" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

David Kieran, "Signature Wounds: The Untold Story of the Military's Mental Health Crisis" (NYU Press, 2019)

Vania Smith-Oka, "Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

Ben Westhoff ed.,"Lives Interrupted: The Fentanyl Tragedy" (Arsenault Family Foundation, 2026)

Stacia Kalinoski, "Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

Judith Weisenfeld, "Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake" (NYU Press, 2025)

Daniel A. Rodriguez, "The Right to Live in Health: Medical Politics in Postindependence Havana" (U North Carolina Press, 2020)