The Trailblazer Who Ensured Women With Breast Cancer Had a Choice
Today, it is not uncommon when a woman diagnosed with breast cancer writes about her experiences. Illness memoirs, hardly only about breast cancer, are now a popular genre. However, this was not always the case. When New York City-based writer Babette Rosmond published her book The Invisible Worm 50 years ago, it was a daring act of […]
“Brian’s Song” at 50 Still Offers Lessons About Cancer for Today
When “Brian’s Song” made its debut as an ABC Movie of the Week in 1971, this tear-jerker about a professional football player who died of cancer became a surprisingly popular hit. Fifty years later, it has sunk into obscurity, along with “Brian Piccolo: A Short Season,” a book written by Jeannie Morris, a journalist and […]
Another Pragmatic Public Health Decision
There has been much criticism of the decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to let Covid-infected people who are feeling better to stop quarantining after five days and simply wear a mask. Most of the concern stems from the fact that up to 31% of people in this category will actually still […]
Good history means grappling with people’s complicated legacies
Besides the coronavirus pandemic and the election of Joe Biden as president, another topic made 2020 a dramatic year: the relentless attack on past heroes due to bad — and sometimes appalling — behaviors. From the tearing down of statues of Confederate soldiers to the removal of President Woodrow Wilson’s name from Princeton’s School of […]
Despite All the Backlash, Anti-Depressants Can Really Help
On The Empire of Depression by Jonathan Sadowsky Among the most important early works in the social history of medicine were histories of mental institutions. Here, in often great detail, historians wrote of seemingly barbaric procedures — such as insulin shock therapy, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and lobotomy — that had less to do with helping […]
Bruce Springsteen: The Latest Celebrity DWI
It was especially disappointing to read about Bruce Springsteen’s recent arrest for suspicion of driving while intoxicated (DWI). After all, the famous rocker, whose father was an alcoholic, has stated that he is not a heavy drinker. And his father’s sister was killed by a truck when she was a child. Yet Springsteen, according to the arresting […]
Michael J. Fox: The Impact of a Very Famous Patient
When some people learn that I wrote a scholarly book on celebrity illness, they are skeptical. After all, celebrities are associated with a certain superficiality and self-promotion. How much can we really learn about famous people who go public with as serious a topic as disease? Quite a lot, it turns out. From Lou Gehrig […]
Resisting Public Health Measures, Then and Now
We owe the “rounders” an apology. Rounders were tuberculosis patients in the early 20th century who left hospitals against medical advice when they felt better and later wound up at another hospital. While “making the rounds,” they potentially infected others with their disease. Health officials routinely criticized these individuals for endangering the public. One of […]
Fox, Bosk, and Rothman: An Appreciation of Three Scholars of Medicine
With all of the tumult surrounding the coronavirus and the upcoming presidential election, few people likely noticed that three important figures in bioethics, medical history, and medical sociology recently died within a month of one another. But for those of us who work in these fields, the deaths of Renée Fox, Charles Bosk, and David […]
Weighing Risks for My Patients at a Time of Covid-19
My patients continue to have medical problems that are not related to the coronavirus. But now, when I offer recommendations — especially those that possibly involve putting themselves at risk of contracting a Covid-19 infection — they often reject my advice. Of course, my patients have a point. Not only has the coronavirus killed hundreds […]