Blog by Eileen Barrett About fifteen years ago, I attended a patient’s funeral mass and was touched to hear her family mention me in the eulogy. I felt honored and grateful, but also a little embarrassed because I had treated her and her family the way any of my colleagues would have during her care. […]
Latest articles
Metaphors in the Care of Pediatric Sexual Abuse Survivors
Blog by Aanya Ravichander Metaphors may be as necessary to illness as they are to literature, as comforting to the patient as his own bathrobe and slippers. —Anatole Broyard1 Studies show that patients communicate better with physicians who use metaphors.2 Metaphors not only subconsciously influence our thinking, they determine how we approach obstacles, conceptualize […]
Why Public Health Information Should Incorporate Socio-cultural Insights
Blog by Rui Liu and Susanne Lundin The COVID-19 pandemic brought up many public health challenges, including a lack of knowledge about how the public tackles health worries on an everyday basis. People were concerned about whether face masks would work, whether home remedies of various kinds could help, and about how to get vaccinated. […]
‘What’s a D and C Between Friends?’ Space, Intimacy and the Medicalisation of Unmotherhood in Modernist Literature
Article Summary by Kate Schnur This article explores the representations of different experiences of “unmotherhood” are represented in literature of the twentieth century. As this special issue explores the conditions of modernity that shape maternity, I ask how are the conditions of living outside of motherhood similarly shaped by those same conditions? I look to […]
“Our Culture is Changing Its Mind”: Assisted Dying and the Value of Old Age
Blog by James Aaron Green In a recent Times article, the columnist Matthew Parris argues that it is time to lift the taboo on assisted dying in cases of “extreme senescence.”1 This call for what amounts to voluntary euthanasia—for each person to recognise ‘“Your time is up”’—was “widely condemned” for its reductive, dehumanizing verdict upon […]
‘Mrs. Don’t Care’: Refusing Modern Black Motherhood in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand
Article Summary by Matty Hemming This essay offers an analysis of Nella Larsen’s Harlem Renaissance novel, Quicksand, within the context of Larsen’s career as a nurse. I consider what thinking about the author’s experience of public health nursing and nurse training in the early twentieth-century does to our understanding of her novel’s portrayal of reproductive […]
Smoothies, Bone Broth, and Fitspo: The Historicity of TikTok Postpartum Bounce-Back Culture
Article Summary by Bethany L. Johnson, Margaret M. Quinlan and Audrey Curry Have you ever implemented dietary, wellness or health advice from a TikTok video? You probably aren’t alone. In this study, we explore the health, wellness, and fitness content on TikTok with a focus on a particular phase in life—the postpartum period, and we […]
LivingBodiesObjects and the Tragedy at Bhopal
Podcast by Clare Barker and Lynn Wray The 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India, is recognised as the world’s worst industrial disaster. It has killed around 25,000 people to date, and the health of thousands of families in Bhopal continues to be affected by a groundwater supply contaminated by toxic chemicals from the now abandoned […]
Motherhood, Medicine and Magazines in Interwar Vienna: The Case of Die Mutter (The Mother, 1924–1926)
Article Summary by Alys X. George Whether we admit it or not, these days we all rely on “Doctor Google” for information about our bodies, health, and medical issues. But what did people do in the past? This article investigates how Austrian women in the 1920s accessed medical knowledge about (impending) motherhood. A grassroots network […]
From the Womb to the World: A Study of Pregnancy Narratives by Celebrity Moms in India
Article Summary by Pratyusha Pramanik and Ajit K Mishra This article delves into how celebrity moms in India are crafting their public images by sharing their pregnancy experiences publicly. Even though motherhood is highly glorified in India, women often have little control over their choice to become a mother and how to become a mother. […]