Survey: FDA History Office Website

The FDA History Office is competing for funding to update and expand its website. We want to boost its value to medical historians and their students, in particular. As a part of the process, we would like to hear about the kinds of FDA related materials and topics that would help historians of medicine in their research and teaching. If you have time to go to the website, look around, and return comments to me, it would certainly help us in shaping our proposal. Suzanne.Junod@fda.hhs.gov.

This is the general site.

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/default.htm

Calling your attention to this newly posted article on Clinical Trials, would more pieces such as this be useful in your research and teaching?

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/Overviews/ucm304485.htm?utm_campaign=Google2&utm_source=fdaSearch&utm_medium=website&utm_term=short%20history%20of%20clinical%20trials&utm_content=1

 

 

Feminst Currents at Frontiers

We at Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies are delighted to introduce our readers to a new interactive column, “Feminist Currents,” by Eileen Boris, Hull Professor and chair of the Women’s Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In the paragraph below Boris poses a question to our readers and all interested feminists, whether they find this column in Frontiers or on any number of postings in cyber space. All are invited to e-mail Frontiers their answers, which Boris will edit by synthesizing and summarizing. Her intent is to cook up a gumbo out of our responses: mixing, seasoning, and throwing in her own ingredients, as she enables us to engage in feminist dialectic.  Boris’s response will appear in our next spring issue along with another question posed by her. We see this exchange as a way to strengthen and enrich our feminist community. Or, in Boris’s words, “‘Feminist Currents’ is a place for feminists to debate pressing and not so pressing (sometimes whimsical but hopefully compelling) issues of the day, to share perspectives and thoughts, develop strategies, and connect scholarship and teaching to social justice.”

A Question:
As I write this question, the fate of health care reform is still up for grabs. We do not know what the final bill will look like or what the outcome will be—or whether getting the people’s business done will trump the misinformation and noise of this summer. What stakes do women have as women in the politics of health care? While scholars have uncovered the workings of gender in the shaping of medical research and delivery, here we want to collect personal experiences and prescriptions for change from feminist perspectives.

Replies:
You can respond in two different ways. You can give your answer on the Frontiers Facebook page . Or you can email your reflections, from 30 to 300 words, to frontiers@asu.edu no later than September 1, 2011. In your subject line please type “Feminist Currents.” Unless you notify us otherwise in your email, your response signifies that we may paraphrase your thoughts, quote directly from them, and use your name and affiliation.

FRONTIERS: A Journal of Women Studies
Arizona State University
PO Box 874302
Tempe, AZ 85287-4302
http://shprs.clas.asu.edu/frontiers

Query: Sanitation reform and public health

Any suggestions for secondary works on sanitation reform or public
health in western cities, or available primary sources (we could just
say, west of the Mississippi?), would be helpful. This is a very strong
senior history major, but we are talking about a one-semester, sitting in Walla Walla, WA, undergraduate sort of project — no archive trips possible.

Many thanks!

Nina

Query: Hospital Regulations

Dear Colleagues,

Does anyone know if southern hospitals in the twentieth century
generally had less regulations than hospitals in the North? Thanks in
advance for any information you may have.

Sincerely,

Simone

–
Simone M. Caron
Chair and Associate Professor of History
Wake Forest University
1834 Wake Forest Road
Winston-Salem, NC 27106
336 758-5556
336 758-6130 (fax)
caron@wfu.edu

Query: Exhibit of Influenza Epidemic

Greetings, Historians of Medicine,

My college assigns a book for all incoming students to read over the summer, and the library likes to create a display case exhibit on the theme of the book each year. This year’s book is Thomas Mullen’s _The Last Town on Earth_, which deals with flu, quarantine, etc — if you’re curious, here’s the PR blurb:

If you were scanning through the motley museum collection at the college, and requesting help from local historical sources, what sort of medical techniques would you hope to represent in some material
form? European or American, any vaguely early-20th-c suggestions are more than welcome.

Just answer off the top of your head, if an answer shows up there, I’ll promise *not* to cite you if you’re making an educated guess! I think my educated guesses are better than the librarian’s, but the WHOM collective’s are better than mine, especially when I don’t have time to refresh my memory.

Best wishes for the rest of August!

Nina

Nina E. Lerman
Associate Professor of History
Director, Maxey Museum
Whitman College
Walla Walla, WA 99362 USA
lermanne@whitman.edu