Women Historians of Medicine

Research Grant: Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine

hmprescott — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:59:28 +0000

The Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine will provide one $5000 grant to support travel, lodging, and incidental expenses for a flexible research period between July 1st 2012 – June 31st 2013. Foundation Fellowships are offered for research related to the history of women to be conducted at the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Preference will be given to projects that deal specifically with women physicians or other health workers or medical scientists, but proposals dealing with the history of women’s health issues may also be considered.

Manuscript collections which may be of special interest include the recently-opened Mary Ellen Avery Papers, the Leona Baumgartner Papers, and the Grete Bibring Papers

(find out more about our collections at
www.countway.harvard.edu/awm>).

Preference will be given to those who are using collections from the Center’s Archives for Women in Medicine, but research on the topic of women in medicine using other material from the Countway Library will be considered. Preference will also be given to applicants who live beyond commuting distance of the Countway, but all are encouraged to apply, including graduate students.

In return, the Foundation requests a one page report on the Fellow’s research experience, a copy of the final product (with the ability to post excerpts from the paper/project), and a photo and bio of the Fellow for web and newsletter announcements.

Application requirements

Applicants should submit a proposal (no more than two pages) outlining the subject and objectives of the research project, length of residence, historical materials to be used, and a project budget (including travel, lodging, and research expenses), along with a curriculum vitae and two letters of recommendation by April 1st, 2012. The fellowship proposal should demonstrate that the Countway Library has resources central to the research topic. The appointment will be announced by May 1st, 2012.

Applications should be submitted to:
Foundation Research Fellowships
Archives for Women in Medicine
Countway Library
10 Shattuck Street
Boston, MA 02115

For more information, visit:
https://www.countway.harvard.edu/menuNavigation/chom/fellowships/about.html#3

Postdoctoral Fellowship: Global History of Medicine

hmprescott — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:56:38 +0000

Global History of Medicine

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship 2012-14

Cogut Center for the Humanities and History Department Brown University

The Cogut Center and Department of History at Brown University invite
applications for a two-year Mellon post-doctoral fellowship in the Global
History of Medicine. The field is defined as any sub-set of the history of
medicine that explores connections or interactions in more than one region,
or that compares the history of medicine between two or more regions.
Applicants must have received their degrees from institutions other than
Brown within the last five (5) years. The successful candidate must show
exceptional scholarly promise and will be expected to teach one course a
semester to complement courses in the history of medicine already offered at
the university (these will be listed by the History Department and
cross-listed with the Cogut Center).

The Fellow will also be affiliated with the Cogut Center, where s/he will
participate in Center activities as appropriate to their research. Fellows
have the opportunity to interact with Brown faculty affiliated with the
Center, to participate in fellows’ seminars, lectures, and conferences, and
to participate in the planning of working groups and large-scale seminars on
various topics. The Center seeks to provide a stimulating scholarly
environment in which to pursue research, develop new interdisciplinary
connections, and network with others.

The appointment will begin on July 1, 2012, or as soon as possible
thereafter. Receipt of the Ph.D. is expected by the time of appointment.
Fellows receive stipends of $52,000 and $54,080 in their 1st and 2nd years,
respectively, plus standard fellows’ benefits and a $2,000 per year research
budget.

Interested candidates should send a letter of application, a curriculum
vitae, and three letters of reference, by February 3, 2012, to Prof Harold
J. Cook, Department of History, Box N, Brown University, Providence, RI
02912. Brown University is an EEO/AA employer. Women, minorities, and
international scholars are encouraged to apply.

Posted by Hal Cook harold_cook@brown.edu

NEH Seminar on Health and Disease in the Middle Ages

hmprescott — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:43:05 +0000

Applications are being sought for a five-week Seminar for College and University Teachers—“Health and Disease in the Middle Ages”—which is being held June 24 through July 28, 2012, in London, England. Part of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminars and Institutes program, the Seminar is sponsored by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) and will convene at the Wellcome Library, the world’s premier research center for medical history. This Seminar will gather together sixteen scholars (including up to two advanced graduate students) from across the disciplines interested in questions of health, disease, and disability in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean.

A stipend of $3900 is provided to cover travel and other expenses. The application deadline is 1 March 201. For further information (including a detailed description of the program and the syllabus), please go to the Seminar website: http://acmrs.org/healthanddisease2012.

Or write to us or call at:
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS)
4th Floor, Lattie F. Coor Hall
Arizona State University
P.O. Box 874402 Tempe, AZ 85287-4402
e-mail: healthanddisease2012@acmrs.org
Phone: 480.965.4661

Methodology for Gender in science,health & medicine, and engineering

hmprescott — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:16:55 +0000

Dear Colleagues, This is the latest methodology for gender in science, health & Medicine, and Engineering! Check it out. All best, Londa

launching at: http://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/

gendered innovations employ sex and gender analysis as a resource to create new knowledge and technology. The Gendered Innovations project:

1. Develops practical methods of sex and gender analysis for science, health & medicine, and engineering.

2. Provides case studies as concrete illustrations of how sex and gender analysis leads to innovation.

Three years in the making, the project was funded by Stanford University and the European Commission. It draws upon experts from across both the EU and the US.

Have a look!

All best,

Londa Schiebinger, John L. Hinds professor of the History of Science

Stanford University

Ineke Klinge, Associate Professor of Gender Medicine

Maastricht University

Martina Schraudner, Professor of Gender and Diversity in Organizations

Technical University; Strategic Research Planning, Fraunhofer, Berlin

Book Announcement: Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine

hmprescott — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:19:45 +0000

ello everyone,

Patricia Clark’s announcement of her new book last week prodded me to announce mine.
It came out this past July with Routledge Press. Here is the publisher’s link to it.

Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415602532/

Please order it for your university library! (Too expensive for an individual academic’s budget)

And if you wish to read further, here is an abstract:

This book takes a “disease biography” approach to trace the centuries-old history of a class of febrile disorders called “Warm diseases” (wenbing) in China. Although biomedicine does not largely recognize traditional disease classifications, focusing on them in Chinese medicine opens a new window on interpretive themes in medical and cultural history as well as on contemporary cultural studies of the history of science. This biography of a Chinese disease concept explores both the geographical imagination in Chinese medical thought over two thousand years of textual history and its intersection with pre-modern and modern epidemiology.

The Chinese geographic imagination is also the metageography of traditional China, such as the fundamental spatial binaries of northwest-southeast and north-south that informed how people organized their world. It also includes the major natural boundaries of mountain ranges and rivers, and even man made ones, such as the Great Wall. Culturally defined regions also fall under metageography—such as the names of the states of antiquity, the schematic five regions and eight winds of the classical period, or the later provinces and bureaucratic regions of imperial China. This metageography structured how Chinese understood the space they lived in, influenced how physicians treated their patients, and had a history as unique to it as does each disease concept.

This book thus focuses on conceptions of space in medical thought, complementing the better-known analysis of medical cosmology in terms of time. It relates this spatial imagination to the changing boundaries and internal divisions of empire as well as to the different social and clinical local environments within which doctors practiced. “Warm diseases” acquired their association with the geographical south early in imperial history, with epidemics in the wake of the devastating late Ming epidemics of the mid-seventeenth century, and began to be redefined as a distinct “current of learning” in the Qing period. The revisionist indigenous epidemiology that gradually developed out of this led to several “emergent traditions” of the nineteenth century, and became the foundation for twentieth-century Traditional Chinese Medicine disease classification that linked “Warm diseases” with both acute infections and the regional disorders of the Far South. This book thus links the bio
graphy of Warm Diseases and the Chinese geographical imagination to both an evolving older ethno-epidemiology and the processes of resistance to and accommodation with modern science in the twentieth century.

This book also shows how relevant medicine is to cultural and social historians of China by relating medical practices to both late imperial movements of cosmological criticism and social understandings of human variation based on regional rather than ethnic identity. The conclusion brings the story down to the present, showing how the continuing dialectic between local and universal made “Warm diseases” a category that constitutes both Traditional Chinese medicine’s response to germ theory in the twentieth century and a southern disease pattern that the world came to know in the form of SARS, the first newly emergent disease of the twenty-first century.

Currently Visiting Scholar, Max Plank Institute for the History of Science, Berlin http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/staff/members/mhanson

Website & publications: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/martahanson/research/publications.htm

Wellcome Collection Talk

hmprescott — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:18:31 +0000

Healthcare and housewifery
Wellcome Collection talk
06 October 2011, 19.00 – 20.30

How did edible remedies enable women to challenge male medical orthodoxy in early modern England?
While some people turned to medical practitioners in times of illness, many relied on homemade medicines and remedies. The pre-modern home was a major site for health-related activities and housewives, armed with treasured recipes and bottles of waters and syrups, acted as the first line of defence against the onslaught of sickness. Explore the contents of their precious recipe collections, and the role of women as household physicians in early modern England.
This event includes time for you to view unique manuscripts from the Wellcome Library’s special collections.
Speaker: Dr Elaine Leong, historian of early modern medicine and science, University of Cambridge.
This event is FREE. To book a ticket please click here.

This talk forms part of a wider series of autumn events at Wellcome Collection exploring the connections between food, health and life. To find out more please go to http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/events/recipes-and-remedies.aspx.

Book Announcement: A Cretan Healer’s Handbook

hmprescott — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:17:31 +0000

Hello – members might like to know that (at long last) my book on Greek
traditional medicine will be available from Ashgate in October. Below is
the publishers ‘blurb’ for *A Cretan Healer’s Handbook in the Byzantine
Tradition: text, translation and commentary*.

The book is the third volume in the series Medicine in the Medieval
Mediterranean – see:
http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=1269&lang=cy-GB

The link to my book is:
http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&title_id=7187&edition_id=10258&calcTitle=1

In 1930 the Cretan healer, Nikolaos Konstantinos Theodorakis of Meronas,
re-copied a notebook containing medical lore passed down through his
family over generations. The present volume offers an edition of this
notebook together with an English translation, the first of its kind. It
belongs to the genre of iatrosophia, practical handbooks dating mainly to
the 17th to 19th centuries which compiled healing wisdom, along with
snippets of agricultural, meteorological and veterinary advice, and
admixtures of religion, astrology and magic. Both fascinating and of
critical importance, iatrosophia allow glimpses of classical and Byzantine
medical sources and illustrate the vitality and resilience of Greek
traditional medical and botanical knowledge. From years spent exploring
local healing customs in Crete’s Amari region, Patricia Clark is able to
present Theodorakis’ iatrosophion against a rich historical, geographical
and social background. Introductory essays and explanatory notes to the
translation give context to the iatrosophion and provide the specialized
information necessary for a good understanding of the text. The abundant
materia medica of the notebook is treated in a substantial appendix. Each
animal, mineral, plant or product is provided with an overview of its
various names through the millennia. Such entries are not only a key to
understanding the Greek medical legacy, but also a vivid illustration of
its usage from antiquity to the present day.

Patricia A. Clark, paclark@uvic.ca

Proposed New Rules for Human Subject Research

hmprescott — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:55:20 +0000

U.S. proposes rule changes for human-subject research

By David Brown, Published: July 23 | proposed changes, the Common Rule would cover all research at institutions that get money from one of the 15 federal agencies, even studies paid for entirely by other sources, such as drug companies or private foundations. The effect would be to capture nearly all the biomedical experiments not already covered.

The rule would also require that a single “institutional review board” oversee a study that enrolls subjects at many hospitals and clinics (as is the case with most big clinical trials of drugs and procedures). Currently, each hospital’s board generally reviews the experimental protocol and makes suggestions — a process that researchers call burdensome and government overseers find confusing.

However, boards in foreign countries would still review proposals for research enrolling their own citizens because, according to an HHS document, “it might be difficult for an IRB in the U.S. to adequately evaluate local conditions in a foreign country that could play an important role on the ethical evaluation of the study.”

The proposal would also exempt from board review research that involves surveys and interviews that poses little or no risk to people — a change expected to be especially welcomed by social scientists. The revisions intend to make the consent forms that lay out a study’s risks and possible benefits clearer, shorter and more standardized.

Friday’s announcement acknowledges the revolution in computer information technology and in understanding the human genome that’ has marked the last 20 years of medical research.

A single Web site would be created where all “adverse events” from clinical studies would have to be reported. Today, notification of such problems is sent to various agencies on different schedules. Having a single database would not only be more efficient, it might increase the chance of catching rare and severe complications more quickly.

Volunteers in studies in which biological material, such as blood or tissue, is collected would be asked whether they agree to have the material used in future research. Today, archived blood can be studied long after collection as long as researchers strip it of information that identifies the donor. But the concept of “anonymity” has changed in an era of cheap and easy gene sequencing.

“This acknowledges that with today’s technology that biospecimens are inherently identifiable,” said Kathy Hudson, a deputy director at the NIH.

Asking permission to use their specimens — including their DNA — in future research “expresses a very high level of respect to those research participants,” she said.

Archives: Bodil Vibeke Jerslev Lund

hmprescott — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:18:47 +0000

With permission from Lise Oxenbøll Huggler, I’m sharing her very interesting memoir of her mother, Bodil Vibeke Jerslev Lund (April 30th 1919 – December 21st, 2004), a Danish organic
chemist and x-ray crystallographer.

On the 18th Century studies listserve, Lise mentioned her mother’s connection with Princeton University in the 1940s. That caught my eye because I live in Princeton and, among other things, work on New Jersey history of science and medicine. So I urged her to pass along the account with the Princeton University archivist and asked if I could make it available to the WHOM listserve.

Lise adds: “I sent my account to one of my mother’s former collegues, and he wrote back that he, so to speak, could hear my mother’s voice in the quotings.”

Enjoy!

Karen

cc: huggler@ruc.dk (Lise Huggler),
creager@Princeton.EDU (Angela Creager),
dlinke@princeton.edu (Daniel Linke),
spweldon@ou.edu (Stephen Weldon, Bibliographer
for the History of Science Society)

=========

6/6/2011

Hi Karen,

I hold the family archives and have been delving a bit, so here goes:

Mor (at some time I began to call her “mummy” – she simply hated that, so I stopped and therefore use the Danish equivalent), Bodil Vibeke Jerslev Lund (April 30th 1919 – December 21st, 2004) was the eldest child of Aage Jerslev, pharmacist in Fjerritslev, a small town in Northern Jutland, and Ella Jerslev (born Friis Sørensen), also educated as a pharmacist.

Mor herself graded as pharmacist in 1941. In 1942 she was appointed “amanuensis” (something like junior lecturer) at the organic chemistry department at The Danish School of Pharmacy, Copenhagen. However, due to WWII, the education of pharmacists was closed; instead the University of Copenhagen and other “academic” Schools in the Copenhagen area arranged series of lectures for people like her on hot topics in science. She attended some lectures on X-ray chrystallography – and was sold! This became her main area of scientific interest.

After the war she got a grant to study X-ray chrystallography at The University of Uppsala, Sweden, in 1946, and she stayed there for, I believe, about 1 year. (By the way, my parents were engaged shortly
before, and far (aka my father), Christian Oxenbøll Lund, engineer, in ca. 1947 went to Princeton to work, first as a trainee in Bells Laboratories and later at RCA.)

Mor was in 1948 awarded “H.C. Ørsteds rejselegat” (Ørsted founded the Pharmaceutical School), which made it possible for her to go to Oxford to do research under the auspices of Dorothy Hodgkin in
the autumn 1948. From England she went directly to Princeton. It was Dorothy Hodgkin who got her the invitation from the dean of Frick Chemical Laboratory, professor Hugh S. Taylor.

Here comes a bit of human/cultural interest: My parents had planned to get married immediately upon mor’s arrival at December 27th, 1948. Far seems to be have ignorant that a Wassermann test (for syphilis) was required. On the way to their marriage at the Danish Church in New York, they got a hitch hike, and mor was about to blurt out about all the fun about their retarded wedding, but far hushed her since it was prohibited by law to live together prior to marriage…

Well, in the middle of January 1949, she started to work at Princeton. January 31st she wrote a letter to the leader of the organic chemical laboratory at The Pharmaceutical School in
Copenhagen, professor Hans Baggesgaard Rasmussen describing her immediate impressions. I quote two passages, in my translation:

“Well, now I’m established at the University in Princeton, which seems to be very exceptional. Beforehand, I did know that there are only male students, but I did not know that there are absolutely no post graduate girls nor assistants at Frick; anyway, there aren’t, and whatever may have moved the leader, prof. Hugh S. Taylor to let me in, I can’t find out, really. Still, here I am, and I am pleased to be there. It is rather crowded, I share laboratory with a couple of infrared people and Dr. White, an Englishman and X-ray chrystallographer. And am under orders from assoc. prof Turkevich, who especially works on infrared spectroscopy. On the other hand, this is a “genuine” chemical lab, in contradistinction to Oxford that was purely chrystallografic, so I am doing very well.
Right now there is not very much X-ray apparatus, but they gather together, and apparently my appearance has given the enterprise a push, in any case a Weissenberg will
arrive in some weeks. I believe that it is characteristic for the place that prof. Taylor didn’t batter an eyelid when he heard that it costs $1200, but that he showed interest when he
asked about the space it occupies. When he heard that its volume is very limited, he brightened up considerably.”

From a letter to Dorothy Hodgkin, dated March 18th 1948, I quote:

“I started at the lab. here in Princeton in the middle of january, and at the first glance I was a little bit disappointed. The only X-ray camera, they have got, is a 114 mm diameter oscillation
camera, and though here is one X-ray tube, here is no further equipment, not even strips. However, they have, as you told me, plans to set up a better outfit, and it seems, that a Weissenberg
was ordered (Supper) soon after I came, and it is expected to arrive any day. Robertson-strips are also on their way, so in a few weeks working conditions will be quite nice.”

The strips mentioned were paper strips used to do Fourier syntheses, indispensable at that time, before computers took over, to work out molecule structures from X-ray photographies.

Well, the arrival of the Weissenberg camera was retarded due to a railway strike. Instead, she got opportunities to go to other universities in the US which had the facilities needed.

My parents went back to Denmark before July 1st 1948.

Mor went back to work at the Pharmaceutical School. In 1958 she defended the dr.phil. degree at the University of Copenhagen on the structure of oximes. Later that year, she was elected as professor in
organic chemistry.

Kindly regards,
Lise
–
Karen Reeds, PhD, FLS karen.reeds@verizon.net
Visiting Scholar, History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania
Princeton Research Forum http://www.princetonresearchforum.org/

Karen Reeds, A State of Health: New Jersey’s
Medical Heritage (Rutgers UP, 2001)

Job announcement: National Library of Medicine

hmprescott — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 18:24:20 +0000

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE

BETHESDA, MARYLAND

CHIEF, HISTORY OF MEDICINE DIVISION

Preliminary Announcement

The National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, will be recruiting for the position of Chief of the History of Medicine Division. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is the world’s largest medical library and a major organizational component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is responsible for collecting, preserving, and promoting the dissemination of information important to the progress of medicine and public health, both nationally and internationally. The History of Medicine Division (HMD), a major component of Library Operations, NLM, (1) selects, acquires, processes, preserves, and gives access to rare books, manuscripts, archives, images, historical audiovisuals, and electronic materials in the field of biomedicine; (2) promotes scholarship in the history of medicine using the NLM historical collections; (3) develops and promotes the use of K-12 curriculum materials associated with exhibitions; (4) develops, promotes, and travels exhibitions to libraries across America; and (5) develops and promotes original scholarship to support innovative and interactive onsite and online exhibition and digital programs. As Chief of the HMD, the incumbent directs and manages all activities of the Division.

This is a Supervisory Historian, GS-170-15, position with a salary range from $123,758 to $155,500 including locality pay per annum. For complete vacancy announcement information and application instructions, go to the NLM website at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/jobs/jobs.html. Applications must be received by 11:59 pm on the closing date of the announcement.

NIH IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER