History Essays

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A – J

Mariam Abdulghani

Saved by the spoonful: Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) new

Rebekah Burgess Abramovich

Elizabeth Fleischmann-Aschheim

William R. Albury

From changelings to extraterrestrials: depictions of autism in popular culture

Historical reflections on cause, responsibility and blame in medicine

Jacob Appel

The derailment of Franklin Pierce

Mohammad Hossein Azizi and Farzaneh Azizi

PDF Document A History of the Human Plague in Iran

Joyce Balls-Berry, Lea Dacy, and James Balls

“Heard It through the Grapevine”: The black barbershop as a source of health information

Jeremy Hugh Baron

PDF Document Professor Lord Lister, William Ernest Henley, and Oscar Wilde

PDF Document Sailors’ scurvy before and after James Lind – a reassessment
PDF Document How much should we know about our leaders’ health?

Emily Bethea

The US hospice movement: redressing modern medicine

David Blitzer, Alvise Guariento, and Robert M. Sade

The Lewis and Clark Expedition: medical ethics in uncharted territory

Julius P. Bonello

Trying to conceive: royal fertility issues in Renaissance times

Julius P. Bonello and Adam Awwad

A sporting end to Henry II, King of France

Jennifer Borst

Swaddling: Forever bound in controversy?

Anagha Brahmajosyula

A historical review of Crohn’s disease WIN ’23

Basil Brooke

A happy individual knows nothing

Stewart Cameron

Arthur Wohlmann and the Rotorua Health Spa

Philippe Campillo and Daniel Caballero

The influence of the text De Arte Gymnastica on the resurgence of medical gymnastics in Renaissance Italy: Girolamo Mercuriale (1530-1606)

Ninan Chacko

PDF Document Autonomy or Economy?

Enrique Chaves-Carballo

Death, disease, and discrimination during the construction of the Panama Canal (1904-1914)

Erin Connelly

“If it be a poor man”: medieval medical treatment for the rich and poor

Anita Cooke

A very Victorian drug

Michael Crossland

An abominable habit

Paul Dakin

John Wesley: amateur physician and health crusader

Nada Darwish and Alan Weber

Muslim women healers of the medieval and early modern Ottoman Empire

Joseph deBettencourt

History repeated: child abuse in the United States

Richard de Grijs

“Plague of the Sea, and the Spoyle of Mariners”—A brief history of fermented cabbage as antiscorbutic

Vincent P. de Luise

Medicean optics: an analysis of Raffaello’s Portrait of Pope Leo X and Two Cardinals

Jessica Douthwaite

Leaving nothing to the imagination: Casualties Union and post-war first aid training

George Dunea

PDF Document Porphyria Variegata, a disease of kings

The doctor and the baron

High drama in the scullery
Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor
Ivan Illich after almost half a century 
Agricola’s De re metallica: an early description of industrial diseases
Diane de Poitiers, a case of mammary narcissism
The assassination of President McKinley: death from traumatic gunshot pancreatitis?
Lucrezia Borgia—victim of her times
Science and medicine in Venice
Edward Gibbon’s decline and fall

Jack Effron

The battle of the vivisected dog

Eve Elliot

The Queen’s quickening: the phantom pregnancies of Mary I
Body language: The history of medical terminology WIN ’23

Claire Elliott

How not to make the consultation sexy

Michael Ellman

Mark Hanna’s knees and the Panama Canal

Patrick Fiddes and Paul A. Komesaroff

An emperor unclothed: the virtuous Osler

Paul G. Firth

Shackleton’s angel

Howard Fischer

Another look at the medical problems of Jean-Paul Marat: searching for a unitary diagnosis
Nazi doctors and medical eponyms
Creating a race of orphans: Lebensborn, the “spring of life” 
Syndrome K and the Fatebenefratelli Hospital
The Warsaw ghetto hunger study
When the FBI investigated William Carlos Williams
“The trial” of Dr. Spock
Andersonville, Georgia and Elmira, New York: When Hell was on Earth
A tangled web: stealing newborns in twentieth-century Spain
Fascist Italy: The Battle for Births
Going berserk
Dr. Alice Miller on Hitler’s childhood
International adoption of Greek “orphans”
Rapamycin: The “fountain of youth” from Easter Island?
The adenoid riots of 1906

Morris Fishbein

PDF Document Ludvig Hektoen: A biography and an appreciation

Ronald Fishman

Dirty, dark, dangerous: coal miners’ nystagmus

Patrick Flynn

Healing in the face of cultural devastation

James L. Franklin

PDF Document Chicago medicine and peptic ulcer disease

Eisenhower and Crohn’s Disease
In praise of swimming: from Benjamin Franklin to Oliver Sacks 
The three contraries of Benjamin Franklin: “the gout, the stone and not yet master of all my passions”
Guaiac and “the old Guaiacum test”
“My dear neoplasm:” Sigmund Freud’s oral cancer

Laurette Geldenhuys and Guillermo Quinonez

Samuel Clossy’s Observations: an unrecognized contribution to the origin of anatomical pathology

Charles Raymond Gill

Bank of England Medical Officers: from Napoleonic to modern times

Denis Gill

Doctors like eponymity

Ira D. Glick, Danielle Kamis, and Neil Eisenberg

Improving health and saving lives: the unusual relationship of religion on sports and health

F. Gonzalez-Crussi 

An “enematic” saga
Cranium: the symbolic powers of the skull
Of luxuriant manes and in praise of baldness

Kevis Goodman

“Uncertain disease”: the science of nostalgia

Magdalena Grassman and Eva Niklinska

The Polish White Cross – birthed on American soil to support Polish soldiers abroad

B. Herold Griffith

Two great Scots: John and William Hunter

Richard de Grijs

“All hands to dance and skylark!” – Shipboard dancing in the British Navy
Temporary insanity in tropical waters new

Lynsey Grosfield

Collections complete: experiential centres of learning

Stanley Gutiontov

Pig man: pigs in medicine from Galen to transgenic xenotransplantation

Timo Hannu

Thomas Bartholin’s consolation on the burning of his library

Bert Hansen

Medical history on the silver screen: Hollywood’s ten-minute films about medical heroes

Katherine Harvey

“Troubled in my eyes”: the risks of reading and writing

Laura D. Hirshbein

The boys’ club

Maureen Hirthler and Richard Hutchison

Jean-Françoise Champollion—Revisiting his illnesses and death WIN ’23

Barry I. Hoffbrand

Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians and their fees

Shabrina Jarrell

The Doctors’ Trial and the Nuremberg Code new

Liz Jones

The promise of a perfect smile

Paul G. Joseph

The value of achievement

Stewart Justman

Musical evenings on HMS Bounty


K – P

 

Robert M. Kaplan

Dictator on the couch: The only known psychological treatment of Adolf Hitler

Charles G. Kels

Political obfuscation and medical speculation

Mahek Khwaja

Healing and hedonism: a reevaluation of Hashishian legends of crime and indulgence

Lloyd Klein

General Robert E. Lee’s myocardial infarction: Did illness impact the Battle of Gettysburg?

Infectious diseases in the Civil War

Lloyd Klein and Eric Wittenberg

The decisive influence of malaria on the outcome of Grant’s Vicksburg campaign of 1863 WIN ’23

Adam Komorowski and Sang Ik Song

Doctorum Ecclesiae: the medical clerics of the Diocese of Bath and Wells, England
Episteme and translation in an annotated copy of the Canon of Medicine by Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna)

Stephen Kosnar

Welcome to The Jungle: the story of adopting two food safety laws

Biji T. Kurien

Looking back 175 years

K.N. Lai

Illness shapes the course of human events

Marshall A. Lichtman

The first effective chemotherapy for cancer

Philip R. Liebson

The sweating sickness in Tudor England: a plague of the Renaissance

Citizen Zinsser: portrait of a Renaissance man
The death of James Abram Garfield

The talented Dr. Cotton and other quacks

Kevin R. Loughlin

Joseph Warren: The forgotten founder
A 130-year-old medical cold case: Who was Jack the Ripper?
The search for Eisenhower’s adrenal tumor
The death of Zachary Taylor: The first presidential assassination or a bad bowl of cherries?
Samuel Mudd, MD: Good Samaritan or conspirator?
Teddy Roosevelt: Did a speech really save his life? 

Christopher Magoon

The Friends’ Ambulance Unit South Bank Clinic: the forgotten valor of the pacifists who stayed beyond the fight

Silvia Maina

Medical photography in the nineteenth century: from portraits to clinical photography

Constance Markey

Doctor in exile

Stephen Martin

Emblems and psychological medicine on the Sutton Hoo purse
Clinical signs in images of King Henry VII

Stephen Martin and Aidan Jones

Applause, Honours and Mortification: Admiral Pellew’s psychology of achievement in combatting slavery

S.E.S. Medina

The Philosophers’ Stone: History and myth

Juliana Menegakis

Queen Juana: the mad or the betrayed?

Maureen Miller

Consolidation: pneumonia and other pathologies on the Bellevue Hospital Autopsy

Lisa Mullenneaux

Choose your poison: the curious case of Dr. Waite

Jacquline Musgrave

Risking it all to save strangers—remembering Gisella Perl

Carlos G. Musso

PDF Document Auenbrugger, Corvisart and Laennec: Three Generations that Forged the Basis of Chest Examination

Carlos G. Musso and Paula Enz

PDF Document Ivan Pavlov: a pioneer researcher and fine human being

Avi Ohry

Winnie Ille Pu and Dr. Alexander Lenard WIN ’23

Seamus O’Mahony

The death of King George V

Ciara O’Neill

The pediatric pioneer and his finger

J.M.S. Pearce

Polymathy in decline?

The forgotten Darwin
The Lunar Society legacy

The Monros: a medical dynasty
Nicholas Culpeper and Herbal Medicine
Scurvy before James Lind
The legacy and maladies of Jonathan Swift
The X Club
The other Charles Darwin (1758-1778)
Science versus religion: the medieval disenchantment
Joseph Merrick, “The Elephant Man”
Jean-Paul Marat, physician and revolutionary 
St. Audrey Etheldrida
The “Ether Controversy”
The discoverers of aspirin 
Leeching and François-Joseph-Victor Broussais
Harvey Cushing and pituitary diseases
The medical exploits of Roald Dahl
The illness of King George III
What makes a polymath, a genius, or a man who knows everything?
George Redmayne Murray and “myxœdema” WIN ’23
From poppy to morphine and heroin new

Einar Perman

Samuel Tissot: patient compliance in the 18th century

Doctor Moore on 18th century medicine

Colin Phoon

The origins of pediatrics as a clinical and academic specialty in the United States
The remarkable Harriet Lane

Constantina Pitsillides

The rebirth of medicine

Susan Brunn Puett and J. David Puett

The Florentine Renaissance apothecary
Santa Margherita da Cortona new


R – Z

 

Suzanne Raga

       Anesthesia: culture, technology, and the rise of the surgeon
Jesús Ramírez-Bermúdez

       The monarch, the musician, and the medic

Ira Rezak
        Medicine and medals in 19th and 20th century France

Sarah Riedlinger, Dean Giustini, and Brenden Hursh

Part I: The impact of insulin on children with diabetes at Toronto Sick Kids in the 1920s

Part II:  The impact of insulin on children with diabetes at Toronto Sick Kids in the 1920s

Jack E. Riggs and David B. Watson

“Between false modesty … and conceit” – Sir Roger Bannister

Ann W. Robinson

Behind the pep: modern and postmodern perspectives in Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company’s advertising

Nicolas Roberto Robles

Saint John of God and the origins of nursing
Too many doctors: the death of Friedrich III
Clausewitz’s death: Cholera and melancholy
King Wamba’s poisoning with cytisine new
Philip the Handsome and the plague new

Tony Ryan

Mount Everest and a medical atlas 
Otology in late Victorian Ireland 

Anthony Ryan and Grace Neville

Le petit journal, clowns & children in hospital in Victorian London

Vittoria Sabatini

Hadrian and Frank’s sign new

Lynn Veach Sadler

The divine leaf: physick and the cause for physick

L. J. Sandlow

Oaths, codes, and charters in medicine over the ages

Shrestha Saraf, Sanjay Saraf, and Sudarshan Ramachandran

A look back at insulin

Saty Satya-Murti and Michael Engh

When needs trumped faith and dogma: early twentieth century Los Angeles women’s social conscience

Mariella Scerri

Wet nursing: a historical perspective

Erika Silvestri

Wilhelm Werner’s life unworthy of life: a voice from the Nazi Euthanasia Program

Anabelle S. Slingerland

The history of diabetes and insulin

Elizabeth A. J. Scott

The anatomist’s violin

Steve Server

Finding a “New Orientation” in Mexican Public Health: the Servicio Médico-Social

Julie Silverman

Dame Cicely Saunders and the foundation of the hospice movement

Armando Susmano

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s last illness

Mariel Tishma

“Some little show of nail”: the health of Anne Boleyn
“Rich man, poor man”: a history of lead poisoning
The history and mystery of cupping
Women in the medical profession: the trial of Jacoba Felicie de Almania
Frankincense and myrrh: medicinal resin worth more than gold 
Body and soul, balance and the Sibyl of the Rhine: the life and medicine of Saint Hildegard of Bingen 
“For their own sakes”: The Edinburgh Seven, Surgeon’s Hall Riot, and the fate of English medical women

Hugh Tunstall-Pedoe

Medical and other memories of the Cold War and its Iron Curtain

Jude Tunyi

The secrecy behind JFK’s autoimmune disease new

Katarina Villner

“And of scurvy the teeth fall out of them”

Sara Vogt

Diagnosing defectives: disability, gender and eugenics in the United States, 1910-1924

Daniel Vuillermin and Richard de Grijs

“Marvailous Cures”: sympathetic medicine connecting Europe and China

William H. Wehrmacher

Illuminating the third millennium with flashes of experience from the 20th century

George M. Weisz and Andrzej Grzybowski

Ludwik Fleck, physician in Lwow Ghetto

Isobel P. Williams

Captain Scott’s brave and loyal assistant: Petty Officer Edgar Evans

Andrew Williams and Frederick O’Dell

“Surrounded with many Mercies”: 270 years of patient advice

Philip K. Wilson

Weighing medical evidence on a historical scale

Andrew P.K. Wodrich

Plague epidemics and the evolution of language in England
Can headless martyrs really walk? The belief in cephalophores in the Middle Ages new

Frank A. Wollheim

Dr. Wedekind’s son: a Frank story

James R. Wright Jr.

Maligning Macleod and “Bettering” Best: the discovery of insulin as depicted in film before Michael Bliss

Melissa Yeo

Sea sick: Naval surgery and sanitation in eighteenth-century Britain new

Ping Yu & Chi Lu

A publicly funded health care system of China in 11th to 3rd century BC, as recorded in the Rites of Zhou

Richard Zhang

A Tale of Two Tonics: Sino-Western psychopharmaceutical modernity in Shanghai, 1936
American ginseng as an herbal emissary influencing Qing-American trade relations

Vignettes

Vignettes 

Is history good for you? Pros and cons
Origins of the Pap smear