New Books in Medicine

In The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in France (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Michael Osborne offers a new way to think about and practice the history of colonial medicine. Eschewing pan-European or Anglo-centric models of the history of colonial medicine, Osborne’s book focuses on the centrality, transformations, and ultimate demise of naval medicine in France in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Motivating the central arguments and narrative of the book is a concern with place, places, and emplacement, and Osborne explores maritime medical practices and the ecology of disease in French provincial port cities, on ships, in prisons, in hospitals and schools, and beyond. The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in France pays special attention to how the study and conception of race, and its connection with health and disease, was formed and reformed in these settings. Readers with a special interest in the relationship between medicine and the military will find much to enjoy here, as will those who come to the book wanting to know more about the maritime history of diseases like Yellow Fever, lead poisoning, and Malaria. There’s also some wonderful storytelling here, including a fascinating account of a book-bomber in Chapter 4. It is a beautifully written account, and it should be required reading for those interested in the history of medicine and healing, of France, of the colonial medical past, and of place and locality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

In his new book, Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT Press, 2014), Amit Prasad, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Missouri, examines what he calls the “entangled histories of MRI” by studying the development of the technology in the United States, Britain and India. In this way, Prasad deconstructs West/non-West technological and cultural divisions, as well as elucidating Euro/West-centrism in the histories of technology. To do so, Prasad examines five key aspects of MRI research: invention, industrial development, market, history, and culture. In so doing, Prasad provides a critique of the situating of the origin of modern science in the West. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

It may seem silly to ask why we seek ecstasy. We seek it, of course, because it’s ECSTASY. We are evolved to want it. It’s our brain’s way of saying “Do this again and as often as possible.” But there’s more to it than that. For one thing, there are many ways to get to ecstasy, and some of them are very harmful: cutting, starving, and, of course, drug-taking. These things may render an ecstatic state, but they will also kill you. Moreover, many of the ecstasy-inducing activities and substances are powerfully addictive. It’s fine, for example, for most people to use alcohol to feel more relaxed or even to achieve an ecstatic state. But something on the order of 10% to 15% of people cannot safely use alcohol at all without become seriously addicted. And once they do, they usually descend into a profoundly un-ecstatic nightmare that often ends in death. According to Sharon K. Farber‘s Hungry for Ecstasy: Trauma, the Brain, and the Influence of the Sixties (Aronson, 2013), our desire for ecstasy is first and foremost a psychic defense that protects us against on-going or anticipated trauma. When reality (as we perceive it, which, of course, is not always or even often accurately) becomes “too much” for us, we seek refuge in altered states of consciousness. The most attractive of these, of course, is ecstasy. It makes everything frightening just “go away.” Sometimes, the ecstatic state appears spontaneously. More often, however, especially in our culture, it is consciously induced by self-harming and drug-taking. For most of us, this sort of self-medication “works.” For a large minority, however, it ends in addiction and death. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

The twentieth-century West witnessed a revolution in childbirth. Before that time, most women gave birth at home and were attended by family members and midwives. The process was usually terribly painful for the mother. Beginning in the nineteenth century, however, doctors started to “medicalize” childbirth. Physicians began to think of ways to ease the pain of childbirth. Two main options were explored. One–drugs–is quite familiar to us, for it is the primary tool used by doctors to make women comfortable during the birth process today. The other–“psychoprophylaxis”–has now passed into memory. The most famous form of psychoprophylaxis, and the subject of Paula A. Michaels’ excellent book Lamaze: An International History (Oxford University Press, 2014), is known as the “Lamaze method.” Its history is fascinating and surprising: born in the Soviet Union (or was it the United Kingdom?), it migrated to France, and then to much of Europe. It then jumped the Atlantic and became a quasi-political force in the United States (“natural childbirth”). And Lamaze is still with us, though in a form hard to recognize. Listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Abena Dove Osseo-Asare‘s wonderful new book is a thoughtful, provocative, and balanced account of the intersecting histories and practices of drug research in modern Ghana, South Africa, and Madagascar. Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2014) tells the stories of six plants, all sourced in African countries, that competing groups of plant specialists have tried to transform into pharmaceuticals since the 1880s. The leaves and roots and seeds of the book’s narrative collectively map the contours of a story that emerges from a crucial and germinal tension: on the one hand, much of the history of the plant sciences in these African spaces is motivated by a race for patents and scientific credit; at the same time, the mobility of plants across the borders of Osseo-Asare’s study has complicated efforts to assign priority of discovery to individuals or groups, and in fact challenges the very notion of a “traditional” or “indigenous” body of knowledge in the first place. Simultaneously a carefully situated ethnography and a history informed by a material archive that encompasses pages and petals, the book explores that tension in a critical assessment of what it means to talk about “African” science or “local” knowledge. Bitter Roots will deservedly have a wide audience in African studies, science studies, and the histories of medicine, pharmacy, and botany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

There are very few studies like the Harvard Grant Study. Started in 1938, it has been following its approximately 200 participants ever since, analyzing their physical and mental health and assessing which factors are correlated with healthy living and healthy aging. One of the psychiatrists of the study is George E. Vaillant, who was a young man in 1966 when he joined the research group, and has now written Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study (Harvard University Press, 2012). This fascinating book relates how the participants have changed over the course of their lifetimes (yes, Dr. Vaillant claims, people can change) and highlights the factors correlated with both happiness (e.g. warm childhoods, close relationships) and misery (e.g. alcoholism). Some of the findings are what you would expect, but this longitudinal study also holds some surprises, even as its participants reach their 90s and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

What is the interplay between the physical human body and the body politic? This question is at the heart of Ellen J. Amster‘s Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956 (University of Texas Press, 2013). In this pioneering, interdisciplinary study, Professor Amster explores the French campaign to colonize Morocco through medicine. It is through medicine and medical encounters that Amster reveals competing ideas of “scientific paradigm (cosmologies), knowledge systems (hygiene and medical theory), and the technologies of physical intervention (therapeutics)” (p. 2) between the colonizing French positivists and the Moroccan populace. Amster’s breadth of expertise in the fields of medical history, Moroccan/North African history, the history of French colonization, the study of Islam and Sufism, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy is equally matched to the depth in which she explores these topics throughout the six chapters of her work. Each chapter explores a unique encounter, or more often clash, between the French and the Moroccan. From Sufi saints in the first chapter to government hygiene initiatives in the fourth, Amster is meticulous and exhaustive with her source material. Even more distinctive is her use of oral narratives. Scholars interested in the role of women as medical practitioners will greatly benefit from Amster’s exploration of the qabla (midwife) in the fifth chapter. Gradually, Amster demonstrates that French attempts to “modernize” Morocco were in fact the very seeds that led to Moroccan ideas of independence and nationhood. This work will have a tremendous impact on many fields and hopefully give rise to further interdisciplinary work in the fields of Islam, North African and Moroccan history, and medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Sarah Franklin‘s new book is an exceptionally rich, focused yet wide-ranging, insightful account of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the worlds that it creates and inhabits. Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells, and the Future of Kinship (Duke University Press, 2013) treats IVF as a looking-glass in which can see not only ourselves, but also transformations in modern notions of biology, technology, and kinship. In addition to a fascinating ethnography of the various kinds of work (by artists, by scientists, by patients and doctors) at IVF and stem cell research facilities, readers will find insightful explorations of the work of Marx and Engels, Haraway, Plato, Strathern, Derrida, Firestone, along with a wide range of authors of feminist texts from the 1980s and after. It is a book full of hands, socks, pipettes, eggs, screens, organisms, and arguments, it is fascinating, and it was a great pleasure to talk with Sarah about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

In this episode, I talk with Carlo C. DiClemente, a Presidential Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland- Baltimore County, about his co-authored book, Substance Abuse Treatment and the Stages of Change: Selecting and Planning Interventions (Guilford Press, 2013). We examine the stages-of-change model (also known as the transtheoretical model) in behavioral change, particularly in substance abuse and drug addiction treatment. We discuss the complexity involved in substance abuse, and the need to consider stage status in effective treatment. We talk about relapse and its implications for individuals’ recovery trajectories. The importance of the individual client as the central mechanism of change is emphasized throughout our discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

In this episode, I sit down with Karen G. Weiss, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University, to talk about her book, Party School: Crime, Campus, and Community (Northeastern University Press, 2013). We discuss the subculture of the “party university,” and how such an environment normalizes and encourages extreme binge drinking and reckless partying. We talk about how extreme partying harms students as well as the larger community, and why students willingly put themselves (and others) at risk for victimization. We discuss why the party subculture appears so resistant to change, and why efforts from university personnel and law enforcement often appear futile. We also explore possible ways to transform the party subculture and address the problems it causes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Angela Creager‘s deeply researched and elegantly written new book is a must-read account of the history of science in twentieth-century America. Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine (University of Chicago Press, 2013) traces a history of radioisotopes as military and civilian objects, for experimentation and therapeutic use, from the 1930s through the late twentieth century. Creager follows the emergence of a political and economic market for radioisotopes, looking carefully at their use as controversial political instruments, as representations of the benefits of atomic energy for US citizens, and as commodities. After six chapters that trace these broader contexts of the production and circulation of radioisotopes, the second half of the book offers a set of fascinating case studies that explore representative users and uses of the technology in biochemistry, molecular biology, medicine, and ecology. Aspects of the story touch on the history of scientific and medical research using human and animal subjects, the early history of radiation therapy, and the history of ecology and environmental science. Not only is it a historiographically important and meticulously crafted work based on exhaustive research, but it’s also a great set of stories. The pages of Life Atomic are full of guinea pigs, scientific vaudeville, and stories and characters from many different fields of the modern life sciences, expertly weaving them together into a compelling set of arguments. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Addiction has recently emerged as an object of anthropological inquiry. In a wonderful, focused volume of ethnographies of addiction in a wide range of contexts, Eugene Raikhel and William Garriott have curated a collection of essays that each follow a particular “addiction trajectory.” Addiction Trajectories (Duke University Press, 2013) includes studies that trace epistemic, therapeutic, experiential and experimental transformations across time and space. Collectively, they blend approaches from ethnography and science studies. Readers who are interested in historical ontologies, the concretion of new diseases and illnesses, the history of pharmaceutics and drug use, local styles of medical and clinical reasoning, the politics of healing, and the spaces of experimentation will find much of interest here. Eugene and Will generously made time to talk with me about the volume itself the workshop with which it began, and their own fascinating contributions on addiction medicine in Russia and methamphetamine addiction in rural West Virginia. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Two main questions frame Sienna R. Craig‘s beautifully written and carefully argued new book about Tibetan medical practices and cultures: How is efficacy determined, and what is at stake in those determinations?Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine (University of California Press, 2012)guides readers through the ecologies of mind, body, and society within which Sowa Rigpa is practiced, understood, and transformed from rural Nepal to New York City. The first two chapters each chronicle a day spent in one of the main ethnographic sites featured in the book: a rural clinic and school in Mustang, Nepal; and a major medical institution in urban China. After this grounding in the wide varieties of experience that might collectively fall under the category of “Tibetan medicine,” the following chapters explore how associated people, objects, and practices engage with the opportunities and challenges posed by encounters in very different contexts. These contexts range from warehouses meant to prepare drugs for the global pharmaceutical market, to government-supported medical facilities in Nepal and China, to dissertation defenses, to private clinics in a variety of towns and cities, to fields in which medicinal drugs grow wild, to randomized clinical drug trials. It is a fascinating story, a moving and engaging narrative, and a pleasure to read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Between WWII and the 1970s, prominent researchers from various fields established and defended a view that emotions are integral to the self, and that a mother’s love determines an individual’s emotional development. In Marga Vicedo, The Nature and Nurture of Love: From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America (University of Chicago Press, 2013), Marga Vicedo explores the emergence of the science of children’s emotional needs in the twentieth century. Masterfully bringing together approaches from the history and philosophy of the biological sciences, Vicedo’s book focuses on British psychoanalyst and psychiatrist John Bowlby (1907-1990), whose ethological work became one of the most influential and controversial psychological theories of the 20th century. Vicedo uses the story of Bowlby’s science to explore a broader modern history of work on animal and human behavior that includes Konrad Lorenz, Anna Freud, Benjamin Spock, and Niko Tinbergen, among others. Along the way, The Nature & Nurture of Love chronicles the emergence of a kind of anthropomorphic material culture of the human sciences, inhabiting its story with a fascinating cast of robots, dolls, geese, monkeys, and stuffed animals, as well as humans. It is a fascinating and gripping trans-disciplinary story and an absolute pleasure to read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Free will is essential to our understanding of human nature. We are masters of our own fate. We chart our own course. We take our own road. In short, we decide what we are going to do. There seems little doubt that free will is a reality. But how, psychologically and physiologically, does it work? How does free will arise out of what is essentially a biological machine? How do we decide? That’s the question at the center of A. David Redish‘s fascinating The Mind Within the Brain: How We Made Decisions and How Those Decisions Go Wrong (Oxford UP, 2013). His elegant answer is that on the neurological level, we have a number of discrete decision-making mechanisms. They range (though there is no real order or hierarchy) from completely unconscious and mechanical, as when experience a nerve reflex, to completely explicit and flexible, as when we deliberate about options and choose one. Especially interesting is David’s discussion of what happens when one of these decision-making mechanisms breaks and goes into “failure mode,” namely, the manifestation of common psychological problems such as consistent irrationality, addictive behaviors, and PTSD. Listen in to our fascinating discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

If you think about it, pretty much everything has a history insofar as everything exists in time. Historians, however, usually limit themselves to the history of humans and the things humans make. Occasionally, of course, they make forays into the history of animals, the environment and even the universe (see “Big History”), but these excursions are exceptions to the all-human rule. In Virus Hunt: The Search for the Origin of HIV (Oxford UP, 2013), Dorothy H. Crawford–a biologist–breaks new historiographical ground by tracing the history of a virus, namely HIV. She is, naturally, interested in the tragic human story of HIV and AIDS. But her focus is on the virus itself. Where and when, she asks, was HIV born? In what populations did it live before it jumped to humans? And, most importantly, where and when did it jump to humans? Using an array of sophisticated tools, a group of biologists-cum-detectives were able to give credible answers to these historical questions. Crawford tells their story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

For a patient choosing among available forms of healing in the medical marketplace of mid-20th century South Korea, the process was akin to shopping. In Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health, and Nation-Building in South Korea Since 1945 (Stanford University Press, 2013), John DiMoia explores emergence of that marketplace in the context of a confluence between biomedicine, bodies, and the nation in South Korea since the last half of the 20th century. In a series of case studies that range from quarantine efforts after the arrival of the U.S. Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) to plastic surgery in today’s South Korea, DiMoia traces a number of themes through his history of biomedicine and healing: the gradual transition from German/Japanese academic medicine to American and international models of medicine; a corresponding embracing of diverse forms of bodily intervention; and the ultimate adoption of private models of health care in modern South Korea. We meet several fascinating characters in the course of the narrative, from practitioners of traditional Korean medicine, to groundbreaking vascular surgeons, to men and women whose bodies became the testing grounds for reform in birth control technologies. DiMoia’s account introduces public health practices that included spraying of human bodies with DDT, surgical practices that transformed the spaces and bodies of medicine mid-20th century South Korea, and antiparasitic practices that saw thousands of children bring stool samples to school. It is a rich account of a hybrid medical ecology with moments that would collectively make up a riveting fictional novel if they weren’t all true. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Children born in the 1970s and 1980s received just a handful of vaccinations: measles, rubella, and a few others. Beginning the 1990s, the numbers of mandated vaccines exploded, so that today a fully-vaccinated child might receive almost three dozen vaccinations by the time he or she turns six. Worries over vaccinations are nothing new, but in recent years they have reached a new state of intensity. Supposed links between vaccinations and the spike in diagnoses of autism have generated a well-publicized anti-vaccination movement. Mark A. Largent addresses the roots of this controversy in Vaccine: The Debate in Modern America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), a book that is as refreshing for its accessible, readable style as it is for the nuanced, dispassionate, and fair manner it treats the players in this debate, from health care professionals to Jenny McCarthy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Virginia Gray, David Lowery, and Jennifer Benz are the authors of Interest Group$ and Health Care Reform Across the United State$ (Georgetown University Press, 2013). Gray is Distinguished Professor of Political Science, UNC, Chapel Hill, Lowery is Professor of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University, and Jennifer Benz is a Senior Researcher at NORC at the University of Chicago. In the wake of the passage of national health care reform (Affordable Care Act (ACA)), we may all have overlooked the plethora of policy making at the state level. Why is it that the ACA took over 50 years to pass, yet states have regularly changed their own health care regulations? This book investigates how state policy makers have reformed health care laws from 1988-2002 with a focus on: market controls; mandated employee coverage; coverage for needy families; and single-payer systems. As the title suggests, they pay particular attention to the role interest groups have played in reform. The authors end the book with a discussion of the implementation of the ACA by states. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Rachel Prentice‘s new book blends methodological approaches from science studies and anthropology to produce a riveting account of anatomical and surgical education in twenty-first century North America. Bodies in Formation: An Ethnography of Anatomy and Surgery Education (Duke University Press, 2013) carefully considers three field sites in which physical interaction is crucial to the development of medical knowledge: anatomy labs in which students dissect human cadavers, operating rooms that serve as spaces for surgical training, and design labs that are creating the body as a “computational object” at the same time that they produce technologies for simulating surgery and dissection or virtually enabling it from afar. Prentice offers a fascinating window into the aspects of medical education that produce the technical, ethical, and affective modes of the medical and surgical self. It is a sensorily-grounded, embodied ethnography that considers its bodies – of cadavers, of surgeons, of computer programs, of students, of patients – simultaneously as material entities and active participants in the narrative. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Like it or not, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) has an enormous influence in deciding what qualifies as a mental health disorder in the United States and beyond. The each revision of the DSM directly influences people’s lives, guides treatment, and has important legal and economic consequences. In her book, The Making of DSM-III: A Diagnostic Manual’s Conquest of American Psychiatry (Oxford University Press, 2013), history professor Hannah S. Decker explores the history of the important third revision of DSM. DSM-III was revolutionary at the time because it changed the field of psychiatry from a generally psychoanalytic approach to a more symptom-based, medical model of diagnosis. Through the use of archival sources and interviews with people who were involved in its creation, Dr. Decker paints a picture of the DSM-III in the 1970s. She also explores the landscape of psychiatry before, during, and after the creation of DSM-III. Dr. Decker’s work is important in understanding the context and controversies that surround the DSM, which continue to this day with the recent release of DSM-V. This book will be of interest to people interested in the history of medicine and psychiatry, clinicians and researchers in any mental health discipline, and anyone who is interested in ongoing debates about the field of psychiatry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

T. J. Hinrichs and Linda L. Barnes have produced a volume that will change the way we learn about and teach the history of health and healing in China and beyond. Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History (Harvard University Press, 2012) collects ten chronologically-organized chapters that each explore practices of health and healing in a specific historical period, ranging from oracle bones in the pre-Han period to modern McDonald’s restaurant décor. Each chapter is supplemented by short vignettes that introduce noteworthy texts, important concepts, or examples relevant to and contemporary with the material in the chapter. Taken together, the resulting volume can be used and enjoyed by a wide range of readers, from instructors and students in a university classroom to interested browsers on a Sunday afternoon in the park. It’s a phenomenal accomplishment and makes for an enjoyable and compelling read. In the course of our conversation, we talked about a wide range of issues germane to the volume, the research and writing of each of the editors, and the wider field of medicine and healing in China. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Dorothea was a widow who treated Martin Luther, the Duke of Saxony, and throngs of poor peasants with her medicinal waters. Anna was the powerful wife of the Elector of Saxony who favored testing medical remedies on others before using them on her friends and family. Elisabeth was an invalid patient whose preferred treatments included topical remedies and ministrations from the “almighty physician,” but never “the smear.” We meet these three lively women in the pages of Alisha Rankin‘s wonderful new book on the medical practices of noblewomen from the last decades of the sixteenth century. Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany (University of Chicago Press, 2013) considers the intellectual and social contexts of healing practices in early modern Germany, focusing on elite women who spent much of their adult lives devising and administering medicinal remedies. The book argues that noblewomen were celebrated as healers not despite their gender, but because of it, offering a useful corrective to the historiography of gender and the sciences in early modernity. Rankin situates three in-depth case studies within a careful exploration of some of the main factors that enabled the kind of success that noblewomen-healers like Dorothea of Mansfield and Anna of Saxony enjoyed in sixteenth-century Germany: more opportunities for information exchange through local communities and wider epistolary networks; an increasing focus on empirical knowledge in its many forms; and the foundation role of written medicinal recipes as a form of kunst. It is a thoughtfully written and very clearly argued work that informs many aspects of the history of gender, of science and medicine, and of practical epistemologies. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

It is common today to treat depression and other mental disorders as concrete illnesses – akin to having pneumonia or the flu. In fact, being prescribed a pill after complaining to your family doctor about feeling depressed is a common occurrence. But are mental disorders really illnesses the way that a sinus infection is? Gary Greenberg, in his fascinating new book The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry (Blue Rider Press, 2013), argues that the answer is no. The DSM, which categorizes and defines mental disorders, is socially constructed, he claims, and changes over time. Homosexuality, for example, was considered an illness until 1973, and Asperger’s, now widely considered by the public to be a real condition (which many identify with), may no longer be in the newest revision of the DSM. Greenberg is not indicting all psychiatry or arguing that people should not take antidepressants, but he is criticizing the assumption that mental suffering is the same as physical suffering, arguing that mental anguish is often a multi-layered problem that cannot be fixed by a pill or explained by brain malfunction (though we are often led to believe that this is the case). Allowing the DSM to dictate reality as if it were a scientifically grounded book is a mistake, and we should be more aware of the haphazard way in which it was assembled. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

“This is a history of promises.”So begins Nathaniel Comfort‘s gripping and beautifully written new book on the relationships between and entanglements of medical genetic and eugenics in the history of the twentieth century. Based on a rich documentary and oral history archive, The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine (Yale University Press, 2012) reframes the histories of early and contemporary human genetics. Rather than treating eugenics as “a contaminant of good, honest biomedicine,” the book shows that early human genetics had many of the same basic goals – human improvement and the relief of suffering – as genetic medicine today. At the same time, contemporary genetic medicine emerges as much less benign than it has often been depicted. All of this is accomplished through a sensitive historical tracing of two major approaches to understanding human heredity through the twentieth century: a Galtonian approach characterized by a concern with quantification, public health, and populations; and a Garrodian approach characterized by an interest in conceptualizing the human as individual, and in synthesizing heredity with other forms of knowledge. As we follow these threads along with Comfort, he introduces us to a bookful of colorful, vibrant characters from the history of medical genetics: the idealistic inventor of a “Gumption Reviver,” the sanitarium-operator who was fond of prescribing yogurt-enemas, and the medical geneticist with a talent for boogie-woogie piano, among others. These figures are embedded in an exceptionally carefully-wrought narrative of the spaces, practices, and events by which medicine became genetic, genetics became molecular, and molecules made the engineering of humanity possible in a new way. In the course of our discussion, we talked about the importance, for Comfort, of paying careful attention to elements of the writer’s craft when composing a historical work. The John McPhee essay on narrative structure that was mentioned in that part of the interview can be found here (A subscription to the New Yorker is required to read the full piece.) The Oral History of Human Genetics Project can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Identical twins, separated at birth, raised in different families, and reunited in adulthood. In 1979, psychology researchers in Minnesota found some twins who had been reunited after a lifetime of separation, and brought them in to participate in a research study. And so began the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart. At the time, psychology leaned heavily toward the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate. The twins provided unique information about the role of genes and environment in human development. Over the twenty years of the study, massive amounts of data about the twin pairs were collected about intelligence, personality, medical traits, and many other aspects of development. The results changed our understanding of how we become who we are in adulthood. In her book, Born Together-Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study (Harvard University Press, 2012), Dr. Nancy Segal describes the history of the controversial Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, as well as the results of the study and case examples of these fascinating twin pairs. Her book recently won the prestigious William James Book Award from The American Psychological Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Before the Second World War, very few Americans visited psychologists or psychiatrists. Today, millions and millions of Americans do. How did seeing a “shrink” become, quite suddenly, a typical part of the “American Experience?” In his fascinating book Shrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America (Nebraska University Press, 2013), Lawrence R. Samuel examines the arrival, remarkable growth, and transformation of psychoanalysis in the United States. As Samuel shows, Americans have a kind of love-hate relationship with their “shrinks”: sometimes they love them and sometimes they loath them. The “shrinks” seem to know that their clients are fickle, and so they “re-brand” their technique with some regularity. Sometimes it’s “analysis,” sometimes it’s “therapy,” sometimes it’s just “counseling.” But, regardless of what it’s called, it’s always some variation on the “talking cure” and it can always be traced to Freud. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

If you have studied neuroscience, memory, or even basic psychology, it is likely that you have heard of the famous amnesic patient Henry Molaison, or “H.M.” as he was known during his lifetime. In 1953, Henry underwent an experimental brain surgery in hopes of finding a cure for his severe epilepsy. As a result, he developed a severe case of amnesia. Unable to encode new memories into long-term storage, Henry lived constantly in the present, unable to recall events that had happened even minutes before. In the 55 years between the surgery and his death in 2008, Henry became the most famous and comprehensively studied patient in neuroscience. Decades of research on Henry’s cognitive abilities provided a lasting contribution to neuroscience, and research on his postmortem brain is continuing into the future. Perhaps no one knew the case of H.M. better than Dr. Suzanne Corkin. In this interview, Dr. Corkin will discuss her new book, Permanent Present Tense: The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, H.M. (Basic Books, 2013) Her decades of research with Henry provided a major contribution to our understanding of various systems of memory and the brain, and the book tells the incredible tale of Henry the person, “H.M.” the willing research participant, and the complexity of human memory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

There are pigeons, cats, and Martians here. There are CT scanners, dentures, computers large enough to fill rooms, war games, and neural networks. In Biomedical Computing: Digitizing Life in the United States (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), Joe November mobilizes this ecology of instruments and objects, people and programs, in a story that maps out the early years of the introduction of computers to biology and medicine from 1955 to 1965. As computing technology was gradually integrated into different spaces of biomedicine that were characterized by agents with very different agendas (a set of processes not without significant contestation), biomedicine and computing transformed one another. Life itself was changed as a result, as the objects of biomedical computing were translated into the kinds of system-entities that computers could describe. The historian of technology who reads November’s book will find fascinating stories of machines like LINC, ENIAC, and UNIVAC. The historian of science will find accounts of the ways that military funding shaped the computerization of biomedicine, windows into the mid-century work supported by the NIH, stories of the transformation of diagnostic medicine in the US, and chapters from the history of crystallography and molecular biology. The historian of networks and computing will find analyses of the importance of operations research, expert systems, and transdisciplinary research practices to the work of some of the central figures in the history of the computational sciences. In addition to all of this, November’s book can also be read as a history of the modern personal computer. (There are also men in RNA-themed neckties sprinkled throughout the early part of the story.) Enjoy the interview, and imagine as you listen that you’re here with me at the National Humanities Center, Skyping with Joe as a thunderstorm booms overhead, rain falls loudly outside the window, and brilliant humanities scholars share excited conversation about their work outside the door. It was a special afternoon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Every hundred years or so, the Supreme Court decides a question with truly vast economic implications. In 2012 such a decision was handed down, in a case that had the potential to affect the economy in the near term more than any court case ever had. The substance of the case, and its lasting legal implications, are the subject of Andrew Koppelman’s The Tough Luck Constitution and the Assault on Health Care Reform (Oxford University Press, 2012). The plaintiffs in the “Obamacare” case, NFIB v. Sebelius, had political and legal goals. Politically, they failed, because Justice Roberts was not willing to undo the huge Congressional effort to reform the country’s health-insurance system. But legally, in terms of doctrine, the litigation was a smashing success, altering principles that reach back hundreds of years. Andrew Koppelman has written a superb layman’s guide to what was at stake, legally, in last year’s case — and what the plaintiffs accomplished. They persuaded five justices of the Supreme Court to call into question both of the Court’s most economically significant previous decisions, one from the early days of the Republic, and one from the New Deal. In 1819, the Court agreed unanimously that the federal government could solve national problems: “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adopted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.” (James Marshall) In 1935, the vote on a similar question was five to four: “Although activities may be intrastate in character when separately considered, if they have such a close and substantial relation to interstate commerce that their control is essential or appropriate to protect that commerce from burdens and obstructions, Congress cannot be denied the power to exercise that control.” (Charles Evan Hughes) But the dissent in 1935 took a very different view, one that resonates with the conservative voices of 2012: “The right to contract is fundamental, and includes the privilege of selecting those with whom one is willing to assume contractual relations.” (James McReynolds) In 2012, the Court is now split 4-5, in the other direction, on both of these topics. Prof. Koppelman shows that the “necessary & proper” clause, held to trump states’ rights by Justice Marshall, is hollowed out by Justice Roberts’ opinion. And Justice McReynolds’ “right to contract,” made infamous by the Lochner court, has returned in ghostly form, as a new individual right not to contract with insurance companies. In economic matters, the tide of constitutional law is shifting. The power of the Tough Luck constitutional doctrine was not exercised because of Justice Roberts’ forbearance in preserving the Affordable Care Act on other grounds. But with the help of Prof. Koppelman’s lucid and persuasive book, any reader can now fully grasp the legal significance of this line of thinking. Its practical implications, meanwhile, are becoming visible in the context of Medicaid, because a secondary holding in the case empowered governors to refuse new federal money for health care for the working poor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

The liberal media in the Western World takes a firm line on how two of the big issues facing Africa intersect – bluntly speaking Africa’s high levels of religiosity have contributed substantially to its high levels of HIV infection. Religion and AIDS in Africa (Oxford UP, 2012), however, tells a different story, and one based upon an impressive amount of data. For a start, the story that the authors tell is far more nuanced than this broad-brush representation of how religion has impacted HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. In places it has aggravated infection rates and in others it has led to lower levels, for instance through emphasising sex within marriage and through education. Often the picture depends far more upon the message being put out by particular religious leaders in particular villages than the niceties of any Islamic or Christian doctrine. Jenny Trinitapoli and Alex Weinreb also treat AIDS and HIV in a far more holistic way than simply talking about infection rates. They look at the impact of religion on care for the ill, on the intersection between religion and traditional medicine, and the role that stigma has to play. The result is a very serious book about a very serious subject, packed full of insight, data and analysis. It deserves to be widely read by those interested in how HIV and AIDS have impacted. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

This past August, the saga of Lance Armstrong came to its inglorious end. The seven-time champion of the Tour de France and Olympic medalist ended his defense against charges that he had engaged in blood doping during his cycling career. In the judgment of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the end of Armstrong’s challenge was effectively a concession of guilt. The body responded by stripping Armstrong of his titles and banning him from cycling competitions. Armstrong, however, has continued to maintain his innocence. It appears that many Americans agree with him. In various polls conducted after the USADA’s actions, large majorities of respondents stated their belief that Armstrong had not engaged in doping. But outside the US, opinion of the cyclist is somewhat different. As Peter Beaumont remarked in The Observer, the real question is not whether Armstrong engaged in doping, it’s why his fall from grace didn’t come sooner. Lance Armstrong now joins a notorious collection of athletes who have been stained by allegations or proof of doping: baseball’s Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, sprinter Marion Jones, swimmer Michelle Smith, cross-country skiers Olga Danilova and Larissa Lazutina, Chinese swimmers of the late 1990s. Chris Cooper begins his study of the science of doping with what was perhaps the most shocking episode of a champion athlete caught doping: Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who set the world record in the 100-meter dash at the 1988 Seoul Olympics only to be stripped of his record and gold medal days later. As Cooper points out, athletes had long been using anabolic steroids. And indeed, Johnson was not the only sprinter in that race to have been found using drugs. But the fall of the gold medalist in the Olympics’ marquee event brought the use of performance-enhancing drugs to broad public attention. Since 1988, great athletic accomplishments have been viewed with suspicion, while athletes have been obligated to pee in cups. Athletes still take performance-enhancing drugs. Why? What benefits, if any, do they gain? Chris’ book, Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat: The Science Behind Drugs in Sport (Oxford University Press, 2012), addresses these questions. As a researcher in biochemistry, Chris explains what the drugs do, and whether they work. We learn from the interview that doping does provide a clear advantage, in some instances. But in other cases, the drug’s effects are slim–which raises the question: should they be banned? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Volker Scheid and Hugh MacPherson‘s Integrating East Asian Medicine into Contemporary Healthcare (Churchill Livingstone, 2011) is the result of a wonderfully transdisciplinary project that aims to bring scholars and practitioners of East Asian medicine together in a common dialogue that also informs and is shaped by cutting-edge work in Science Studies. Not a typical conference volume, the book is instead the result of years of continuing collaboration among the editors and authors, and celebrates the spirit of collaborative work in every aspect of its structure and material. The chapters collectively explore some key ideas that thread through the work and are of broad relevance to the histories and practices of health and healing: the nature of “authenticity” in alternative and complementary health practices; the problem of standardization; learning through best practices and best practitioners; and the changing and plural nature of evidence and proof in the contemporary world. The material covered in the book is extended and deepened in a series of vignettes that each illustrate exemplary phenomena, texts, settings, or concepts relevant to the chapters in which they are embedded. I had the opportunity to speak with both co-editors about the book, the larger intellectual and practical goals that inform it, and the history and potential futures of their collaboration. It was a very enjoyable conversation about a fascinating project, and I hope you’ll enjoy! * A quick note: You’ll notice that there’s an echo on this one due to a rare circumstance with a three-way Skype call during which not all participants had earphones handy. Because there was a lot of good material, we decided to post it regardless of the echo. Apologies for that! We’re working on trying to reduce the incidence of this kind of audio issue for future interviews, to the extent possible. Thanks for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

When a mother listens to the beats of her own heart, where angst, fear and fortitude compete, and then beautifully weaves emotion into a story about her ongoing journey to support a bipolar son, then you know something significant has happened in African American literature. At least I did, when I read Charlotte Pierce-Baker‘s insightful memoir, This Fragile Life: A Mother’s Story of a Bipolar Son (Lawrence Hill Books, 2012). But what I didn’t know is why Pierce-Baker would “go there” again. I mean, she has already, once before, “gone there,” when she mined personal pain to write about trauma and black women’s narratives of rape. Yet, when I reflect on a line from her son’s poetry, which is what knits the narrative together, I understand. Her son Mark writes: “When mom is gone nothing is right and everything is wrong/A joke is not a joke, and the birds don’t sing their song.” The power of this book for me is that a mother has created a literary space for her son, a black man living with mental illness, to sing about being a father, a husband, a solid citizen, and yet struggling. Mark’s wrangles with his struggles are revealed in poetic opening lines like these: “In the padded room of my heart/ A madman suffers.” “Street vendors here do not sell soft pretzels/They trade toxic pebbles for pocket change until there is just lint left.” “I will love you until God dies.” This book is as much about a black man in America, as it is about a black man dealing with bipolar disorder, as it is about a mother, a family, learning to cope and ultimately to understand. This Fragile Life is a must read. Listen to the interview, and you’ll see why? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

One of the best things about co-hosting New Books in STS is the opportunity to discover books like this one. Sherine Hamdy has given us something special in Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt (University of California Press, 2012). Framed as a study of the history and ethnography of organ transplantation in modern Egypt, Hamdy’s work uses a wide range of sources to encourage readers to think in a much more nuanced way about categories that we tend to generalize: bodies, family, religion, Islam, the idea of a “black market.” The story ranges from printed texts and interviews, to television programs, participant observation in classes on Islamic jurisprudence, and fieldwork in hospitals, private clinics, and other medical institutions. At every stage, Hamdy offers accounts (often quite moving) of individuals who are in the process of weighing the risks and benefits of transplantation, reminding us that none of these individuals exists outside of a complex web of social, political, familial, and other relationships. It is an inspiring book that ought to be read and assigned widely. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

In her new book, The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare (Regnery Publishing, 2012), Sally C. Pipes, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Pacific Research Institute, argues that the Obama health care law will make our health care system worse and provides a step-by-step plan for how to dismantle and replace it. She also proposes an alternative, free market-based reform that will bring down costs, expand coverage, and support innovation in life-saving drugs and technology. In our interview, we talked about her vision for the future of health care, the rise of new conservative health experts, and how the Canadian health system failed her own mother in a time of great need. Read all about it, and more, in Pipes’ detailed new book. Please become a fan of “New Books in Public Policy” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

What would a Presidential campaign be without a good dose of reproductive politics? To be sure, many of us are surprised to see contraception, and not just abortion, called into question – but maybe that’s because the intensity of abortion politics has allowed us to forget just how recently the issue of contraception was as fraught as the issue of abortion. And in any case, recent tussles over teen access to over-the-counter emergency contraception might have reminded us that debates about contraception are hardly closed. In her new book The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States (Rutgers University Press, 2011), Heather Munro Prescott helps us to understand the politics of emergency contraception. Initially a side-product from research into infertility, hormonal contraceptives – both the “regular” and the “emergency” kind – became the subject of heated battles in the 1960s and 1970s. Feminist health care advocates protested that the medical establishment was pushing potentially unsafe medications on women who were not fully informed of side-effects. With conservatives’ attack on reproductive rights starting in the 1980s, however, feminist health care advocates and the medical profession became allies in the battle for continued access. This alliance bore results in the first decade of the twenty-first century, as the FDA reluctantly agreed to approve over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception (although not for minors). Heather Munro Prescott is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University. If you care about reproductive rights, you’ll want to take a look at her book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Southern Medicine for Southern People: Vietnamese Medicine in the Making (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) gives me hope for the future of edited volumes. Not only is it a fascinating and coherent treatment of the history and practice of Vietnamese medicine, but it’s also a wonderfully interdisciplinary collection of approaches that incorporates work by social scientists, humanists, and medical practitioners. The essays collectively challenge some pervasive assumptions about “traditional” versus “scientific” modes of knowledge, inviting readers to rethink our assumptions about traditional medical practices in Vietnam while offering a set of wonderful case studies to think with. This collection is a must-read for anyone working on the humanistic or social studies of medicine, but it’s also full of wonderful insights and for readers broadly interested in science studies, Asian studies, and colonial studies. I spent a very energizing hour talking with Ayo Wahlberg, one of the volume co-editors. Our conversation ranged broadly from ethnographic practice in history and anthropology, to an inspiring journey across laboratory and countryside to find a local treatment for opium withdrawal, to the ways that “our medicine” took shape in the modern history of Vietnam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Marta Hanson‘s book is a rich study of conceptions of space in medical thought and practice. Ranging from a deep history of the geographic imagination in China to an account of the SARS outbreak of the 21st century, Hanson’s book maps the transformations of medicine and healing in late imperial China that accompanied transforming geographies of empire. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China (Routledge, 2011) is both the biography of a disease and a masterful tour through the history of medical practice and knowledge in later imperial China. Over the course of our discussion, we talked about the people and ideas that inspired Hanson’s work, the importance of “eureka moments,” and the SARS epidemic in Beijing. The author has generously shared a discount on her book for listeners of New Books in East Asian Studies. To order a copy of the book through the Routledge Press website at a 20% discount, visit http://www.routledge.com/9780415602532/ and enter discount code SECM11 at the checkout to claim your discount. Offer expires 28th February 2012. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Forty-five years after her death, the reproductive rights activist Margaret Sanger remains a polarizing figure. Conservatives attack her social liberalism while liberals shy away from her perceived advocacy of eugenics and her supposed socialist tendencies. Though she was a pivotal 20th century figure, Sanger’s own voice has been drowned out by the cacophony of controversy. As renown feminist historian Jean H. Baker writes in Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion, “She has been written out of history, thereby easily caricatured and denied the context required for any fair appraisal of her life and work.” In Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion, Baker strips away the layers of myth and inaccuracy to reveal how truly radical Sanger’s ambitions were. A staunch advocate of the freedom and privacy of women, Sanger was determined that family planning must be seen as a basic human right. To that end, she opened clinics, challenged the obscenity laws and wrote explicit pamphlets on contraceptives. Undaunted by a stint in jail and constant bouts with the law, Sanger did everything in her power to help women take control of their reproductive lives. Baker’s portrait of Sanger is fascinating because it captures the broad sweep of Sanger’s ambitions for the movement, but also because it illustrates how, to an extraordinary degree, Sanger did precisely what she said she would do. In 1931, in her autobiography Sanger wrote: “I resolved that women should have the knowledge of contraception. I would tell the world what was going on in the lives of these poor women. I would be heard. No matter what it cost. I would be heard.” And she was. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

For the past half century, Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-step recovery program has been the dominant method for treating alcohol abuse in the United States. Reservation communities have been no exception. But as Erica Prussing vividly describes in her new book,White Man’s Water: The Politics of Sobriety in a Native American Community (University of Arizona Press, 2011), a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment does not, in fact, fit all. An assistant professor of anthropology and community and behavior health at the University of Iowa, Prussing lived for three years on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, working with community organizations, building long-lasting relationships, and gathering testimonies of alcohols’ often disruptive impacts on the lives of many Northern Cheyenne. While many young women have embraced the 12-step program, others – particularly of the older generation – find its moral assumptions foreign and unhelpful. What emerges from Prussing’s account is not a reductive and totalizing “Cheyenne culture” but rather a complex negotiation of tradition, community, and recovery in the face of persistent colonial challenges. This nuance and attention to detail makes Prussing’s call for indigenous self-determination in health care all the more powerful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

In what must be one of the most well-organized and clearly-written books in the history of academic writing, Yi-Li Wu‘s book, Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China (University of California Press, 2010), introduces readers to a rich history of women’s medicine (fuke) in the context of late imperial China. Reproducing Women offers much more than a history of ideas and practices of women’s health in the late Ming and early Qing, however. Wu weaves together an impressive range of sources, including comparative perspectives from contemporary contexts, to create a fascinating account of the ways that human bodies were experienced and understood in Chinese medical history. In the course of our discussion and our journey through the book, we touched on topics ranging from monastery handbooks, to the late imperial version of Kinko’s, to the comparative history of pregnancy tests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

The instructor of my freshman physics course fit the stereotype of a physics professor: unkempt white hair, black glasses case in the breast pocket of his short-sleeved shirt, thick German accent, and a tendency to mumble to himself while mulling over formula on the chalkboard. I was not his most attentive student, and finished the term with a grade of C (for which I was ecstatically grateful). Judging from his book Gold Medal Physics: The Science of Sports (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), I imagine that my physics experience would have been much more enjoyable if John Eric Goff had been my professor. Eric’s enthusiasm for both science and sports is evident in the book, as he explains concepts and laws of physics by analyzing well-known athletic feats. In the interview, we talk about Doug Flutie’s miraculous touchdown pass, Bob Beamon’s record-breaking long jump, and David Beckham’s bending free kicks. As Eric explains, his aim is not to turn the performances of athletes into purely mechanical processes. Instead, his analysis offers a new perspective and appreciation for what athletes can accomplish. And you’ll also pick up some fascinating nuggets to share with your friends, such as why the players at the 2010 World Cup complained about the ball, and why using a baseball without laces would bring a drop in home runs. After listening to the interview, check out Eric’s blog, where he gave his stage-by-stage predictions for the winning times in the this year’s Tour de France–with impressive accuracy. And please link to the Facebook page of New Books in Sports, where you can tell us with you think of the interviews, get announcements of new podcasts, and find links to recent, thoughtful sports writing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

When in medical school, I found myself drawn to the study of infectious diseases in large part because of the mixture of science and anthropology – infectious diseases are always about the way we interact with the world around us, what we do with whom and when and where and how often. Take the recent examples of the global spread of pandemic influenza (a respiratory virus spread in the air) and the epidemic of cholera in Haiti (which depends on lack of access to clean water to spread), and how in each case the spread of the infection says something about the world and the ways in which the world’s population is connected. Now, the most important infection of our time is HIV, and its predominant modes of transmission are particularly complicated and culturally loaded human behaviors: sex and intravenous drug use. In her engaging, informative, and fun book, The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS (Norton, 2008), Elizabeth Pisani draws on her experiences doing field work as an epidemiologist in Indonesia and on staff at UN AIDS, the joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, during the time when the world was coming to grips with the fact of an exploding global epidemic of HIV. If you want to design effective interventions, you have to understand exactly who and what those interventions should target. But how easy is it to figure out who has sex with whom and when and where and how often? Or who injects drugs and shares needles? Doing so is loaded with pitfalls, and Elizabeth lays them out for us, exploring how preconceptions, ignorance, and technical problems can cloud our ability to see what’s really happening, to interpret what we see, and, most importantly, to figure out effective ways to intervene. She reminds us that what’s true for Jersey may be completely false in Jakarta. And, on top of all that, how do you convince the people who hold the purse-strings to pay for everything? These are fascinating problems and we thank Elizabeth for sharing her expert insights. Elizabeth’s blog and website, The Wisdom of Whores, is also a great source of news and ideas in the world of HIV/AIDS and much else. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

If a parent decides not to vaccinate their children, is that an individual choice, or is it a serious threat to the public health? In Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All (Basic Books, 2011), Dr. Paul Offit discusses the very real threats to the public health created by the anti-vaccine movement, both in the U.S. and around the world. In the book, Dr. Offit reviews the history of vaccines, their importance, and the various attempts to discredit them over the past few centuries. One of these efforts, readers will be interested to know, led to the creation of the Raggedy Ann doll. Read all about it, and more, in Dr. Offit’s frightening new book. Please become a fan of “New Books in Public Policy” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

This week New Books in Public Policy interviews Bob Goldberg about his new book Tabloid Medicine: How the Internet Is Being Used to Hijack Medical Science for Fear and Profit (Simon & Schuster, 2010). The book is a look at the way medical science is discussed and played out over the Internet. As Goldberg says on his website, tabloid medicine is “medical reporting or information based on or consisting of Internet material that sensationalizes and exaggerate the dangers of medical technology without describing the benefits.” In the interview, Goldberg talks about both this problem and its implications, from parents refusing to vaccinate their children to suicidal people avoiding antidepressants for fear of overhyped side effects. He also discusses the role of those who seek to foment fear, as well as discredit their opponents, using new media and innuendo regarding inappropriate conflicts of interest. Finally, Bob takes on the New Books in Public Policy signature question, “What policies would you initiate if you were king for a day?” and gives his policy prescriptions for addressing the problem of Tabloid Medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

You may not know who John Galsworthy is, but you probably know his work. Who hasn’t seen some production of The Forsyte Saga? Galsworthy was one of the most popular and famous British writers of the early 20th century (the Edwardian Era). He left an enormous body of work, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932. But Galsworthy was also what we might call a “public humanitarian,” that is, he used his high profile and influence in a great, good cause. The focus of his effort was disabled solders returning from World War I. We, of course, are well acquainted with the remarkable destructive power of modern weaponry. Not a week goes by (alas) in which we do not hear about a soldier being wounded by mines, grenades, artillery fire or bombs (often of the “roadside” variety). But we also have come to expect that soldier, no matter how grievously wounded, will receive medical treatment that will stand at least a fighting chance of saving their lives. And indeed, many wounded soldiers do survive incredibly severe injuries and return to our world. The generation that fought and suffered World War I–or as they called it “The Great War”–were really not familiar with any of this. Europeans and Americans of the nineteenth century were surely used to wars, but they were generally short and decided by pivotal battles (Waterloo, Gettysburg, Sedan). But the Great War was different. Millions of men lived for years at the “front” and under the shells. Many died there and many more were wounded. Thanks to advances in medical knowledge (and particularly the discovery of the germ theory of disease), a goodly proportion of the wounded survived. This presented a new problem: How to re-integrate wounded men into society? This became Galsworthy’s cause. The course of his efforts on the part of wounded soldiers is detailed with great skill and care by Jeffrey Reznick in his John Galsworthy and the Disabled Soldiers of the Great War (Manchester UP, 2009). Reznick shows us Galsworthy attempting to create the modern infrastructure of veterans’ care: special hospitals, rehabilitation programs, work-transition agencies and so on. And we get to read Galsworthy’s writing on the subject, both non-fiction and fiction. All this give us–or gave me–a new understanding of Galsworthy’s literary work. Galsworthy was a great man. But as it turned out he was greater than I knew. We should thank Jeff for bringing his good-works to our attention. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

In 1980 I left Kansas to go to college in Iowa. A lot of things caught my attention about Iowa, for example, that the people really are very nice. I also noticed that there were a lot of drugs. One of them was “crystal methamphetamine,” or “crystal meth” for short. I’d never heard of it before (which is not surprising), but I quickly learned that, while not as fashionable as coke, it was inexpensive and widely available. Lots of people did it. It made them feel good. I left Iowa in 1984 for California, and with it any thought of crystal meth. “Crank,” however, remained, ever ready to make people feel good when they had nothing much to feel good about. And as Nick Reding explains in Methland. The Death and Life of an American Small Town (Bloomsbury, 2009) America’s midland didn’t have much to feel good about in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Globalization was hammering the industries that had long supported places like little Oelwein, Iowa, the subject of Reding’s attention. Light manufacture, meatpacking, and agriculture were all in decline. Wages were dropping, poverty rising, and people were leaving for the coasts (as I had). Misery loves company, but there was less and less company to be had in Oelwein. Misery, however, also loves drugs, and there was plenty of meth to go around thanks to a peculiar alliance between: 1) big pharma–which opposed any legislation to limit the sale of the essential over-the-counter ingredient in meth; 2) south-of-the-border drug cartels–who took said over-the-counter ingredient and made massive quantities of meth; and 3) some down-on-their luck Iowans–who arranged for the import of said drug. In some ways, meth did what it was supposed to do: it made sad people happy and tired people strong. But it also destroyed the lives of users, their families, and their communities. The bi-costal press reported that the hicks of flyoverland had been possessed by a new kind of “reefer madness.” The rest of the story–globalization, lobbying by big pharma, the drug cartels–it missed for the most part. Nick Reding didn’t, and we in Iowa owe him a debt of gratitude. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

When you were in college, did you visit the health center? I did, several times. Did you ever wonder why there was a student health center? I didn’t. It seemed like a part of the college scenery, something that had “always” been there. Far from it, as Heather Prescott shows in her fascinating new book Student Bodies. The Influence of Student Health Services in American Society & Medicine (University of Michigan Press, 2007). Believe it or not, many very smart folks used to believe that college could hurt you, especially (though not exclusively) if you were a woman. And it wasn’t just that you could catch a nasty cold. Too much thinking, these folks said, might weaken the body and lead to a decline in fertility. That wouldn’t be good for the “race.” So some forward-thinking people began to consider ways in which the health of America’s sons and daughters might be protected while they studied. The result was a kind of early experiment in universal health care. In some ways it succeeded and in others it failed. But in either case it holds lessons for us (Americans, that is) as we think about how to fix our broken national health care system. We should thank Heather for teaching these lessons to us. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine