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2003/2004 History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 – 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.
ANNE WOOD HUMPHRIES, MLS
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library
Teaching with a Sable Brush: The Life and Art of Frank H. Netter, MD
Drawing on research conducted using Netter’s personal files, this presentation tells the story of the medical illustration career of Frank H. Netter, MD. Netter’s career is put in the context of the artistic and cultural climate of his life and times, beginning with his art academy years and influences, his medical training, various special projects and commissions, and culminating in the research methods used to produce his life’s work, the famous Netter Collection of Medical Illustrations. Personal anecdotes and illustrations convey the vivid personality of the man behind the legendary “green books.”
Wednesday, November 5, 2003 – 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.
HELEN KING, PhD
University of Reading, Reader in the History of Classical Medicine, Department of Classics
Oxford Brookes University, Visiting Lecturer
A Disappearing Disease? Green Sickness: The Disease of Virgins in Medical History
Dr. King’s talk will investigate the condition best known in English as “green sickness,” but probably more familiar outside the English language as chlorosis (a coined technical word dating from 1609 and based on chloros, a Greek term for green). Originally termed “the disease of virgins,” and known in French-speaking countries as “les pales couleurs,” it usually involved lack of menstruation, dietary disturbances, altered skin color, and general weakness. It is an interesting condition for the history of medicine because it is one of very few diseases for which we can find a precise start date in the mid-sixteenth century and also one of the few diseases that seems subsequently to have vanished by the 1930s. As the rhetoric of Western biomedicine speaks of “the conquest of disease,” the notion of a “disappearing disease” is not an easy one for medical writers to accept: was it ever conquered, or did it simply retire from the field of battle? Attempts have been made to use changes in diet or in female dress to explain its demise, and also to deny that it ever “disappeared.” Scholars have also tried to understand its origins, thinking that if we can find out when and why it started, then perhaps this will tell us why it stopped. The talk will also consider the image of “green sickness” in nineteenth-century medicine.
Co-sponsored with Humanities in Medicine
Wednesday, December 10, 2003 – 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.
JOHN L. TONE, PhD
Georgia Institute of Technology
History, Technology, & Society
Carlos Finlay, "The Mosquito Man": Spanish Medicine and the Finlay Theory
People have underestimated the role of disease in the destruction of the Spanish army in Cuba from 1895 to 1898, because they have overstated the military effectiveness of the Cuban insurgency and the total number of Spanish casualties from causes other than disease. But the mortality caused by malaria, typhus, and especially yellow fever among Spanish troops can be measured with reasonable precision, and the numbers are appalling. The Spanish government was fully apprized of the problem. Yet, an aggressive campaign by the Liberal and Republican press exposing this health crisis spurred no action by the Spanish government. The solution provided by the Cuban physician Carlos Finlay, who had for years argued correctly that a particular mosquito, Aedes aegypti, transmitted yellow fever and even prescribed a program of fumigation, water drainage, and the other measures eventually enacted to great effect by the Americans, found no takers. So why did the Spanish government fail to protect its troops and follow up on Finlay’s work? This presentation will explore the complex answer and show why Finlay’s timely recipe for saving the Spanish colony in Cuba went untried by Spain, leaving the United States to reap all the benefits of his work.
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 – 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.
LINDA LAYNE, PhD
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The Alma and H. Erwin Hale ’30 Teaching Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Science and Technology Studies
A Historical Juncture for the Experience of Pregnancy Loss in America
The last quarter of the twentieth century was a unique moment in terms of the experience of pregnancy loss. Middle class American women who experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth or early infant death during those years found themselves caught between two sets of strong, contradictory, cultural forces. On the one hand, deep seated cultural taboos regarding the liminal entities of fetuses and corpses and a strong cultural preference for stories with happy endings, while on the other, unintended (and unexamined) consequences of new reproductive technologies and earlier medical management of pregnancy including the increasing importance of fetal personhood, and an ideological emphasis on individual control (and responsibility) during pregnancy in both conventional obstetrics and the natural childbirth movement. This confluence exacerbated the experience of loss for women.
Co-sponsored with Humanities in Medicine
Wednesday, March 10, 2004 – 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.
JOHN A. OWEN, JR., MD and LEO J. FALK, MD
University of Virginia School of Medicine
The Mulholland Law: A Master Mentor and His Creed
Drs. Owen and Falk co-authored the recent book, The Mulholland Law: A Master Mentor and His Creed (University of Virginia Medical Alumni Association, 2003). Dr Henry B. Mulholland (1892-1966) was the eminent University of Virginia physician whose life, teaching style, bedside manner, and lengthy career defined the now perhaps overly-used word “mentor.” Dr. Mulholland’s example was so inspirational that today the Student Governing Body of the University of Virginia Medical School is the Mulholland Society.
Reception and Book-Signing by the authors following lecture
The Eighth Annual Kenneth R. Crispell Memorial History Lecture
Co-sponsored with Humanities in Medicine
Wednesday, April 7, 2004 – 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.
JAMES E. STARRS, LLM
The George Washington University Professor of Law and Forensic Sciences
Exhumations of Human Remains: From Jesse James to John Wilkes Booth to Meriwether Lewis
Professor James E. Starrs is co-author of Scientific Evidence in Civil and Criminal Cases, senior co-editor of Scientific Sleuthing Review, and a member of the advisory board of the Encyclopedia of Forensic Sciences. Professor Starrs is best known for having directed a number of exhumations of historical figures in controversial cases.