What does the vaginal speculum have to do with power? How does the history of this instrument help us to understand how bodies have been understood, policed, and governed? Can this object be reclaimed?
Lisa Godson explores.
Tag: history of medicine
Reforming Medicine: Dr. Krishnabai Kelavkar
A look at the lives of early women physicians in India reveals the impact of social reform in on health outcomes. Dr. Krishnabai Kelavkar, who transformed maternal and infant health in the state of Kolhapur, is such a trailblazing woman, as Mrunamayee Satam writes.
Renaissance Lockdown: How Venice tried to control the plague
With Italy on the frontline of Europe’s Coronavirus outbreak, Rosa Salzberg examines how Renaissance Venice established world-leading measures to combat the plague, strategies we are still relying on today.
The Black Death and the future of history after Covid-19
Bruce Campbell argues that interactions between climate and disease during the fourteenth-century Black Death can inform insights into Covid-19 and alter historians’ understanding of the nature of historical change.
History Does Have Something to Say
How can the history of the response to the 2009-10 swine flu epidemic illuminate the British government’s response to the COVID crisis? Virginia Berridge explores.
Behaviour Change, Public Health and ‘The Public’
How did behaviour change become an integral part of public health strategies in the twentieth century? And what insights can this history offer in tackling the unique challenge of Covid-19?
Skin before Colour in Early Modern Europe
When, how, and why did skin colour matter in early modern Europe? Hannah Murphy explores how science could make the known strange.
