History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons^™

“Unnatural, Filthy, Unclean And Positively Dangerous To Health And Life.”: Smallpox Vaccine Refusal And Sectional Violence In Montréal 1885, Mary M. Horman

Major Papers

Montreal was stricken by an epidemic of smallpox in the year 1885 which resulted in over 3,000 deaths and which lasted 15 months. The disease was brought into the city by a pullman conductor arriving on a train from Chicago. The city of Montréal Health Department was confident that they would be able to manage the initial outbreak easily because by 1885 smallpox was considered to be a vaccine preventable disease. Unfortunately, many errors were made by the Health Department in the initial outbreak that allowed the disease to escape into the city of Montreal, where it was greatly aided …

Medicinal Vibrations, Lauren E. Gardner

The Purdue Historian

In the course of the mid to late 20th and 21st centuries the term "vibrator" has been synonymous with sexual gratification and the female sex drive. However, its original usage is more in line with a therapeutic medical treatment administered and recommended by medical professionals. In this article the history of the vibrator discusses the roots of medicines views on the female body and the ways in which their ailments were treated, with medicine not fully understanding the female sexual gratification of clitoral stimulation until the 1920s. These previous decades are colored by ancient understandings of the female sex and …

Is Humanitarian Aid Neutral? The American Ambulance Field Service And The American Red Cross, Laura Neis

Madison Historical Review

The United States did not outwardly join WWI until April of 1917. However, in the nearly three years in which the U.S. was neutral, they provided medical support to the suffering. This act has been dismissed as humanitarian charity work, and therefore not breaking with neutrality agreements, but it was actually a hotly contested act of foreign policy, and different propaganda campaigns were used to change the minds of American citizens.

Two different groups of medical volunteers show how humanitarian aid shapes perspectives on war. The American Ambulance Field Service drove ambulances for the French army on the front line, …

Michigan's Upper Peninsula Is The Cradle Of Paul Bunyan's Beehives, Thomas J. Straka

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

One of the Michigan Upper Peninsula’s earliest industries was iron production. Iron furnaces (smelters) were part of that industry; these were primarily fueled by charcoal, produced in hundreds of charcoal kilns scattered across the Upper Peninsula. The four basic kiln designs (rectangular, round, conical, and beehive) were all used in the region, with the beehive design becoming the predominant form. James C. Cameron, Jr. is credited with developing the beehive charcoal kiln design while employed by Upper Peninsula iron furnaces. This design was first introduced to the Upper Peninsula, and then to Northeastern Wisconsin, Northern New York, and the Far …

A Historical Analysis Of Health Institutions, Professionals, And Advocates In The Civil Rights Movement In Columbia, South Carolina, Anusha Ghosh

Senior Theses

From 1900 to 1970, widespread racism severely restricted healthcare access for Black citizens in the South, leading them to establish and staff alternative healthcare institutions to support their community.

Such institutions faced debilitating issues such as chronic financial shortages and patient overflow. Despite these problems, oral histories, media, and primary written sources show that Black healthcare workers in alternative healthcare institutions demonstrated a greater ability to meet the health needs of Black patients due to cultural understanding and external community involvement.

Dr. Matilda Evans was an African-American woman physician who became a leader in medicine, public health, and education in …

Cybernetics: How It Compares To Science-Fiction And Future Possibilities, Anindo Majumder

CAFE Symposium 2024

Cybernetics is a branch of science that studies how information is communicated in machines and electronic equipment compared to how information is communicated in the brain and nervous system. It also relates to the theory of automatic control and physiology, particularly the physiology of the nervous system. Usage of cybernetics is very popular in various science-fiction medium. This naturally leads one to be curious if its depictions might turn into reality one day. This research paper delves into the growth of cybernetics since its inception, current applications of cybernetics, and what the future might hold.

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Of Sacrament And Safety: How Two 1970s Home Birth Services Magnified The Power And The Limits Of Women's Voices, Kristen S. Burgess

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

Two home birth services faced changes in the early 1970s, resulting in a watershed moment for maternity care and childbirth options throughout the United States. One service began in Summertown, Tennessee, where a counterculture group believed birth was sacramental and home birth was essential to honoring that sacrament. Still, these resourceful pioneers embraced technology for prenatal care and safe birth practices, leading to the establishment of the Farm Midwifery Clinic and contributing directly to the rebirth of midwifery in the United States. Chicago, in contrast, offered home delivery to urban Chicago's racially diverse, low-income population through The Chicago Maternity Center. …

End Of The Patrol: Analysis Of The Blimp And Its Contributions To The Us Navy, 1941-1962, Spencer M. Benefiel

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

From 1917 to 1962, the United States Navy was America’s main contributor to the use of lighter-than-air vehicles, from small observational kite-balloons to the massive infamous rigid airships like the ill-fated Shenandoah, Akron, and Macon. Most aviation histories cover the Navy’s rigid airships but ignore the post-rigid era, a period that began after the demise of the Hindenburg. This study serves to examine the Navy’s airship program in the subsequent two time periods: World War II and the post-war era. This study is based upon both qualitative and quantitative sources, most of which come from written …

Questioning Reality: The Progressive Development Of Modern Physics, Joshua Lancman

STEM for Success Showcase

Humanity has a tendency to divide time. The past is distinct from the present which is entirely separate from the future. In supposedly 20-20 vision history is neatly divided into different sections, distinct eras with sharp lines between them. What is present and in the future is always modern. What is past is something else with another name.

Yet time is not divided so neatly. We know this living through it: years and decades blend into one another in a non-uniform progression. To divide human history into separate eras is a necessary simplification, as it helps to ascribe order onto …

Madness As Response To Inherent Cultural Conflicts In Anglophone Fiction From 1700 To 2020, Anna Klambauer

Comparative Woman

Madness in literature has a long and colourful history. While its representation varies significantly in different literary periods, madness is nonetheless a consistent theme responding to inherent conflicts of civilisation. Thus, in the eighteenth-century novel, madness is subdued and forced to express itself in the language of rationality, while in the nineteenth century the theme becomes increasingly subversive. In the form of the madwoman trope (Gilbert and Gubar 1979), madness is simultaneously a reaction to restrictive patriarchal norms, and a frame in which the gender conflicts of the time can be safely and effectively played out. In the twentieth century, …

Soho Story, Michelle A. Hamilton, Mackenzie Bodnar, Emma Bronsema, Emily Clink, Jessica Hugh, Niġel Klemenčič-Puglisevich,, Hannah Mantel, Emma Macdonald, Zahra Mcdoom, Paige Milner, Sarah Pointer, Avraham Shaver, Keely Shaw, Madeline Shaw, Danielle Sinopoli

History Publications

Formed by the London Community Foundation (LCF), the Vision SoHo Alliance is a partnership between six non-profit housing developers, which includes Chelsea Green Home Society, Homes Unlimited, Indwell, Residenza Affordable Housing, London Affordable Housing Foundation, and Zerin Development Corporation. Vision SoHo Alliance will create 650-unit apartments, of which 30-60% will be affordable units, in seven buildings on the former South Street Victoria Hospital property. Most buildings will be located on the block bounded by Waterloo, South, Colborne, and Hill streets. Another building will be constructed at the northeast corner of South and Colborne. Indwell purchased the former Faculty of Medicine …

Ic 008 Guide To University Of Texas Medical School Records, 1969-2006, University Of Texas Medical School At Houston

Institutional Finding Aids

University of Texas Medical School records primarily consists of newsletters like Scoop, IATRO year books, annual reports, directories for consultation referrals, and other types of ephemera. The collection roughly dates from 1979 to 2011. See more at IC 008.

“Sounds Like” Redemption? On The Musicality Of Species And The Species Of Musicality, Tyler Yamin, Alice Rudge

Faculty Journal Articles

Popular and academic studies of music frequently claim that human musicality arose from the so-called ‘natural world’ of non-human species. And amid the anxieties produced by the Anthropocene, it is thought that the possibility of reconnecting with the natural world through a renewed appreciation of music’s links with nature may usher in a new era of posthuman environmental consciousness, offering repair and redemption. To critique these claims, we trace how notions of ‘musicality’ have been applied to or denied from non-human entities across diverse disciplines since the late nineteenth century. We conclude that such debates reinforce the separation that they …

January 2024, New England Osteopathic Heritage Center

New England Osteopathic Heritage Center Newsletter

New England Osteopathic Heritage Center's annual newsletter for January 2024

Writing Centers & The Dark Warehouse University: Generative Ai, Three Human Advantages, Joe Essid

Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies

Institutions are scrambling, at an unaccustomed pace, to adapt to generative artificial intelligence. While justified concerns focus on plagiarism, the nature of student learning, and changes to assignments, recent scholarship has largely ignored the potential for faculty and staff unemployment that may accompany acceptance and deployment of the new technology. As we ponder seismic changes in higher education, one voice should join, indeed lead, campus discussions. Writing center professionals have proven adept at weathering technological changes, budget cuts, administrative big ideas, and professional marginalization for more than half a century. Early on, centers were sometimes dismissed as mere “fix-it shops” …

Carlene Smith Interview 2, Carlene Smith

Remembering Central State Hospital

Carlene Smith worked as a nurse at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia from 1962-1995, when she retired. This interview talks about her experience as an employee.

Care And Pregnancy Loss, Chelsea Phillips

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, new legislation across the U.S. has created ambiguity around the access to and legality of interventions for pregnancy loss in certain states. This essay situates our current legal landscape in opposition to that of the eighteenth-century, where care and preservation of the pregnant person were a guiding priority.

Introduction: Conversations On Abortion Rights And Bodily Autonomy In The Eighteenth Century And Today, Vicki Barnett Woods, Manushag N. Powell

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This piece serves as an introduction to the discussions of bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, revised from roundtable presentations held at ASECS 2023. This collection of essays contributes to the resounding responses of frustration and anger toward the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The collection was written and presented by eighteenth-century scholars who have a comprehensive knowledge of the eighteenth-century legal, social, and medical histories that center around reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.

Carlene Smith Interview 1, Carlene Smith

Remembering Central State Hospital

Carlene Smith worked as a nurse at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia from 1962-1995, when she retired. This interview talks about her experience as an employee.