New Books In Medicine

Today on New Books in Gender Studies Jana Byars talks with Lindy McDougall, of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia about her new book, The Perfect Vagina: Cosmetic Surgery in the Twenty-First Century, out this year, 2021, with Indiana University Press. In The Perfect Vagina, Lindy McDougall provides an ethnographic account of women who choose FGCS in Australia and the physicians who perform these procedures, both in Australia and globally, while also examining the environment in which surgeons and women come together. Physicians have a vested interest in establishing this surgery as valid medical intervention, despite majority medical opinion explicitly acknowledging that a wide range of genital variation is normal. McDougall offers a nuanced picture of why and how these procedures are performed and draws parallels between FGCS and anthropological discussions of female genital circumcision (cutting). Using the neologism biomagical, she argues that cosmetic surgery functions as both ritual and sacrifice

Literature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revere--from Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, and others--each made a unique technical breakthrough that can be viewed as both a narrative and neuroscientific advancement. Literature's great invention was to address problems we could not solve: not how to start a fire or build a boat, but how to live and love; how to maintain courage in the face of death; how to account for the fact that we exist at all. Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature (Simon & Schuster, 2021) reviews the blueprints for twenty-five of the most powerful developments in the history of literature. These inventions can be scientifically shown to alleviate grief, trauma, loneliness, anxiety, numbness, depression, pessimism, and ennui--all while sparking creativity, courage, love, empathy, hope, joy, and positive change. They can be found all throughout literature--from ancient Chinese lyrics to Shakespeare's plays, poetry to nursery rhymes and fairy

Until now, the herbal traditions of the Ashkenazi people have remained unexplored and shrouded in mystery. Ashkenazi Herbalism: Rediscovering the Herbal Traditions of Eastern European Jews (North Atlantic Books, 2021) rediscovers the forgotten legacy of the Jewish medicinal plant healers who thrived in Eastern Europe’s Pale of Settlement, from their beginnings in the Middle Ages through the modern era. Including the first materia medica of 26 plants and herbs essential to Ashkenazi folk medicine, Ashkenazi Herbalism sheds light on the preparations, medicinal profiles, and applications of a rich but previously unknown herbal tradition–one hidden by language barriers, obscured by cultural misunderstandings, and nearly lost to history. Written for new and established practitioners, it offers illustrations, provides information on comparative medicinal practices, and illuminates the important historical and cultural contexts that gave rise to Eastern European Jewish herbalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi

From the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries, Saint Elizabeths Hospital was one of the United States' most important institutions for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. Founded in 1855 to treat insane soldiers and sailors as well as civilian residents in the nation's capital, the institution became one of the country's preeminent research and teaching psychiatric hospitals. From the beginning of its operation, Saint Elizabeths admitted black patients, making it one of the few American asylums to do so.  Martin Summers' book Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions (Oxford UP, 2019) is a history of the hospital and its relationship to Washington, DC's African American community. It charts the history of Saint Elizabeths from its founding to the late-1980s, when the hospital's mission and capabilities changed as a result of deinstitutionalization, and its transfer from the federal government to the District of Columbia. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including patient case files,

Joseph Gfroerer spent nearly 40 years working as a statistician for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Starting in 1988, when the American drug war was taking its current shape, he led the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), one of the federal government’s largest and most important ongoing health surveys that tracks Americans’ use of illegal drugs, prescription drugs, alcohol and tobacco. War Stories from the Drug Survey: How Culture, Politics, and Statistics Shaped the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (Cambridge UP, 2018), written after he retired, shows where the survey came from, details how it gathers information, and tracks the impact that the shifting cultural and political climate surrounding drug use played on how these statistics were understood. Gfroerer provides necessary insight on what drug use statistics have meant, how they’ve been used (and misused), and what this means for our understanding

A rich examination of the history of trans medicine and current day practice Surfacing in the mid-twentieth century, yet shrouded in social stigma, transgender medicine is now a rapidly growing medical field. In Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender (NYU Press, 2021), stef shuster makes an important intervention in how we understand the development of this field and how it is being used to “treat” gender identity today. Drawing on interviews with medical providers as well as ethnographic and archival research, shuster examines how health professionals approach patients who seek gender-affirming care. From genital reconstructions to hormone injections, the practice of trans medicine charts new medical ground, compelling medical professionals to plan treatments without widescale clinical trials to back them up. Relying on cultural norms and gut instincts to inform their treatment plans, shuster shows how medical providers’ lack of clinical experience and scientific research undermines th

How does understanding business help us understand sex? In The Business of Birth Control: Contraception and Commerce in Britain before the Sexual Revolution (Manchester UP, 2020), Claire Jones, a Senior Lecturer in the History of Medicine at the University of Kent, explores the intersection of commerce and medicine in the interwar period in Britain, as a way of rethinking both the history of contraception and the history of sex. The book uses new archival research, as well as perspectives from business history, to show changing attitudes and practices of people, clinics, and companies in the era before the contraceptive pill. Charting the rise of a new consumer culture, intertwined with company, technology, and medical history, the book is essential reading across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in sex! Dave O'Brien is Chancellor's Fellow, Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Edinburgh's College of Art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega

On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews scholar and historian Camille Robcis. In her most recent book, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Robcis grapples with the historical, intellectual, psychiatric and psychoanalytic meaning of institutional psychotherapy as articulated at Saint-Alban Hospital in France by exploring the movement’s key thinkers, including François Tosquelles, Frantz Fanon, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. Anchored in the history of one hospital, Robcis's study draws on a wide geographic context—revolutionary Spain, occupied France, colonial Algeria, and beyond—and charts the movement's place within a broad political-economic landscape, from fascism to Stalinism to postwar capitalism. J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and graduate student at Smith College School for Social Work currently living in Northampton, MA. He can be reached at jmull@smith.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/

Today we are talking with Becca Andrews, a journalist at Mother Jones, where she writes about reproductive rights and gender. The story we discuss is “When Choice is 221 Miles Away: The Nightmare of Getting an Abortion in the South” and its follow up. Becca’s debut work of nonfiction, No Choice, based on her Mother Jones cover story about the past, present, and future of Roe v. Wade, will be published by in 2022. Andrews is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism and wrote for newspapers in her home state of Tennessee. Agata Popeda is a Polish-American journalist. Interested in everything, with a particular weakness for literature and foreign relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Between the decriminalization of contraception in 1969 and the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, a landmark decade in the struggle for women's rights, public discourse about birth control and family planning was transformed. At the same time, a transnational conversation about the "population bomb" that threatened global famine caused by overpopulation embraced birth control technologies for a different set of reasons, revisiting controversial ideas about eugenics, heredity, and degeneration.  In Challenging Choices: Canada's Population Control in the 1970s (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020), Erika Dyck and Maureen Lux argue that reproductive politics in 1970s Canada were shaped by competing ideologies on global population control, poverty, personal autonomy, race, and gender. For some Canadians the 1970s did not bring about an era of reproductive liberty but instead reinforced traditional power dynamics and paternalistic structures of authority. Dyck and Lux present case studie

Despite enormous advances in medical science and public health education over the last century, access to health care remains a dominant issue in American life. U.S. health care is often hailed as the best in the world, yet the public health emergencies of today often echo the public health emergencies of yesterday: consider the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 and COVID-19, the displacement of the Dust Bowl and the havoc of Hurricane Maria, the Reagan administration’s antipathy toward the AIDS epidemic and the lack of accountability during the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Spanning the period from the presidency of Woodrow Wilson to that of Donald Trump, American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics (University of California Press, 2021) illuminates how—despite the elevation of health care as a human right throughout the world—vulnerable communities in the United States continue to be victimized by structural inequalities across disparate geographies, income levels, and et

Overcoming Challenges in the Mental Capacity Act 2005: Practical Guidance for Working with Complex Issues (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019) both delivers on what promises and more: it gives practical and ethical guidance for mental health law practitioners, and applicable tools to apply the Mental Capacity Act 2005. It also provides the ethical and philosophical justifications for doing so. This very useful book sets out the legal framework and within that shows how relationships can impact in both positive and negative ways. It demonstrates how autonomy can be supported within existing laws and practices and how to achieve excellent ethical standards in assessments of mental capacity and best interests.  In navigating the complexities of mental capacity law and practice, this book is essential reading for students and practitioners of law, and for those who work in medicine, mental health services and social care. It is also of great significance for those interested in the task of law reform - legislators

The laws that govern psychiatric treatment under coercion have remain largely unchanged since the eighteenth century. But this is not because of their effectiveness, rather, these laws cling to outdated notions of disability, mental illness and mental disorder why deny the fundamental rights of this category of people on an equal basis with all others. In Men in White Coats: Treatment Under Coercion (Oxford University Press, 2017) Professor George Szmukler examines the violation of these rights, such as the right to autonomy, self-determination, liberty, and security and integrity of the person in the context of the domestic laws which themselves perpetuate ongoing discrimination against people with mental impairments. Tracing first the history of the medical coercion and involuntary treatment of people with mental illnesses and mental disorders, Professor Szmukler offers a potential path which he argues would end discrimination against this category of people. He puts forward a legal framework which is non-d

Doctors of the World, also known as Médecins du Monde, is an international network of more than 400 programmes across 80 different countries, providing emergency and long term medical care to the world's most vulnerable people. Whether it's urgent response in the Ukraine, mental healthcare to refugees in Calais, or strengthening the health systems in west Africa, DOTW respond based on the needs of the people they work with. In the UK, Doctors of the World run clinic and advocacy programmes in London that provide medical care, information and practical support to people often excluded from wider society such as destitute migrants, sex workers and people with no fixed abode. Their recent report Left out in the Cold: The extreme unmet health and service needs of street sex workers in East London before and during the Covid-19 pandemic highlights the devastating challenges that street sex workers have in accessing essential healthcare services, resulting in poor health outcomes. Rachel Stuart, one of the report's

In this compelling history of the co-ordinated, transnational defence of medical experimentation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rob Boddice explores the experience of vivisection as humanitarian practice. He captures the rise of the professional and specialist medical scientist, whose métier was animal experimentation, and whose guiding principle was 'humanity' or the reduction of the aggregate of suffering in the world. He also highlights the rhetorical rehearsal of scientific practices as humane and humanitarian, and connects these often defensive professions to meaningful changes in the experience of doing science. Humane Professions: The Defence of Experimental Medicine, 1876-1914 (Cambridge UP, 2021) examines the strategies employed by the medical establishment to try to cement an idea in the public consciousness: that the blood spilt in medical laboratories served a far-reaching human good. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a pr

Jeanne Simons devoted her career as a social worker and educator to the study, treatment, and care of children with autism. In 1955, she established the Linwood Children's Center in Ellicott City, Maryland, one of the first schools dedicated to children with autism. Her Linwood Model, developed there, was widely adopted and still forms the basis for a variety of autism intervention techniques. Incredibly—although unknown at the time—Jeanne was herself autistic. Behind the Mirror: The Story of a Pioneer in Autism Treatment and Her Work with Children on the Spectrum (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021) reveals the remarkable tale of Simons. In this interview I speak with Dr. Sabine Oishi, who co-author this book with Simons and also the book, the hidden child. Sabine Oishi, PhD, was educated first as a teacher and then as a child psychologist at the University of Geneva. She earned her PhD in child development and family therapy from the University of Maryland. She has worked as a teacher, researcher, and therapist both in

To many mathematicians and math enthusiasts, the word "innumeracy" brings to mind popular writing like that of John Allen Paulos. But inequities in our quantitative reasoning skills have received considerable interest and attention from researchers lately, including in psychology, development, education, and public health. Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers (Oxford University Press, 2020) is a unified treatment of these broad-ranging studies, from the ways more and less numerate people differ in our perceptions of risk and our number-based decisions to the roots of our numeric faculties and how we can make the best of them. Dr. Ellen Peters has made significant contributions to the subject and brings her expertise and an exceptional clarity to its presentation. Precious little of the research surveyed in her book could fit into this interview! We discussed the three components of numeric ability—objective numeracy, subjective numeracy, and the innate number sense—and how they vary w

Why do I feel bad? There is real power in understanding our bad feelings. With his classic Why We Get Sick, Dr. Randolph Nesse helped to establish the field of evolutionary medicine. Now he returns with Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry (Dutton, 2019), a book that transforms our understanding of mental disorders by exploring a fundamentally new question. Instead of asking why certain people suffer from mental illness, Nesse asks why natural selection has left us all with fragile minds. Drawing on revealing stories from his own clinical practice and insights from evolutionary biology, Nesse shows how negative emotions are useful in certain situations yet can become overwhelming. Anxiety protects us from harm in the face of danger, but false alarms are inevitable. Low moods prevent us from wasting effort in pursuit of unreachable goals, but they often escalate into pathological depression. Other mental disorders, such as addiction and anorexia, result from the

Military Medicine and the Making of Race: Life and Death in the West India Regiments (Cambridge University Press, 2020) by Tim Lockley demonstrates how Britain's black soldiers helped shape attitudes towards race throughout the nineteenth century. The West India Regiments were part of the British military establishment for 132 years, generating vast records with details about every one of their 100,000+ recruits which made them the best-documented group of black men in the Atlantic World. Tim Lockley shows how, in the late eighteenth century, surgeons established in medical literature that white and black bodies were radically different, forging a notion of the 'superhuman' black soldier able to undertake physical challenges far beyond white soldiers. By the late 1830s, however, military statisticians would contest these ideas and highlight the vulnerabilities of black soldiers instead. The popularity and pervasiveness of these publications spread far beyond British military or medical circles and had a signi

Blood is messy, dangerous, and charged with meaning. By following it as it circulates through people and institutions, Jenny Bangham explores the intimate connections between the early infrastructures of blood transfusion and the development of human genetics. Focusing on mid-twentieth-century Britain, Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics (U Chicago Press, 2020) connects histories of eugenics to the local politics of giving blood, showing how the exchange of blood carved out networks that made human populations into objects of medical surveillance and scientific research. Bangham reveals how biology was transformed by two world wars, how scientists have worked to define racial categories, and how the practices and rhetoric of public health made genetics into a human science. Today, genetics is a powerful authority on human health and identity, and Blood Relations helps us understand how this authority was achieved. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus