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Paper Products. Powder Rooms. What Past Pandemics Left Behind Forever.

Disease reshapes our lives in surprising ways.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on March 23, 2021
A portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with white hair and a full beard.

A Beautiful Ending

On dying and heaven in the time of Longfellow.
by Nicholas A. Basbanes via Humanities on June 15, 2020
Military patients in an emergency hospital at Camp Funston, Kansas, 1918.

How the Industrialization and Militarism of the Early 1900s Helped Spread the Spanish Influenza

The public and private battles waged across Europe and the United States during the 1918 flu pandemic.
by Edna Bonhomme via Literary Hub on March 24, 2025
A painting of a Staten Island harbor filled with boats, captioned "View of the Marine Hospital and Quarantine Grounds, Staten Island, New York."

Quarantine Scenes in Staten Island History

Staten Island's long battle against quarantine restrictions, from yellow fever to COVID-19.
by Carlos A. Santiago via The Gotham Center on March 19, 2025
Egg yolk spilling from crushed egg shell

It’s Weird That Eggs Were Ever Cheap

What were we thinking, buying so many of these fragile, messy, remarkable ovals? Get used to high egg prices, it was a miracle they were low in the first place.
by Annie Lowrey via The Atlantic on February 27, 2025
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter address children at a Ghana hospital in 2007.

How Jimmy Carter's Global Health Efforts Elevated 'The Art of the Possible'

Former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, gave visibility to devastating health problems that are often invisible.
by Helen Branswell via STAT on December 29, 2024
A boy sitting inside of an enclosed porch while his mother looks in from outside the door.

Inside Out

The magical in-betweenness—and surprising epidemiological history—of the porch.
by David Owen via The New Yorker on July 27, 2024
Benjamin Hawkins and the Creek Indians.

“Weapons of Health Destruction…” How Colonialism Created the Modern Native American Diet

On the impact of systematic oppression on indigenous cuisine in the United States.
by Andrea Freeman via Literary Hub on July 24, 2024
Three immigrants with chained hands and feet ascending staircase to a plane to be deported.

America’s Medicalized Borders: Past, Present, and Possible Future

Undoing the politics of fear will require us to reckon with the legacies of nativism that divert our attention from the greatest threats to our health.
by Carlos Martinez via Public Books on May 29, 2024
Black nurses and Sea View Hospital.

The ‘Black Angels’ Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis

Professional nurses who moved north during the Great Migration worked in New York City’s most contagious sanatorium — and changed the course of public health.
by Maria Smilios via The Emancipator on May 9, 2024
Students in Winnetka, Ill., are checked by a nurses as shown here on return to school following illness. 1947.
partner

To Address the Teen Mental Health Crisis, Look to School Nurses

For more than a century, school nurses have improved public health in schools and beyond.
by Sherrie Page Guyer via Made By History on May 8, 2024
The island of Molokai, where the Ball Method successfully treated leprosy sufferers.

A Young Black Scientist Discovered a Pivotal Leprosy Treatment in the 1920s

Historians are working to shine a light on Alice Ball’s legacy and contributions to an early treatment of a dangerous and stigmatizing disease.
by Mark M. Lambert via The Conversation on April 12, 2024
A photograph of two Guatemalan women infected with syphillis in U.S. experiements, their eyes covered by black bars.

The Hidden U.S. Experiments in Guatemala

The U.S. purposefully infected thousands of Guatemalans with sexually-transmitted diseases in the 40s and 50s. Their grandchildren still carry the trauma.
by Lydia Crafts via Process: A Blog for American History on April 9, 2024
Grave marker for "Special Case - Baby 1."

The Search for Special Case–Baby 1

Who was buried in the lonely grave in New York’s potter’s field? The year-long search led to a lost world in the history of AIDS.
by Lizzy Ratner via The Nation on March 12, 2024
A photograph of the Arizona desert at sunset with cacti in the foreground.

I Want Settlers To Be Dislodged From the Comfort of Guilt

My ancestors were the good whites, or at least that’s what I’ve always wanted to believe.
by Natasha Varner via Electric Literature on February 8, 2024
A participant in the Tuskegee syphilis study sits on steps in front of a house in Tuskegee.

The US Once Withheld Syphilis Treatment From Hundreds of Black Men in the Name of Science

The archival trove chronicles the extreme measures administrators took to ensure Black sharecroppers did not receive treatment for the venereal disease.
by Caitjan Gainty via The Conversation on January 12, 2024
Chickens and eggs.

The Unending Quest To Build A Better Chicken

Maybe what we need is not just a new form of poultry farming but a complete revolution in how we relate to meat.
by Boyce Upholt via Noema on December 19, 2023
Grafitti reading "no mines."

The Navajo Suffered From Nuclear Testing. 'Oppenheimer' Doesn't Tell Our Story

We must recognize the continued suffering and sacrifice of the Navajo that built the atomic era.
by Buu V. Nygren via TIME on July 21, 2023
Glass of wine spilling.

The Great Alcohol Health Flip-Flop Isn’t That Hard to Understand—If You Know Who Was Behind It

More than 30 years ago, the "French paradox" got America bleary-eyed.
by Tim Requarth via Slate on April 23, 2023
A flower.

A Structural History of American Public Health Narratives

Rereading Priscilla Wald’s "Contagious" and Nancy Tomes’ "Gospel of Germs" amidst a 21st-century pandemic.
by Amy Mackin via Assay Journal on March 25, 2023
Rats in a garden.

New York’s Rats Have Already Won

I thought having a rat czar would be an easy win for the city. I was wrong.
by Xochitl Gonzalez via The Atlantic on March 2, 2023
A pair of horses are unable to pull an overcrowded streetcar in New York City, shown in Harper's Weekly on Sept. 21, 1872.

A Virus Crippled U.S. Cities 150 Years Ago. It Didn’t Infect Humans.

The Great Epizootic, an equine flu in 1872-1873, infected most U.S. horses. Streetcars and mail delivery stopped across the country while fires raged.
by Jodie Tillman via Retropolis on February 12, 2023
A nurse tends to a patient in the influenza ward of the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Md.

1918 Flu Pandemic Upended Long-standing Social Inequalities – At Least for a Time

The first flu children encounter shapes their immune systems. This had a surprising effect on Black and white mortality rates in 1918.
by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Martin Eiermann via The Conversation on December 16, 2022
The edifice of the Lazaretto, Philadelphia's old quarantine station.

The Philadelphia Lazaretto

Quarantine at the Lazaretto met many migrants when they arrived in 19th-century Philadelphia.
by David S. Barnes via Perspectives on History on December 8, 2022
People swimming along the Hawaiian coast.

My Whole Life Is Empty Without You

A necessarily abridged perspective of place in Hawai‘i.
by J. Matt via Lapham’s Quarterly on November 14, 2022
Disinfection plant at Santa Fe Street International Bridge

From Bath Riots to Blocking Asylum

Public heath and race at the US-Mexico border.
by Arabella Delgado via Perspectives on History on August 15, 2022
Profile outlines of four people standing in line.

Every New Disease Triggers a Search for Someone to Blame

Focusing on a virus’s origins encourages individualized shame while ignoring the broader societal factors that contribute to a disease’s transmission.
by Steven Thrasher via The Atlantic on July 31, 2022
Smallpox vaccine vial and syringe.

Never Forget That Early Vaccines Came From Testing on Enslaved People

The practice of vaccination in the U.S. cannot be divorced from the history of slavery.
by Jim Downs via STAT on June 19, 2022
The Detroit Renewable Power waste incinerator

Dire Straits

A new history of Detroit’s struggles for clean air and water argues that municipal debt and austerity have furthered an ongoing environmental catastrophe.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via New York Review of Books on June 2, 2022
A red circle with a slash through it over a pair of puckered lips, superimposed on anti-kissing newspaper articles. Screenshots via Newspapers.com, lips vector by Vecteezy.

The Woman Who Fought to End the 'Pernicious' Scourge of Kissing

New understandings of how disease spread informed Imogene Rechtin's ill-fated 1910 campaign to ban a universal human practice.
by John Last via Smithsonian on May 31, 2022
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