Past Lectures

Past Lectures, 2012-2013

Thursday, September 27, 2012
Curtis W. Hart, M. Div., Weill Cornell Medical College
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: A Famous Patient
This event was co-sponsored by the Heberden Society

Wednesday, October 17, 2012
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Mark Largent, Ph.D., Michigan State University
Vaccine: The Modern American Debate

Past Lectures, 2011-2012

Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Neal Flomenbaum, M.D., Weill Cornell Medical Center
Emergency Medicine in Lower Manhattan in the late 1800's: Everything Old is New Again
This lecture was co-sponsored by the Heberden Society

Wednesday, November 16, 2011
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Barron Lerner, MD, PhD, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
One for the Road: Drunk Driving Since 1900

Tuesday, December 6, 2011
James Colgrove, PhD, MPH, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Epidemic City: The Politics of Public Health in New York

Wednesday, January 18, 2012
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
Ira Rutkow, MD, DrPH, University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey
The Civil War: How Did It Impact Medicine in America?

Wedneday, February 29, 2012
Margaret Humphreys, MD, PhD, Duke University
"Of Wards and War": The Importance of Good and Bad Medical Care in the American Civil War

Thursday, March 15, 2012
Jane E. Schultz, PhD, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis
Hired to Care: Civil War Nurses and the Military Body

Thursday, April 5, 2012
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
Mary Fissell, PhD, Johns Hopkins University
Something Borrowed, Something Blue: The Strange History of Aristotle's Masterpiece

Wednesday, May 16, 2012
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Susan M. Reverby, PhD, Wellesley College
Escaping Melodramas: Historical Thinking and the Public Health Service Studies in Tuskegee and Guatamala

Past Lectures, 2010-2011

Thursday, October 7, 2010
Paul Kligfield, MD, FACC, FAHA Professor of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College
Medical Chaos in 1890s New York: The Case of University Medical College
This lecture was co-sponsored by the Heberden Society

Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Chris Sellars, MD,PhD, SUNY Stony Brook
Global Health: Historical Perspectives I: The Uneven Development of Knowledge about Lead Poisoning: Notes toward a Comparison between the U.S. and Mexico
This lecture was sponsored in part by the New York Council on the Humanities

Thursday, December 2, 2010
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Vinh-Kim Nguyen, MD, MSc, PhD, University of Montreal; Commentary by Jeffrey O'Malley, Director of the HIV/AIDS Group in the United Nations Development Programme
Global Health: Historical Perspectives II: The Republic of Therapy: AIDS in West Africa
This lecture was sponsored in part by the New York Council on the Humanities

Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
Jeffrey M. Jentzen, MD, PhD, University of Michigan
Death Investigation in America

Thursday, February 10, 2011
Anne-Emanuelle Birn, ScD, University of Toronto
Global Health: Historical Perspectives III: Global Health and the Politics of Cooptation
This lecture was sponsored in part by the New York Council on the Humanities

Thursday, March 17, 2011
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
Domenico Bertoloni Meli, PhD, Indiana University - Bloomington
Vivisection in William Harvey's Century

Thursday, April 14, 2011
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Leslie J. Reagan, PhD, University of Illinois
Dangerous Pregnancies: German Measles (Rubella), Mothers, and Disabilities in Modern America

Monday, May 9, 2011
William J. Higgins, Higgins Quasebarth & Partners, LLC
The Architecture of Health: Four Centuries of Hospital Design in New York City

Past Lectures, 2009-2010

Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Beatrix Hoffman, Ph.D., Northern Illinois University
Insurance or Rights? Debates over Health Coverage and Access to Health Care in the U.S., 1912-1950

Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Rosemary Stevens, Ph.D., M.P.H., Weill Cornell Medical College
Industry vs. System: US Health Policy 1948-2009

Thursday, November 12, 2009
Jonathan Engel, Ph.D., Baruch College
What is Wrong with Medicaid?

Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Rashi Fein, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School
Presidents and the Never-Ending Quest for Health Reform

Thursday, February 4, 2010
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
M. Susan Lindee, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Gut Feelings and Technical Precision: Thinking about Cystic Fibrosis

Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Steven J. Peitzman, M.D., Drexel University College of Medicine
Bleed or Not Bleed Mrs. Camac? A 19th Century Medical Decision

Monday, April 12, 2010
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
Jacalyn Duffin, M.D., Ph.D., Queens University, Ontario
Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints and Healing in the Modern World

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Ph.D., University of Missouri, Kansas City and the Linda Hall Library
Nature Revealed: The Evolution of a Scientific Emblem

Past Lectures, 2008-2009

Thursday, October 2, 2008
Bert Hansen, Ph.D., Baruch College
Historical Perspectives on Reducing Maternal Mortality, Part I: Pare Lorentz's "The Fight for Life" and the Maternal Health Movement of the Interwar Years

Thursday, October 30, 2008
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Jacqueline Wolf, Ph.D., Ohio University
Historical Perspectives on Reducing Maternal Mortality, Part II: Despite the Risk: Lay and Medical Perceptions of Obstetric Anesthesia

Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Ann Starrs, President, Family Care International
Historical Perspectives on Reducing Maternal Mortality, Part III: Dying for Life: Maternal Mortality in the Developing World

Thursday, February 5, 2009
Jesse Ballenger, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University
Changing Perspectives on Healthy Aging, Part I: To Conquer Confusion: Aging, Culture, and Concepts of Dementia

Wednesday, March 11, 2009
TheJohn K. Lattimer Lecture
John W. Rowe, M.D., Columbia University
Changing Perspectives on Healthy Aging, Part II: The Development of the Concept of Successful Aging

Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Linda Fried, Columbia University
Changing Perspectives on Healthy Aging, Part III: Preserving and Enhancing Social Utility Among the Aging

Monday, April 6, 2009
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco
Changing Perspectives on Health Aging, Part IV: The Estrogen Elixir: Women, Hormone Replacement, and the Predicament of Aging

Thursday, May 7, 2009
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
Charles Rosenberg, Ph.D., Harvard University
Changing Perspectives on Healthy Aging, Part V: Who Owns Old Age?

Past Lectures, 2007-2008

Wednesday, October 24,2007
Edward Shorter, MD; Max Fink, MD; Lee Wachtel, MD; Ann Bauer, journalist
Alfred Freedman, MD, moderator
The History of Convulsive Therapy from Depression to Autism: Past Uses, Future Possibilities

Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Jeremy Hugh Baron, DM, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Medicine in Wartime, Part I: The Anglo-American Biomedical Antecedents of Nazi Crimes

Wednesday, December 12, 2007
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
Alan Kraut, PhD, American University
'Mirrors of the Culture': Jewish Hospitals in the History of American Health Care

Tuesday, January 22, 2008
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
Will Noel, PhD,The Walters Art Museum
The Strange Case of the Archimedes Codex

Thursday, February 21, 2008
Bertrand Taithe, PhD, University of Manchester
Medicine in Wartime, Part II: The Giant Hospital: Besieged Paris in the Modern War Era, 1870-1871

Thursday, March 27, 2008
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Arleen M. Tuchman, Vanderbilt University
Diabetes: A Cultural History

Thursday, April 24, 2008
Beth Linker, University of Pennsylvania
Medicine in Wartime, Part III: Limb Lab: Getting Amputee Soldiers Back to Work in World War I America

Thursday, May , 8, 2008
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Susan L. Smith, University of Alberta
Medicine in Wartime, Part IV: Place, Health and War: World War II Mustard Gas Experiments in Transnational Perspective

Past Lectures, 2006-2007

Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Mathilde Krim, M.D.
Ronald Bayer, Ph.D., Columbia University
HIV AIDS: The First Quarter-Century

Thursday, October 12, 2006
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
David S. Barnes, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs

Wednesday, November 8, 2006
John P. Swann, PhD, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
100 Years and More of Misbranding, Adulteration, and Drug Regulation in America

Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Barron H. Lerner,MD, PhD, Columbia University
When Illness Goes Public: Celebrity Patients and How We Look at Medicine

Thursday, January 25, 2007
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Harriet Washington, Independent Scholar
American Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans

Thursday, February 15, 2007
Chris Feudtner, MD, PhD, MPH, University of Pennsylvania
Depicting Decisions: The History of Diabetes and the Daily Work of Care

Wednesday, March 21, 2007
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
Walton Schalick, MD, PhD, Washington University in St. Louis
School Books, School Days: The Technology of Medical Books in Medieval Paris

Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Susan Lederer, PhD, Yale University
Bombs, Blood, and Bio-Markers: Medical Preparedness in Cold War America

Tuesday, May 22, 2006
Gerald Oppenheimer, PhD, MPH, Columbia University
Shattered Dreams? The Impact of AIDS on the new South Africa

Past Lectures, 2005-2006

Tuesday, September 27, 2005
David T. Mininberg, MD, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
The Art of Medicine in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean

Thursday, October 27, 2005
James P. Allen, PhD, Metropolitan Museum of Art
The World of Ancient Egyptian Medicine

Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Michael McVaugh, PhD, University of North Carolina
An Ailment Not to be Treated: The Rationality of Pre-Modern Surgery

Wednesday, December 7, 2005
Monica Green, PhD, Arizona State University
Gynecology and Surgery: Allilances of Knowledge and Practice in the Premodern Period

Wednesday, January 18, 2006
David Oshinsky, University of Texas
Polio: A Look Back at the 20th Century's Most Feared Disease

Thursday, February 23, 2006
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
James H. Jones, PhD
The Decision to Put David into "the Bubble:" Treatment or Research?

Thursday, March 23, 2006
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Janet Golden, Rutgers University
The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
Roger Gaskell
Recreating the Harveian Library of the London College of Physicians

Wednesday, May 17, 2006
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Amy Fairchild and Ron Bayer, Columbia University
The Searching Eyes of Government: Public Health Surveillance in Twentieth-Century America

Past Lectures, 2004-2005

Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Humanities Month
Julia Boyd
Doctress: Elizabeth Blackwell, MD and her Place in the History of Medicine
Co-sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities

Monday, October 25, 2004
Paul E.M. Fine, VMD, PhD, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
From Pumphandle to Polio Eradication

Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Sarah Tracy, PhD, University of Oklahoma
2003-04 Paul Klemperer Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine
Old Wine in New Bottles?: Theories of Alcoholism and its Treatment in America, 1870 to 2004

Thursday, November 11, 2004
Bryan Waterman, New York University
2004-2005 Audrey and William H. Helfand Fellow in Medical Humanities
Narrative, Knowledge, and the National Health: Writing about Yellow Fever in Late Eighteenth-Century New York City

Thursday, November 18, 2004
John Barry, Tulane University
The Great Influenza of 1918

Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Jeremy Greene, Harvard University
The Fall and Rise of a Risk Factor: Cholesterol and the Statins, 1950-2000

Tuesday, January 18, 2005
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
Michael Bliss, University of Toronto
Harvey Cushing, his Boswells, and his Harem: Immortalizing an American Surgeon

Thursday, February 10, 2005
Samuel Roberts, Columbia University
Mediating Infection and Politics: Ideas of Hereditary Predisposition and Poverty in the Early U.S. Anti-Tuberculosis Movement

Thursday, March 17, 2005
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Judy Wu, Ohio State University
Modernizing Chinatown: Race, Reproduction, and Medical Tourism

Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Paul Sutter, University of Georgia
Pulling the Teeth of the Tropics: Disease, Race, and Nature during the American Construction of the Panama Canal

Thursday, April 21, 2005
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
Howard Markel, University of Michigan
When Germs Travel: Epidemics and Immigrants in the 20th Century
This event was sponsored in part by the New York Council for the Humanities.

Monday, May 23, 2005
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Susan Wolf, University of Minnesota Law School
Governing Reproductive Medicine and Reprogenetics: A Daunting Challenge

Past Lectures, 2003-2004

Tuesday, October 14, 2003
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Bert Hansen, PhD, Baruch College
Medical History for the Masses: Heroes of Medicine in Children's Comic Books of the 1940s

Tuesday, November 11, 2003
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
John Harley Warner, PhD, Yale University
Aesthetics, Identity, and the Grounding of Modern Medicine

Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Elizabeth Norman, PhD, New York University
We Band of Angels: The Story of American Nurses Captured in the Philippine Islands During World War II

Wednesday, January 21, 2004
James C. Whorton, PhD, University of Washington School of Medicine
From Cultism to CAM: Alternative Medicine in the Twentieth Century

SPECIAL THREE-LECTURE SERIES ON PSYCHIATRY IN AMERICA

Wednesday, February 18, 2004:
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Jonathan Sadowsky, Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University
Electroconvulsive Therapy and the Concept of Progress in Medical History

Wednesday, March 17, 2004:
Jonathan Metzl, M.D., Ph.D., University of Michigan
Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs

Wednesday, April 7, 2004:
Andrea Tone, Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology
They Used to Call it 'Just Nerves': Pills, Science, and Profit in Modern Medicine

Wednesday, May 12, 2004:
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
Katherine Park, Ph.D., Harvard University
The Empire of Anatomy: Rethinking Vesalius' Titlepage

Past Lectures, 2002-2003

Wednesday, October 9, 2002
Matthew Ramsey, PhD, Vanderbilt University
Remedy Vendors and the Printed Word in 18th- and 19th-Century France

Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Ellen S. More, PhD, University of Texas
Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone and the Personal Politics of Sexuality

Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Alice D. Dreger, PhD, Michigan State University
Measuring Phalluses, Gendering Babies, and Speaking to the Dead: What History Tells Us about Handling Intersex Today

Wednesday, January 29, 2003
Amy Fairchild, PhD, Columbia University
Science at the Borders: Immigrant Medical Inspection and the Shaping of the Modern Industrial Labor Force

Wednesday, February 19, 2003
The Iago Galdston Lecture
Randall M. Packard, PhD, Johns Hopkins University
What Kind of a Problem is Malaria? The Past and Future of Malaria Control

Thursday, March 13, 2003
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
John Efron, PhD, University of California—Berkeley
Medicine, Modernity, and the German Jews

Wednesday, April 9, 2003
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
James Tait Goodrich, MD, PhD, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein School of Medicine
Andreas Vesalius (1519-1564): A Medical Academic's Evolving Viewpoint on Vesalius' Contributions to Art and Anatomy

Tuesday, May 6, 2003
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Paul Lombardo, PhD, JD, University of Virginia
Better for all the World: Eugenics, the Supreme Court and Buck v. Bell

Past Lectures, 2001-2002

Thursday, October 11, 2001
Humanities Month Lecture
M. Susan Lindee, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
The Yanomami-Measles Controversy: A Participant-Observer's Account

Wednesday, November 14, 2001
Karen Buhler-Wilkerson, RN, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
No Place Like Home: A History of Nursing and Home Care in the United States

Tuesday, December 11, 2001
Margaret Humphreys, MD, PhD, Duke University
Whose Body? Which Disease? Studying Malaria while Treating Neurosyphilis

Wednesday, January 9, 2002
M. Donald Blaufox, MD, PhD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
An Ear to the Chest: The Evolution of the Stethoscope

Tuesday, February 12, 2002
The Iago Galdston Lecture
James Mohr, PhD, University of Oregon
The Burning of Honolulu's Chinatown: Plague, Fire, Bacteriology, and Public Health Policy at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

Wednesday, March 13, 2002
The John K. Lattimer Lecture
Steven Feierman, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Traditional Medicine in Africa: Colonial Transformations

Tuesday, April 8, 2002
The Annual Friends of the Rare Book Room Lecture
Philip K. Wilson, PhD, Pennsylvania State University Medical School, Hershey
Reading the Body: Medical and Surgical Perspectives of the Skin in the 18th Century

Wednesday, May 8, 2002
The Lilianna Sauter Lecture
Robert Proctor, PhD, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Was there such a thing as "good Nazi science"? German struggles against cancer, 1933-45