For the Medical Record

This is a bonus episode of For the Medical Record! Mia is flying solo to talk with Paul William Child, Professor of English at Sam Houston State University and alum of Johns Hopkins University's Online Master's Program in the History of Medicine. Child joins the pod to chat about his new book, The Dean Disordered: Jonathan Swift and Humoral Medicine, which grew out of his thesis project as well as a longstanding interest in Swift and his work. They discuss Swift's writings, how Swift understood his humoral body, and how the master's program helped shape his approach. Enjoy!

Works Referenced:

This week, on For the Medical Record, Richard and Mia chat with Benjamin Breen, Associate Professor of History at University of California, Santa Cruz. Breen talks about the paper he presented as part of the Johns Hopkins Program in the History of Science, Medicine & Technology's colloquium series, "The James Siblings in the Age of Quantification." They discuss the James family and their philosophies about the relationship between modern technology and the body as well as how Breen might be looking at this project as a pre-history of artificial intelligence. Enjoy!

For more of Breen's work, check out his books, The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) and Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science (Grand Central Publishing, 2024).

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For the Medical Record is a podcast from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, hosted by Research Associate Richard Del Rio and Postdoctoral Fellow Mia Levenson. New episodes are released biweekly.

In these episodes, we talk to people affiliated with the Center to discuss their research within the history of medicine and the medical humanities. We ask them why their work matters, and how history and the humanities can help us to better understand debates and practices within medicine and care today.

Welcome back to For the Medical Record! This week, Richard and Mia sit down with Dominique Tobbell, Centennial Distinguished Professor of Nursing and director of the Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Nursing History of Inquiry at the University of Virginia. Professor Tobbell recently spoke at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing about her recently published book, Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing. We talk about the history of nursing education and how the debate about whether nurses with doctoral degrees can call themselves "doctors."

Related Resources:

And if you're interested in Prof. Tobbell's newest project, check out:

• Dominique Tobbell, “The Role of Communities in Nurse-Led Clinics, 1965-2000: Lessons from History.” Policy, Politics, and Nursing Practice (2025) 26(1): 6-15.

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For the Medical Record is a podcast from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, hosted by Research Associate Richard Del Rio and Postdoctoral Fellow Mia Levenson. New episodes are released biweekly.

In these episodes, we talk to people affiliated with the Center to discuss their research within the history of medicine and the medical humanities. We ask them why their work matters, and how history and the humanities can help us to better understand debates and practices within medicine and care today.

After a short hiatus for the summer, we're back with another episode of For the Medical Record! This week, Richard and Mia talk with Randall Packard, professor emeritus in the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University about his new book, Fevered Cities: A History of Dengue Epidemics. We talk about why dengue fever is such an interesting disease to track the history of and how changes to global health are going to impact dengue epidemics going forward. 
 
Related Works:

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For the Medical Record is a podcast from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, hosted by Research Associate Richard Del Rio and Postdoctoral Fellow Mia Levenson. New episodes are released biweekly.

In these episodes, we talk to people affiliated with the Center to discuss their research within the history of medicine and the medical humanities. We ask them why their work matters, and how history and the humanities can help us to better understand debates and practices within medicine and care today.

Welcome back to another episode of For the Medical Record! This week, Richard and Mia talk with Bryan Doerries, artistic director of Theater of War Productions. They discuss Bryan's recent production of A Refutation, where actors dramatically read documents related to the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, which was performed at several locations around the DC/Baltimore area, including Johns Hopkins Hospital.

For more information about A Refutation, you can visit Theater of War Productions' website. For a full recording of the performance at the Union Memorial United Methodist Church in West Baltimore, click here.

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For the Medical Record is a podcast from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, hosted by Research Associate Richard Del Rio and Postdoctoral Fellow Mia Levenson. New episodes are released biweekly.

In these episodes, we talk to people affiliated with the Center to discuss their research within the history of medicine and the medical humanities. We ask them why their work matters, and how history and the humanities can help us to better understand debates and practices within medicine and care today.

It's summer, which means scholars are heading to the archives! Looking down the barrel at their own upcoming research trips, Richard and Mia talk with Michael Seminara, the curator for the historical collection at the Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins. They chat with him about curating the collection, putting up exhibitions, and what he wished scholars knew about working with archivists. 

Recent Articles about the Collection:

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For the Medical Record is a podcast from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, hosted by Research Associate Richard Del Rio and Postdoctoral Fellow Mia Levenson. New episodes are released biweekly.

In these episodes, we talk to people affiliated with the Center to discuss their research within the history of medicine and the medical humanities. We ask them why their work matters, and how history and the humanities can help us to better understand debates and practices within medicine and care today.

In this episode, Richard and Mia talk with Mary Fissell, the Inaugural J. Mario Molina Professor of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, about her new book, "Pushback: The 2,500-Year Fight to Thwart Women by Restricting Abortion." This is a great book and Mary is such a wealth of knowledge about this history.

Related Works:

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For the Medical Record is a podcast from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, hosted by Research Associate Richard Del Rio and Postdoctoral Fellow Mia Levenson. New episodes are released biweekly.

In these episodes, we talk to people affiliated with the Center to discuss their research within the history of medicine and the medical humanities. We ask them why their work matters, and how history and the humanities can help us to better understand debates and practices within medicine and care today.

In this (not-so-mini) episode, Richard and Mia chat with Tufts University history professor, Alisha Rankin, about the paper she presented for the 29th Hideyo Ngouchi Lecture and as part of the Johns Hopkins Program in the History of Science, Medicine & Technology's colloquium series. Her paper, "The Skillful Surgeon: Surgical Expertise and Contested Authority in Early Modern Europe," was about these  manuscripts made by Renaissance-era surgeons that illustrated surgical procedures. This is a bit of a longer mini episode -- we had so much fun chatting we simply could not cut it down! 

The Wellcome Collection has digital scans of some of manuscripts discussed:

Georg Bartisch

• The Franciscan copy of Bartisch's manuscript is here.

The Wellcome Collection also has a short blog post on Bartisch's manuscripts.

Other works mentions:

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For the Medical Record is a podcast from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, hosted by Research Associate Richard Del Rio and Postdoctoral Fellow Mia Levenson. New episodes are released biweekly.

In these episodes, we talk to people affiliated with the Center to discuss their research within the history of medicine and the medical humanities. We ask them why their work matters, and how history and the humanities can help us to better understand debates and practices within medicine and care today.

In this episode, Richard and Mia are joined by Lan Li, professor of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Online Program in the History of Medicine, to talk about their new book, Body Maps: Improvising Meridians and Nerves in Global Chinese Medicine.  

Works referenced in the episode:

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For the Medical Record is a podcast from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, hosted by Research Associate Richard Del Rio and Postdoctoral Fellow Mia Levenson. New episodes are released biweekly.

In these episodes, we talk to people affiliated with the Center to discuss their research within the history of medicine and the medical humanities. We ask them why their work matters, and how history and the humanities can help us to better understand debates and practices within medicine and care today.

In this episode, Richard and Mia talk to Julia Cummiskey, a professor of the history of medicine right here at Johns Hopkins University. She chats with us about her new book, Virus Research in 20th-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global.

For more about the Uganda Virus Research Institute, visit https://www.uvri.go.ug/
For more about the Rakai Health Sciences Program, visit https://www.rhsp.org/
A note from Julia: "I wish I had mentioned how important their work is and how much it means when they get donations to help support that work!"

Works referenced in the episode:

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For the Medical Record is a podcast from Johns Hopkins University's Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, hosted by Research Associated Richard Del Rio and Postdoctoral Fellow Mia Levenson. New episodes are released biweekly.

In these episodes, we talk to people affiliated with the Center to discuss their research within the history of medicine and the medical humanities. We ask them why their work matters, and how history and the humanities can help us to better understand debates and practices within medicine and care today.