Invisible Women, Invisible Abortions, Invisible Histories

One La Jolla Family’s Story Illuminates a Persistent Gap in Our Collective Memory

In the summers of 1897 and 1898, the San Diego, Pacific Beach, and La Jolla Railroad hired “Professor” Horace Poole to provide Fourth of July weekend entertainment. The spry 20-something doused himself with a flammable liquid and likely took a deep breath before setting himself ablaze, and diving from the top of the La Jolla Cliffs into the sea.

For this miraculous feat, Horace Poole is remembered well in San Diego. Poole Street in La Jolla is a hat tip to him, and his name regularly appears on local history website …

by Alicia Gutierrez-Romine | October 9, 2023

The Stories Doctors Tell

Physicians and Patients Stitch Together Narratives to Diagnose and Heal

by Jay Baruch | February 1, 2023

The belly pain is so bad that Mrs. Alves*, a woman in her 40s, is worming uncomfortably on the ER stretcher. “I need an answer,” she says. I promise her …

Could a Tattoo Cure What Ails You?

Medicine Is an Art. Art, Too, Can Be Medicine

by Anh Diep | September 22, 2022

Tattoos and medicine may seem an unlikely pairing, but medical tattoos are nothing new. Religious tattoos of ancient Egyptians honored the gods and, possibly, directed divine healing to ailing body …

The Renowned Psychologist Who Fathered a Theory of Child Development, a Rhesus Monkey, and Me

Remembering Kurt Fischer and His Complex, Varied, and Dynamic View of Humanity

by Seth Fischer | July 20, 2020

A few hours after I learned my dad had died, my stepmom called me on speaker to ask if we wanted a post-mortem COVID-19 test. I was pacing my living …

What Do We Owe Doctors and Nurses?

The Virus Has Exposed the Weaknesses of American Healthcare; to Build a Stronger System We Need to Care for Caregivers

by Judith Garber, Shannon Brownlee, and Vikas Saini | April 10, 2020

In late March, a mutual friend of ours called with a grim picture of the situation on the ground at the Queens hospital where he works. New York City had …

The Minnesota Invention That Rescued a Boy With a Hole in His Heart

In 1955, Two Researchers Created the Heart-Lung Machine That Would Save Millions of Children’s Lives

by Irwin Speizer | May 23, 2019

Stephen Joseph Brabeck was born in 1950 with a hole in his heart. To survive into adolescence would have been considered exceptionally fortunate at the time.

But Brabeck was lucky; …

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