conversations about medicine and life
Susanne M. Klausen
William Osler once said ‘one of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine’.[1] Tragedies have unfolded when physicians and pharmacists, wooed by pharmaceutical companies as to the wonders of their products, have not heeded this advice.
[Read more…] about Chemical legacies: Thalidomide in New Zealand
Lucy Hunter
June Opie was twenty-three when she contracted polio on her way to England from New Zealand in 1947. She spent two years in a London hospital, where she initially had no friends or family. Against terrible odds, June recovered from full-body paralysis and learned to walk again, albeit on crutches and with both legs in callipers. Her autobiography, Over My Dead Body, was published in 1957. It became an international best-seller in just ten days.
[Read more…] about The inert body alive on the page: June Opie’s Over My Dead Body
Beatrice Hale
For the past year or so I have been researching and writing the history of family caregiving. Let me say that in no way can this be a comprehensive piece of work! I have chosen to focus mainly on care of the elderly, since this reflects my professional experience as a social worker.
“It’s just what we do.”[1] This quote opens Tim Cook’s 2007 The History of the Carers’ Movement, which outlines the history of the British organisation now known as Carers UK.[2] But caring for others goes back a long, long time, as Lorna Tilley demonstrates in her fascinating book Theory and Practice in the Bioarcheology of Care. She quotes a number of bioarchaeological authorities who say that most remains of older Neanderthal showed healing, ‘implying that the Neanderthals had achieved a level of societal development where disabled individuals were well cared for by others of the social group’.[3]
