Category: Archive

  • Reconsidering the History of Domestic Medicine

    Reconsidering the History of Domestic Medicine

    By Jennifer W. Reiss The history of American medicine often follows a declension/ascension narrative: it’s a teleology of medical progress dominated by professionalised and scientifically-minded male physicians of the nineteenth century bringing the light of modernity to backward-looking, female-dominated folk practice of earlier periods. Even comparable British scholarship on early modern medical history follows a…

  • Film archives: using moving images as historical sources

    Film archives: using moving images as historical sources

    By Max Long My first encounter with moving image archives took place in a windowless room in the basement of a building in London. I was there to view a selection of natural history films. I had watched similar films online, but here I could load, spool, and wind up the films myself. Films are…

  • Thinking about Sleep Across History

    Thinking about Sleep Across History

    By Albert Kohn In a certain sense, sleeping is the great unifying experience across time and place. Regardless of time period, almost every person spends one-third to one-half of their life asleep thus a good portion of our modern lives are identical to those of medieval people! Yet, sleeping is not just the experience of…

  • ‘Experience doesn’t pay the bills’: a lesson from medieval England

    ‘Experience doesn’t pay the bills’: a lesson from medieval England

    By Rhiannon Sandy (@RhiannonSandy) A few weeks ago, in my daily perusal of Twitter, I came across a retweet which made me angry enough to write a blogpost. Questioned as to why interns should be paid if they’re ‘getting experience for their résumé’, US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a short video answer – ‘experience doesn’t…

  • Public History in the Digital Sphere: /r/AskHistorians

    Public History in the Digital Sphere: /r/AskHistorians

    By Joe Rachman What sparked the craze for martial arts, particularly kung fu, in 1970s America? Why did some Serbs commit acts of genocide in the late twentieth century despite Serbs themselves having been victims of genocide during World War Two? What started the Opium Wars? Did Zarathustra, the supposed founder of Zoroastrianism, actually exist?…