This site is dedicated to those hardworking and underpaid Angels of Mercy who, over the years, have made a stay in hospital that much more bearable. It's a growing collection of images of Nurses taken from Film, TV and The Media from the 1930s to the present, showing how uniform styles have changed over the years.
posted by Joe Beese
on Jun 19, 2009 -
7 comments
Thirty-six years after the
National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse recommended that "simple possession" of pot be decriminalised, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has
introduced a bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), to remove federal criminal penalties for possession of up to 100 grams (about three-and-a-half ounces) of marijuana and the not-for-profit transfer of up to one ounce (28.3 grams). Drug reform advocates
lit up hailed the legislation as "an important step toward bringing federal law into line with scientific fact, practical reality and public opinion." Is America, at long last, having a collective moment of sanity?
posted by kliuless
on Apr 20, 2008 -
76 comments
The Suicide’s Soliloquy August 25, 1838, the Sangamo Journal, a Whig newspaper in Springfield, Illinois, carried an unsigned poem, thirty-six lines long. It stands out for two reasons: first, its subject is suicide; second, its author was most likely a twenty-nine-year-old politician and lawyer named
Abraham Lincoln.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin relates how
historians regard a broken off engagement to Mary Todd as the trigger to
his famous depression, but it was his perceived failure as politician, she maintains, that fed Lincoln's
"black dog". (For his depression,
Lincoln probably took "blue mass", a drug prescribed to treat "hypochondriasis," a vague term that included
melancholia). Lincoln's medical history file is
here
posted by matteo
on Jun 7, 2004 -
12 comments
Medical histories of American Presidents - Washington "exuded such masculine power as frightens young women just wakening to the opposite sex." Jefferson had all his teeth when he died at 84. Wilson's handshake was described as "a ten-cent pickled mackerel in brown paper." Taft was once laid up for a few days after a bug flew into his eye. Facts & trivia about presidential health.
posted by madamjujujive
on Sep 28, 2003 -
15 comments
Health Physics Instrumentation Collection. A shoe-fitting fluoroscope,
Geiger Mueller detectors,
civil defence items,
atomic movie posters,
radioactive quack cures,
radiation warning signs, etc.
Much more in the way of historical scientific instrumentation at the
University of Toronto Museum of Scientific Instuments : exhibits on
psychology,
acoustics, and
early electron microscopy; more in
the collections.American Artifacts has some interesting articles and illustrations on antique scientific and medical instruments, such as
these quack eye massagers.
posted by plep
on Aug 17, 2003 -
10 comments
The Origins of AIDS AIDS has become such a commonplace thing, hence the need for days like today. When is the last time you thought of how HIV/AIDS came about? Have you ever? Such interesting tidbits as the fact that it's been documented to 1959 can be found here.
posted by ashbury
on Dec 1, 2001 -
5 comments
Déja vu "A mysterious epidemic, hitherto unknown, which had struck terror into all hearts by the rapidity of its spread, the ravages it made, and the apparent helplessness of the physicians to cure it." — on syphillis, in the 16th centruy.
Highlights from the CBC's 1996 Ideas shows on AIDS in historical perspective, available in real audio for downloading or streaming. I remember stopping the car and listening to the whole thing four years ago: "The programs underline how a whole series of biological, psychological and social factors shape the public's perception of disease, and society's response to it. The strengths and limits of past approaches to detecting sexually transmitted diseases are explored, in order to shed light on approaches that could be used to control AIDS today."
posted by sylloge
on Dec 1, 2000 -
0 comments
