American Association for the History of Medicine: Report of the Eighty-Second Annual Meeting

The eighty-second annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine was held in Cleveland, Ohio, 23–26 April 2009 at the Intercontinental Hotel and Conference Center. The following summary has been prepared by the Secretary, Christopher W. Crenner, and is intended for the information of the members of the Association. The official minutes and reports are preserved in the Office of the Secretary.

Program

• Thursday, 23 April

• AAHM Council Meeting

• Opening Reception

• Friday, 24 April

• Plenary Session

  • Context Matters: The Politics of Expanding Access to Healthcare Since 1932 Daniel M. Fox (President Emeritus, Milbank Memorial Fund)

  • Health Care Reform, One More Time: Must History Repeat Itself? Jonathan Cohn (Senior Editor, The New Republic)

Concurrent Sessions

• Session A1: Cardiovascular Health in the Late Twentieth Century

  • The Great Twentieth-Century Pandemic of Coronary Heart Disease II: State Comparisons William Rothstein (University of Maryland Baltimore County)

  • “Pump Heads”: Selective Inattention to the Cerebral Complications of Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery, 1968–1988 David Jones (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School)

  • Reframing the “Cholesterol Controversy”: Etiology, Epidemiology, and Memory in Postwar American Medicine Todd Olszewski (Office of NIH History, National Institutes of Health) Moderator: Randall Packard (Johns Hopkins University)

• Session A2: Perceptions of Mental Illness Across Time

  • Psychiatry, Gynecology, and the Effort to Understand Emotional Reactions to Oral Contraception Carrie Eisert (Princeton University)

  • “If Only I Was Naturally Ill”—Insanity, Institutions and Families in 1890’s Sweden Anna Lundberg (Centre for Population Studies, Umea University)

  • “Crazed in His Intellectuals”: Mental Illness in Puritan New England Norman Gevitz (Ohio University) Moderator: Jonathan Sadowsky (Case Western Reserve University)

• Session A3: Medicine and Popular American Culture

  • “My Teeth are Mind Blowin’ Givin’ Everybody Chillz”: Hip-Hop Tooth Decoration and American Dentists Alyssa Picard (Wayne State University)

  • Bionic Ballplayers: Medicine and the Business of Baseball Sarah Rose (University of Texas, Arlington) Joshua Salzmann (University of Illinois, Chicago)

  • A Numerical Quandary: New Interpretations of Youth Drinking Behavior and the Appropriate Minimum Drinking Age Joy Newman (University at Albany) Moderator: Martin Pernick (University of Michigan)

• Session A4: Poisonous Histories: Environmental Health

  • Toxic Legacy: Mustard Gas in the Sea Around Us Susan Smith (University of Alberta)

  • Living In the Shadow of Doubt: the Conflicting Politics of Industrial Pollution and Public Health in Herculaneum, Missouri, 1965–2000 Neil White (Columbia University)

  • Debating the Health Effects of DDT: Thomas Jukes, Charles Wurster, and the Fate of an Environmental Pollutant Elena Conis (University of California, San Francisco) Moderator: Gerald Markowitz (John Jay College, The City University of New York)

Lunch Sessions

• Session L1: Apologizing for the Past: The 2008 American Medical Association Apology to African American Physicians

  • Douglas Haynes (University of California, Irvine)

  • Evelynn Hammonds (Harvard University)

  • Susan Lederer (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

  • Theodore Brown (University of Rochester)

• Session L2: Should Medical Students Learn History of Medicine?

  • Jennifer Gunn (University of Minnesota)

  • Mindy Schwartz (University of Chicago)

  • Howard Kushner (Emory University)

Concurrent Sessions

• Session B1: History of the History of Medicine

  • The Man Who Founded the AAHM: Edward Bell “Ned” Krumbhaar (1882–1966) Paul Berman (University of Massachusetts Medical School)

  • The Army Medical Museum During World War I Michael Rhode (National Museum of Health and Medicine)

  • Medical Exhibiting in the Twentieth Century Miriam Posner (Yale University) Moderator: Kenneth M. Ludmerer (Washington University in St. Louis)

• Session B2: Health Services in Comparative Contexts

  • The Development of Health Services in the Israeli Kibbutz Movement, 1910–1948 Michal Man (Max Stern Emek Jezrael College) Shifra Shvarts (Ben Gurion University)

  • Early Detection Clinic or Well-Woman Center? Locating U.K. Women’s Cancer Detection Services, 1960s–1980s Elizabeth Toon (University of Manchester)

  • The Politics of Public Health: Chicago 1850–1930 Stephen Randoll (St. Louis University) Moderator: Theodore Brown (University of Rochester)

• Session B3: The Cold War and Psychiatry, 1940s–1950s

  • Tranquilizing the Caveman: Miltown and Masculinity in Postwar America David Herzberg (State University of New York at Buffalo)

  • Cold War Politics and the Promises and Perils of the New Psychopharmacology Andrea Tone (McGill University)

  • Diseased, Depraved, or Just Drunk? Psychiatrists and the Struggle against Alcoholism in Communist Yugoslavia...