Perspectives on Science

What's that smell? Join us as we revisit our interview with Melanie Kiechle on the history of cities, senses and public health. This episode of our podcast series features Melanie Kiechle's book, Smell Detectives: An Olfactory History of Nineteenth-Century Urban America. The book illuminates the lives of 19th-century Americans—including medical experts and ordinary city-dwellers—who used their noses to detect and address sanitation challenges associated with foul odors in the midst of rapid urban and industrial growth. Find this podcast and further resources on the Consortium's website at: www.chstm.org/video/62

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Alberto Martínez, author of Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Galileo and the Inquisition. In his book, Alberto Martínez reevaluates the life, career, and death of Giordano Bruno, the philosopher and cosmologist burned alive by the Catholic Inquisition in Rome in 1600. Martínez demonstrates that it was not his heterodox religious beliefs that led to his condemnation, but instead his visionary scientific beliefs—that the Earth moves, and that there are many worlds other than our own—that led to his demise. Dr. Martínez discusses the contrasting ways in which Bruno and Galileo were dealt with by the Inquisition, and shows how they drew upon the insights of prior thinkers to inform their own views about the heavens and the earth. He ends by discussing the immense power the Catholic Church has had over the construction of knowledge, and how it influences our collective memory of people like Giordano Bruno. Alberto Martínez is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. This podcast features a number of questions for Dr. Martínez from Lisa Nocks, a historian at the IEEE History Center, and from Vivion Vinson, a retired nurse. To cite this podcast, please use footnote: Alberto Martínez, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, July 27, 2021, https://www.chstm.org/video/123.

If you've watch television or listened to the radio lately, you've probably been bombarded with direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. Join us as we revisit our forum from October 2018 on the interplay between medicine and advertising, capitalism and consumerism. ------- Why do we refer to patients as "consumers" in the United States? Is today's opioid crisis the result of medical consumerism run amok--of pills hawked like soap to gullible shoppers? Is picking a doctor really like choosing a new car? In this talk, historians Nancy Tomes and David Herzberg discuss when and why patients started to be called "consumers," and examine the positive and negative aspects of twentieth-century medical "consumerism." We explore a century of efforts to deliver pharmaceutical relief through properly calibrated markets, and evaluate the risks (and often-misunderstood benefits) of governing addictive drugs as consumer goods. Find this presentation and further resources on the Consortium's website at: www.chstm.org/video/57

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing has been in the news this week with the recent IPO of 23andMe. Thus, we are revisiting our forum from September 2017 on biobanking, genetics, and the competing interests of individuals, businesses, and society in the collection and use of genetic samples. ------- Are we now approaching a time when we could all live, at least in freezers, forever? Modern collection and storage of biological samples make possible a kind of "immortality" for anyone who has ever had a saliva sample frozen for genealogical testing or a blood sample stored in medical collections. New technologies, like CRISPR for gene editing, expand possible future uses of biological materials stored around the world. The story of Henrietta Lacks, popularized in a book by Rebecca Skloot and an HBO special starring Oprah Winfrey, illustrates the ways that a single person's cells and tissues can take on lives of their own as research material. In 1953, just before her death, Lacks's cancer cells yielded the oldest and most common human cell line still used in research. There has been significant public interest in her remarkable story, but the "immortality" of people like Henrietta Lacks raises pressing questions for all of us. Who owns and controls bodily materials extracted from research subjects and patients? Who can profit from the cells and genes that make us who we are? How do we weigh the value of personal privacy and an individual’s sense of self against the potential for medical progress? How do imbalances of wealth and power influence questions of consent, exploitation, and identity for people who provide biological materials? These questions framed a public forum organized by the Consortium and hosted by the American Philosophical Society on September 28, 2017. Find this presentation and further resources on the Consortium's website at: www.chstm.org/video/51

Held in partnership with the American Philosophical Society, this discussion brings together historians Courtney Thompson and Alicia Puglionesi to discuss the fascinating world of the mind sciences in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. During this time period, the human mind captured the imagination of the American public. Efforts to reveal the subconscious and to understand mental physiology inspired the creation of new technologies, modes of experimentation, and collaborations that aspired to make visible the inner workings of the brain. These developments had a profound impact on the production of scientific and medical expertise that continues to influence conceptions of race, gender, and mental illness in the present. Dr. Thompson focuses on the history of phrenology, exploring its connection to popular and elite theories of criminality. As she explains both in her presentation and in her book An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America, phrenology constructed scientific ways of identifying, understanding, and analyzing criminals and their actions - ways which often recruited and justified folk notions and stereotypes of what criminals looked like and how they acted. Dr. Puglionesi recounts how and why psychologists and others interested in the mind investigated seances, clairvoyance, and telepathy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although some researchers were interested in debunking frauds and con artists, most were interested in reconciling the mind sciences with the supernormal. Dr. Puglionesi's book, Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science, tells this history and highlights the ways in which psychical research troubled the boundaries of science and its relationship to democracy and popular ways of experiencing the world. To cite this content, please use footnote: "Sciences of the Mind," Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, accessed Month Day, Year, https://www.chstm.org/video/121.

In light of the current global vaccination campaign against COVID-19 and the struggles to increase vaccine acceptance and ensure vaccine compliance, we revisit our Trust in Science: Vaccines forum from January 2019. What are the historical roots of resistance to vaccination? What is the data about contemporary attitudes? How do these attitudes relate to changing social, economic and political contexts? How do these issues play out in the relationship between a doctor and a patient? Listen to experts share their research and experience on these questions, and lead our discussion. "Trust in Science: Vaccines" is the first event in a series inspired by Perceptions of Science in America, a report from the Public Face of Science Initiative at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know is available now on Netflix, or go to https://www.blackholefilm.com and click on the Watch button at the top for more options. What can black holes teach us about the boundaries of knowledge? These holes in spacetime are the darkest objects and the brightest—the simplest and the most complex. With unprecedented access, Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know follows two powerhouse collaborations. Stephen Hawking anchors one, striving to show that black holes do not annihilate the past. Another group, working in the world’s highest altitude observatories, creates an earth-sized telescope to capture the first-ever image of a black hole. Interwoven with other dimensions of exploring black holes, these stories bring us to the pinnacle of humanity’s quest to understand the universe. In the video above, historians of science Lorraine Daston and Simon Schaffer join Peter Galison for a roundtable discussion about the film, its scientific, philosophical and artistic content, and the choices Peter made as director. Afterwards, Peter answers questions about the film from friends of the Consortium. To cite this content, please use footnote: "Behind the Scenes: Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know," Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, accessed Month Day, Year, https://www.chstm.org/video/120.

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Abraham Gibson, author of Feral Animals in the American South: An Evolutionary History. In his book, Abe Gibson tells the broader social and environmental history of the Southern United States by focusing on the domestication and subsequent ferality of dogs, horses, and pigs over the past three hundred years. Gibson discusses the co-evolution of humans and domesticated animals both in ancient history and the more recent history of the United States, and highlights how and why the open range in the U.S. South lasted longer than in other parts of the United States. Dr. Gibson uses the differential experiences of feral horses, dogs, and pigs to explore broader themes of commerce, sport, environment, and politics in Southern history from the colonial to the modern era. This podcast features a number of questions for Dr. Gibson from Simon Joseph, a former staff member of the Consortium who currently works in the offices of the American Philosophical Society. Abraham Gibson was a 2014-2015 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Abraham Gibson is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He teaches courses on the history of science, technology, engineering, medicine, and the environment, and his research examines topics such as the domestication of animals, the evolution of cooperation, and the relationship between technology and society. To cite this podcast, please use footnote: Abraham Gibson, interview, Perspectives, Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, April 30, 2021, https://www.chstm.org/video/119.

In light of India's ongoing struggle with COVID-19 and its devastating impacts, we revisit our conversation with Kavita Sivaramakrishnan from June 30, 2020. Dr. Sivaramakrishnan discusses public engagement and political history in the context of the COVID-19 crisis in India. Find this podcast and more in the Consortium's series on COVID-19 at: www.chstm.org/video/74

To view Professor Hansen's images and for more resources on this topic, please visit: https://www.chstm.org/video/118. Join Professor Bert Hansen as he discusses a number of popular images of American medicine from the late nineteenth century that he has donated to Yale's Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. In this presentation, Professor Hansen shows us what medicine looked like and how it was experienced by the public at that time. Professor Hansen's images use medicine to satirize the politics of the day, often showing politicians, political parties or mascots as sickly and in need of care. These illustrations depict the changing character of medicine and how it was interpreted by journalists, cartoonists, and the reading public in the late nineteenth century. Dr. Hansen's presentation, using images he has collected over decades and which are now part of The Bert Hansen Collection at Yale's Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, reveals the transformation of medicine and its evolving public reception through lively and fascinating mass media cartoons and illustrations. Bert Hansen has been teaching the history of science and medicine, after earning his PhD from Princeton University in 1974, at Binghamton University, the University of Toronto, New York University, and Baruch College of the City University of New York. He has published two books and numerous articles about medical and scientific developments from the 14th century through the 20th and about the imagery and popular attitudes that surround them. He has also written about gay history. His most recent scholarship examines the significance of Louis Pasteur's engagement with the fine arts. For more, see https://berthansen.com.