Cari Maes To date, Brazil has registered over 500 cases of Zika-related microcephaly and another 4,000 cases have yet to be confirmed. With the country set to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, what was a domestic public health crisis has attracted international concern and media attention. In particular, Zika has […]
Agnes Arnold-Forster In 1904 a rank and file clinician, A. T. Brand, narrated an incident in which, “a man presented himself…suffering from cancer of the…penis.” On further analysis, the tumour was “found to consist, not of penile tissue, but of uterine cervical elements.” It was then discovered, “the the man’s […]
Jill Briggs In 1934 Jamaica was gripped by a moral panic. According to a well-publicized British naval report, the island was “rife” with venereal diseases, particularly syphilis. Some venereal disease experts speculated that infection rates topped eighty percent of the population and included children as young as eight. The root […]
Boyd Brogan If you’re looking for evidence about bodies in history, it doesn’t get harder than skeletons. Opening this three-day conference at the University of Cambridge on the historical relationship between sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) and fertility, bioarchaeologist Charlotte Roberts argued that it is human remains, not documents, that constitute the primary record […]
Lara Freidenfelds “Having sex on your period is absolutely safe,” reassures OB-GYN and talk-show regular Dr. Laura Berman. Like most sex experts in the past half-century, Berman is ready to demolish old menstrual taboos and usher in a modern period. And like many educators, physicians, and cultural critics who have […]
Rob Boddice The news is rife with fearful accounts of disease — influenza is epidemic and measles is re-emergent — and debates about how to inoculate against them. Opponents of vaccination, meanwhile, are fanning the flames of fear. Measles, for example, is entirely preventable, but remains among us because of […]
Katherine Harvey The idea that food and sex are somehow connected is deeply entrenched in contemporary western culture, and one of its most common manifestations is the idea that certain foods and drinks have aphrodisiac properties. Articles on food and drink with aphrodisiac properties are a common feature in newspapers […]
