Medicine’s Culture Brokers: The History of Miami and the Challenge of Diversity in Health Care

Tuesday, September 24, 2024, 6-7:15pm (Eastern)

~ Milton Meyer Michaels Lecture & Hispanic Heritage Month ~

Catherine Mas, PhD (Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University)

After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees came to Miami. With this influx, the city's health care system was overwhelmed not just by the number of patients but also by the differences in culture. Mainstream medicine was often inaccessible or inadequate to Miami's growing community of Latin American and Caribbean immigrants. Instead, many sought care from alternative, often unlicensed health practitioners. This talk discusses the history of how an exceptionally diverse medical scene would catch the attention of medical social scientists who made Miami's multiethnic population into a laboratory for cross-cultural care and "global health."

Catherine Mas is a historian of science, medicine, and society, whose research and teaching focus on modern American history in transnational context. Her recent book, Culture in the Clinic: Miami and the Making of Modern Medicine, examines the history of health and healing in Miami alongside the rise of medical anthropology. Delving into a period of rapid social and demographic change, she shows how Latinx immigrants transformed American healthcare, as the healthcare system learned to manage a racially and ethnically diverse population.

This lecture will be online only. Attendance is FREE. Check back closer to the date for the Zoom link. 

The C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society thanks its dues-paying members and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics and Health Law for its support of the continuing relevance of medical history in our world.

Announcing the 41st Lecture Series

The C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society announces its 41st lecture season for the academic year 2024-2025. All lectures are free and open to the public via Zoom. They take place on Tuesday evenings from 6-7:15pm Eastern. Watch this space for the links, or join our email list.

September 24 ~ “Medicine’s Culture Brokers: The History of Miami and the Challenge of Diversity in Health Care” ~ Catherine Mas ~ Milton Meyer Michaels Lecture & Hispanic Heritage Month

A life-long Pittsburgher, Dr. Michaels (1927-2022) practiced Hematology and Internal Medicine and served as President of the Society.

November 12 ~ “Donora: A Look Back at the Worst Air Pollution Disaster in US History" ~ Andy McPhee ~ Sylvan Stool Lecture

Dr. Stool (1925-2004) was a beloved pediatric otolaryngologist at the University of Pittsburgh and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

January 21~ University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health Lecture ~ TBA

February 25 ~ "Race-Concordant Care: Historical Insights and Ethical Challenges" ~ Wangui Muigai ~ University of Pittsburgh Department of Medicine Lecture 

And in the evening: "Black Infant Mortality and the American Roots of a Health Inequality"

April 1 ~ “The Legacy of Infant Surgery without Anesthesia: Implications for Today” ~ Wendy Patrice Williams ~ Jonathon Erlen Lecture

Dr. Erlen (1946-2022) was the history of medicine librarian at the University of Pittsburgh for 35 years, until his retirement in 2019. He was a devoted teacher in the undergraduate, graduate, and health professions schools, winning the School of Medicine Curriculum Committee’s Excellence in Education Award in 2004 for his month-long elective in medical history. He was an active member of the American Association of the History of Medicine, the American Osler Society, and the Southern Association of the History of Medicine and Science (SAHMS). And for decades John was the linchpin of the Reynolds Society as its secretary, treasurer, and (pre-COVID) host extraordinaire. The fact that he is irreplaceable is evidenced by the fact that the two of us (Kristen and Adam) barely fill his shoes. In particular, we remember John as a mentor to students and to up-and-coming scholars such as ourselves, introducing us to the authors of our favorite books and reviewing our papers before we presented them. If you never received an email with a list of recent dissertations that he thought you would find interesting, then you missed out on a unique gesture of friendship. 

The C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society thanks its dues-paying members and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics and Health Law for its support of the continuing relevance of medical history in our world.

Virulent: The Vaccine War

Tuesday, April 9, 2024, from 7-9pm
Public Health Building, Room A115

Join us for our last event of the year AND our first in-person activity on campus since the pandemic: a viewing of Virulent: The Vaccine War. It's the newest documentary from Laura Davis (Producer) & Tjardus Greidanus (Director/ Editor/ Cinematographer), the makers of Burden of Genius about organ transplant pioneer Dr. Thomas Starzl. The cost is free! The film is 1.5 hours long. If you can, stay afterwards for a Q&A session with the filmmakers and Peter Salk, son of Jonas Salk and himself an expert on vaccines.

Inaugural Michaels Lecture: Gender, Race, and Science in Med School Design

 “Forming the Modern Physician: Gender, Race, and Science

in Early Twentieth-Century Medical School Design”

April 2, 2024 ~ Inaugural Michaels Lecture ~

Katherine L. Carroll, PhD (Independent Scholar)

Architectural historian Dr. Carroll has presented widely on medical school design and the intertwined ways in which the built environment influences scientific culture, as well as the ways in which cultural and social priorities affect building choices. As the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine celebrates the one-year anniversary of the opening of the new West Wing of Scaife Hall, and Duquesne University renovates its campus to welcome a brand-new DO medical school, this was thoughtful commentary about how past schools have made other choices. Click here for the recording (starts at 4:40).

This was the first annual Milton Meyer Michaels lecture. A life-long Pittsburgher, Dr. Michaels (1927-2022) practiced Hematology and Internal Medicine for over five decades. He supported the C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society for many years, having also served as its President. We thank the generosity of his wife, Lois Glazer Michaels, and their children, Eric, Marian, and Jacob, for endowing this speakership.

The C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society thanks the University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics and Health Law for its support of the continuing relevance of medical history in our world.

Image: University of Pittsburgh School of Dentistry shortly after construction (1912). University of Pittsburgh Archives photograph collection, 1971-2006, item 31735070042936.

Image description: A sepia-toned photograph depicts a long, rectangular building with two stories of tall plain windows and one story of short windows. There is decorative stone work around the entrance portal and a small facade on the roof.

“Accompanying History: The Journey to Undocumented Physicians”

February 20, 2024, 6-7:15pm Eastern Time
~ Inaugural John Erlen Lecture ~
Mark G. Kuczewski, PhD, HEC-C

(Loyola University Chicago)

Medical history and bioethics are siblings under the rubric of “health humanities.” For this lecture, Dr. Kuczewski will explore the history of undocumented healers in the United States. He has been engaged in bedside clinical ethics issues for more than 25 years. For the last decade, he has also been an articulate spokesperson for the just and equitable treatment of immigrant patients, medical students, and clinicians.  At noon, Dr. Kuczewski will present a Grand Rounds entitled “Caring for Immigrant Patients: Clinical and Institutional Challenges” to the University of Pittsburgh Department of Medicine. 

All Reynolds Society lectures are free and open to the public. This is the link to watch the recording of the evening lecture. You can check back here to see if the Grand Rounds recording has been posted.

Image description: We see the back of a young woman with brown skin and a long dark brown braid pulled forward over her shoulder. Colorful flowers and the words "I am one of those people Mexico sent" in white are painted on her bright red graduation mortar board with tassel. Credit: Bonnie Arbittier / San Antonio Report (2017)

"Could a situation be more ghastly?": Doctors, Disinfectants, and the Dead After the Johnstown Flood of 1889

Tuesday, January 23, 2024, 6-7:15pm Eastern

~ University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health Lecture ~

Vicki Daniel, PhD (Case Western)

On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam located in Western Pennsylvania’s Conemaugh Valley failed catastrophically, sending a torrent of water toward the city of Johnstown and killing approximately 2,200 people. In the wake of the flood, officials from the Pennsylvania Board of Health immediately labeled the decomposing human bodies scattered throughout the valley as a massive health threat and established new protocols for protecting the public’s health. At the same time, survivors grieved the dead as beloved friends and neighbors who deserved proper burial and commemoration. For this reason, the Johnstown Flood represents a moment of conflict between the social and medical conceptualizations of the dead in the era of emerging public health paradigms. In this talk, I will examine the roots of this conflict and analyze how local leaders and state health officials in Johnstown tried to balance between the biological and social imperatives of mass fatality events. I will show how officials deployed public health measures that reflected a compromise between viewing the dead as dangerous material and seeing them as human remains.

Click here to watch the recording of the lecture. A brief business meeting took place before the lecture with reports from the Secretary and Treasurer as well as an election; see the Contact Us page for the current officers.

Image: Anonymous depiction of the flood water surging over the stone railway bridge, which is in the center. Behind it is a pile of burning buildings and trees with orange-yellow flames and gray smoke. There are people rushing about and bodies in the water and on the ground.

Putting Science to Work: Women Healers and the Pursuit of Medical Knowledge in Early Pennsylvania

November 14, 2023, 6-7:15pm Eastern Time

~ Sylvan E. Stool Memorial Lecture ~

Susan H. Brandt, PhD (University of Colorado, Colorado Springs) 

The history of women physicians in the United States often begins with the 1850 founding of the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. However, mid-19th-century women physicians merely continued the legacies of other women healers from earlier centuries. In this talk based on her book, Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia (2022), Susan Brandt argues that women not only were essential health care providers but also were on the frontlines of scientific knowledge production.

Dr. Sylvan Stool was a beloved pediatric ENT surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh. All Reynolds Society lectures are free and open to the public. You can find the recording of the lecture here.

Image description: The book cover of Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia by Susan H. Brandt shows an artfully arranged collection of 18th-century medical artifacts, books, and plants.