8 Nov 2020
In my previous post we talked about the ways in which newspaper comic strips—the place in a daily paper, otherwise devoted to world wars and local political debates, that was in 1918 primarily focused on entertainment and humor—engaged with the most devastating pandemic the United States had experienced. In the comic strips, cartoonists sought both […]
5 Apr 2020
[1] See Carol R. Byerly, “The U.S. Military and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919,” Public Health Report 125 (2010 ): 82–91. JGJared Gardner is a professor and patient at the Ohio State University. jaredgardner.org
1 Feb 2020
JGJared Gardner is a professor and patient at the Ohio State University. jaredgardner.org
27 Jan 2020
JGJared Gardner is a professor and patient at the Ohio State University. jaredgardner.org
20 Jan 2020
This grows out of a talk I first gave at the American Association for the History of Medicine Conference in Columbus in April, 2019. On October 30, I had the opportunity to give an expanded version for the Heberden Society History of Medicine Lecture series at the New York Academy of Medicine. I am immensely […]
7 Dec 2019
JGJared Gardner is a professor and patient at the Ohio State University. jaredgardner.org
2 Nov 2019
JGJared Gardner is a professor and patient at the Ohio State University. jaredgardner.org
1 Sep 2019
There are many punchlines to which cartoonists would return time and again when addressing the topic of medicine, but “doctors differ” was without doubt the most popular. We see an early version of it in the background of the penultimate entry in William Hogarth’s series Harlot’s Progress where the famous patent medicine huckster of Covent […]
19 Aug 2019
James Gillray was a contemporary of Thomas Rowlandson, and he could be every bit as biting in his representations of medicine. For example, in 1801 he satirized the craze from the US to Britain for Perkin’s Tractors, a device whose “inventor,” Elisha Perkins, claimed it cured all manner of disease through electric force. Gillray skewers […]
11 Nov 2020
Spanish Flu and THE GUMPS
Several years ago I had a chance to work on a collection of one of my very favorite comics, The Gumps, by Sidney Smith. In this edition, for the Library of American Comics Essentials series, we collected the year leading up to the tragic death of Mary Gold in 1929, the first comic strip character […]
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