• Surgeons & Surgical Kits

    There’s always a scene in any movie or television show depicting a surgical operation: a nurse or assistant clad in scrubs, enters the room pushing a cart. On the cart lies several delicate instruments, their hard steel glistening under the harsh lights of the theatre. None of the instruments touch each other, and they are… Continue Reading

  • ELLE Geeks

    I’m thrilled to share that I’m interviewed in the August 2014 issue of ELLE India magazine as a feature on “ELLE GEEKS:” talented women who use science and technology to push boundaries of what we know and how we should think about the world. I’m incredibly honored to be featured alongside some amazingly talented women, all of… Continue Reading

  • Switching On Hearing

    It’s an iconic and powerful photo. The face of a young child, born deaf, hearing sounds for the first time. Jack Bradley, photojournalist from the Peoria Journal Star, captured the exact moment a doctor fitted five year old Harold Whittles with an earpiece and turned on the hearing aid. First printed in the February 1974… Continue Reading

  • The Pressures of Silence

    I’ve been busy this month helping my mom organize the boxes of photographs and old documents at her house. The best part of this project? When I come across documents from my childhood that I’ve long forgotten about, but thanks to my mom, have been carefully preserved. When I was 12, my English assignment was… Continue Reading

  • On Sharing #histmed Images

    For those who follow me on Twitter or the FTHOQ Facebook page, you already know I share a lot of images on the history of medicine. I’ve come across many of these images while browsing through online archives collection data for my research on experiences of hearing and hearing loss in twentieth-century America. I’m particularly… Continue Reading

  • Dieting Deafness Away

    I’m sure some of you have heard of London-based undertaker William Banting (1797-1878), who was the first to popularize a low-carb diet that formed the basis of modern-day diets (think Atkins). Banting was an upper middle-class funeral director whose family held the Royal Warrant for burials for five generations, until 1928; George III, George IV,… Continue Reading

  • Green Light: Mr D.

    This is the fifth installment of my autobiographical series on my experiences with hearing loss. You can view earlier posts: Prologue; Chapter 1: Seeing Sounds; Chapter 2: Fearless Leader; Chapter 3: The Black Box. Posts appear every other Friday.  Sometime when I was six or seven, I was sent to a new school. It was far from our residence, which… Continue Reading

  • 19th Century Indian Women in U.S. Medical School Part II

    “It is not more difficult to prove that Asiastic women have made good as Christian physicians. In India we point to Dr. Karmarkar and Dr. Joshi…”[1] Since my original posting on three Indian women who attended the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, I’ve gotten several inquiries for more information on their stories. There’s plenty of… Continue Reading

  • Ear-picks to Q-tips

    Cotton-wool has long been a staple in households as well as in the aural surgeon’s tool kit. For ear ailments, cotton was used in all sorts of ways: soaked in olive oil and inserted into the ear, trimmed and soaked in medicaments to cover a perforated eardrum, and even inserted between rubber to serve as… Continue Reading

  • Green Light: The Black Box

    III: The Black Box.   This is the fourth installment of my autobiographical series on my experiences with hearing loss. You can view earlier posts: Prologue; Chapter 1: Seeing Sounds; Chapter 2: Fearless Leader. Posts appear every other Friday.  The moment you realize you can communicate and others can understand you, is when your world… Continue Reading