Selling Sex: HRT and Knowledge Transmission in 1940s Ontario
Today, I’ll be showing you a bit more about how HRT became a part of Canadian doctors’ work in the early-to-mid twentieth century.
Alcohol, Benzodiazepines, and Chlorpromazine: The ABCs of the History of Psychopharmacology
The story of mental health treatment in North America is a fascinating one. In many ways, the field of psychiatry has had a harder time advancing at the same pace as other medical fields due to the absence of obvious, external markers of disease. In fact, even today, we struggle to define and identify psychiatric illnesses and develop reliable, safe, and effective methods to treat them.
The Public Life of Hormones: HRT in Ontarian Communities
My project for this summer’s Margaret Angus Research Fellowship will try to unearth some of this history, looking at hormones’ incorporation into physicians’ education, hospitals, and peoples’ daily lives. By investigating the education of physicians at Queen’s medical school, records of their practice and training, news sources like the ones considered here, and 2SLGBTQI+ community records and ephemera, I will be looking into the local history of HRT in Kingston and Ontario more generally.
Traversing the Transplant Timeline: The Story of the First Successful Kidney Transplant
In 1954 something incredible happened. What had once seemed impossible became a reality, setting the groundwork for one of the biggest revolutions in 20th-century medicine. This is the story of the first successful organ transplant.
Solar Eclipse Weekend Event
The Museum will be open Saturday, April 6th, Sunday and April 7th, 10am-4pm for solar eclipse themed programming.Join us for free, interactive, family-friendly activities that investigate beliefs, superstitions, and traditions about the effects of events like the solar eclipse on health and the body.
The Story of the Gloves of Love
Did you know that the story behind surgical gloves is a love story?
Black History Month: Dr. Douglas Salmon
As one of only four Black students at the University of Toronto’s medical school, in 1955 Dr. J Douglas Salmon graduated and would go on to become president of Scarborough Centenary Hospital’s medical staff, and chief of general surgery – the first black person in Canada to hold these positions. He also became one of the first surgeons in Canada to treat people who were morbidly obese with the then life-changing treatment, gastric bypass surgery.
Black History Month: Clotilda Douglas-Yakimchuk
Born and raised in Whitney Pier, Nova Scotia, Clotilda Douglas-Yakimchuk became the first Black graduate of the Nova Scotia Hospital School of Nursing in 1954. She also went on to earn a postgraduate midwifery diploma and psychiatric nursing certificate, and diploma in adult education. Clotilda is also the only Black President in the history of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Nova Scotia (now known as The College of Registered Nurses of Nova Scotia) to date.
Black History Month: Dr. June Marion James
Inspired by her grandmother and spurred on by her family’s experience with typhoid, Dr. June Marion James attended the University of Manitoba with the intention of pursuing a career in medicine. She was the first Black woman to attend the university, and only Black woman of the six women in its medical program in 1963.
Scents & Sensibility: Awakening the Fashionable History of Victorian-Era Smelling Salts
Fainting at the least hint of shock became one way that women could show their delicate and frail nature; to swoon was not only an accepted social cue, but also downright ladylike. Coupled with the prevailing corset fashion of the era, which shifted ribs, constricted lungs, and compressed organs, this created a perfect recipe for a social fainting phenomenon.