New post on #FindTheMidwife today. Sasha Turner talks with us about a 17th century enslaved Barbadian midwife. www.findthemidwife.com/sasha-turner. Thanks Dr. Turner!

Visiting Scholar Dr. Kudus Adebayo will present “When the Caregiver is the Sick Person: Hospital-Based Informal Caregiving and Health Systems in Nigeria" on Nov. 17th at 6pm in Gilman 50 and via zoom webinar. For more info and to register, visit hopkinshistoryofmedicine.org/dr-kudus-ade...

Taking bets on Mike Johnson's new excuse for not swearing in Grijalva: a) it's raining out b) I can't seem to find a Bible c) who? It's not working, Mike, we still remember WHY you are avoiding this.

Delighted to hear that Pushback is on the shelf @ www.staygoldbooks.com! If you are in Pittsburgh, be sure to catch this lovely indy bookshop in Regent Square. Not in Pgh? bit.ly/4iwTsoL

New post on A is for Abortion! It's about a 15th c French woman who provided reproductive health care (including abortion care) to her community.

Beautiful day to have given a talk @ annual @apha.org annual conference! Thanks so much Spirit of 1848 Caucus for inviting me.

The comments to this article are also interesting

This cheerful little fella wishing you a funtastic All Hallows Eve. (From an account of Cooke's voyage, 1712. @jcblibrary.bsky.social ofc)

It's a really special joy to get a book in the mail by a former student that started life as a thesis! www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10133/ Paul Child shows us eloquently how Jonathan Swift's life was shaped by ill-health and his attempts to combat it. Congrats, Paul!

New posting on #FindTheMidwife! Noelene Jeffers and @d-squared.bsky.social in conversation about the long history of racism and gynecology: www.findthemidwife.com/deirdre-coop...

Honored to be a featured author at #SFP2025 ! Thanks everyone for the welcoming & insightful conversations -- and for buying my book! bit.ly/4iwTsoL

Had a wonderful time giving a talk @ubgenderinstitute.bsky.social, lots of great conversations, and they gave me some swag! Thx!

Today’s #poemsontheunderground @poemsonthetube.bsky.social

New post today: Silphium, the ancient abortifacient plant that went extinct from overuse... or did it?

Very apposite post by @sacrobosco.bsky.social! Blaming mothers goes way back... Trump, Tylenol, and 2000 Years of Bad Advice nursingclio.org/2025/10/16/t...

Are you a researcher in the field of history of science, technology and medicine? The #NotesAndRecord essay award is now open for entries until 28 February 2026. Visit our website find out more: buff.ly/dedMm93 #HistSci #HistSTM

Honored to present my work on abortion in 1940s and 50s Baltimore to GYN/OB Grand Rounds at Hopkins this morning! Thanks for inviting me. And yeah, that ergot was made in Baltimore. More Baltimore stories: bit.ly/4iwTsoL

New post today on #FindTheMidwife. Midwives under pressure with @sallypezaro.bsky.social and myself! What happened when midwives were pushed by town fathers to interrogate their clients? How did they balance their obligations? www.findthemidwife.com/midwives-und...

The 2026 SSHM Conference will be @universityofleeds.bsky.social. The theme will be In/Out and we are inviting papers that consider experiences of being in and/or out of health or health care in any period or geographical location. #HistMed #HistSTM sshm.org/sshm-2026/

If you are in Baltimore this evening... great program!

Feeling like a quick medieval ghostly tale? Today's Substack post has got you covered.

Hey bookshop.org has FREE Shipping today! catch my book at at a discount AND free shipping: bookshop.org/p/books/push...

#histmed #MedievalSky Minji Lee's book, The Medieval Womb: Hildegard of Bingen’s Views on the Female Reproductive Body, has just been released #OpenAccess: library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...

Honored to give the 2025 Sig Synnesvedt Lecture at SUNY Brockport, with extra bonus of visiting graveyard where Susan B. Anthony AND Frederick Douglass are buried. Synnesvedt was an early anti-racist, felt so right.

Maybe you thought my Substack would have a tough time finding a topic for the letter Q? LOL no; this week is about quickening.

This week in The Work of Healing we’re exploring how skeletal remains might be analyzed by historians as well as archaeologists, including an extraordinary burial from medieval Lund, pictured here. For more information on our online program, visit hopkinshistoryofmedicine.org/online-progr...

The Committee on Student Affairs is hosting Virtual Co-working Hours, held Fridays between 3-5 ET on Zoom. Whether you're working on seminar papers, dissertation chapters, or abstracts, join the Student Affairs Committee on Zoom for some camaraderie in writing! #histmed histmed.org/committee-on...

This 13th century French silver container held - yes you guessed it — the arm of a saint. This week in The Work of Healing, we are looking at the role of relics in healing. For more info on our online program, visit hopkinshistoryofmedicine.org/online-progr...

The call for papers for the 2026 annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine is live now! We hope you will join us in Buffalo! histmed.org/buffalo-2026/

This week's Substack is about pennyroyal, a plant used to end pregnancies for millennia. It's a story about a 17th century village drama.

Delighted that this popped up in my mailbox today! Congrats @sarahebull.bsky.social !

New post on Substack! Wonderful medieval book of recipes that included pregnancy-ending herbs. Yes, abortion *has* been around for about as long as we can see from written records.

Look what came today! Honored to be in this volume. Thx @nursingclio.bsky.social !

If it feels like America is sliding deeper into darkness—with voter suppression, book bans, gag orders, and fear spreading daily—you’re not alone. The truth is, fascism thrives when good people hesitate, but democracy grows stronger when ordinary people take action. youtu.be/CFIL5xrIjHg

Seen in Waterstones Trafalgar Square (not by me, thx Jamie Gianoutsos)! Love the cover @hurstpublishers.bsky.social did for me! www.waterstones.com/book/abortio...

If you're heading to any rallies...

Very exciting: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography published a cluster of new entries on women stationers. See the intro by Valerie Wayne: www.oxforddnb.com/newsitem/906... ODNB entries are so helpful in identifying women from traces on printed material. So happy to see this work ❤️

New Substack post today. Sigh, 19th century anti-abortion arguments included the all-too-familiar worries that the "wrong people" would have big families.

New Substack post today. Sigh, 19th century anti-abortion arguments included the all-too-familiar worries that the "wrong people" would have big families.

Our Corner Society lecturers this academic year include: @renfro.bsky.social @cethompson.bsky.social @maryfissell.bsky.social @andrewlea.bsky.social @ayahnerd.bsky.social

Mifepristone was not the first mail-order abortion pill. See the new post on my Substack, all about an 1847 book that promoted a NYC abortion clinic and also mailed out pills.

History hivemind, what's best practice for citing stuff from Ancestry.com? Am happily deep in the weeds of 1740s Northampton, Mass (yes, the bad book episode... gasp, Jonathan Edwards finds young people reading Aristotle's Masterpiece). Have some thoughts on who exactly those young people were...

For those planning to drop in around other things, here's the Transcribathon running order (also available on the Eventbrite page) #EarlyModern 🗃️

Today's Substack: the story of Spencer Lindfield, a c19 London midwife and abortion provider. She ran what we might anachronistically call a reproductive services clinic, and birthed babies for a local charity as well as the Poor Law. And... was an inadvertent bigamist. maryfissell.substack.com

Hey! Want to get my book with FREE SHIPPING? And not from The Behemoth? For the next 31 hours, you can get it from Bookshop.org !! And any any other book they carry! bookshop.org/p/books/push...

Check out our newly released special issue, "Reproductive Objects"! Through a collection of stellar articles, it traces the material "stuff" that constitutes the uneven tapestries of power, authority, and knowledge making around human reproduction. www.press.jhu.edu/journals/bul...

Thomas Paine wrote this of British General William Howe during the American Revolution in 1778, but it’s evergreen: “He who is the author of a war, lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.”

I’m struck by how little coverage there’s been of this story, because it’s a big fucking deal. jessica.substack.com/p/judge-repe...

Spotted in the wild at Clifton Commons Barnes & Noble in NJ! Still a thrill. thx Sam! bit.ly/3HMMizb