Books and book events

Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures

Healthcare history is more than leeches and drilling holes in skulls. It is stories of scientific failures and triumphs.

Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures presents a visual and narrative history of health and medicine in the United States, tracing paradigm shifts such as the introduction of anesthesia, the adoption of germ theory, and advances in public health. In this book, museum artifacts are windows into both famous and ordinary people’s experiences with healthcare throughout American history, from patent medicines and faith healing to laboratory science.

With 50 vignette-like chapters and 50 color photographs, Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures showcases little-known objects that illustrate the complexities of our relationship with health, such as a bottle from the short period when the Schlitz beer company sold lager that was supposed to be high in vitamin D during the first vitamin craze. It also highlights famous moments in medicine, such as the discovery of penicillin, as illustrated by a mold-culturing pan. Each artifact tells some piece of the story of how its creators or users approached fundamental questions in health. Some of these questions are, “What causes sickness, and what causes health?” and “How much can everyone master the principles of health, and how much do laypeople need to rely on outside authorities?”

Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures describes the days when surgeons worked on patients without anesthesia and wiped their scalpels on their coats, and the day that EMTs raced to provide help when the Twin Towers were attacked in 2001. The book discusses social and cultural influences that have shaped healthcare, providing insight relevant to today’s problems and colorful anecdotes along the way.

Recorded interviews and book talks:

• Place of treatment, place of isolation, place of community: the Sanatorium in Context. Saranac Laboratory Museum, from February 3, 2022. (71 minutes) 

• Author Talk: Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures. Massachusetts Historical Society, from January 19, 2022 (58 minutes).

• Striking off Smallpox from the Catalog of Nature’s Evils: Early Vaccination in the US. Lexington Historical Society, Lexington, MA from January 6, 2022. (61 minutes) 

• Fanny Longfellow’s “Ethereal Baby” and her Moment in the History of Medicine -- Virtual lecture at the Longfellow House National Historic Site in conversation with site archivist Kate Hanson Plass, from October 21, 2021. (62 minutes.)

• Inclusive History Podcast Episode 38. The History of American Healthcare: a conversation with Tegan Kehoe (32 minutes)
• Transcript

• Museum Archipelago Podcast  Episdode 96. Tegan Kehoe Explores American Healthcare through 50 Museum Artifacts. Both the recording and transcript are available at this link. (15 minutes)

• Malpractice Podcast #3.13: Medical History, with Tegan Kehoe (55 minutes)
• Transcript

• The Small Business Radio Show with Barry Moltz #666 (Segment begins at 35:30 and is about 17 minutes)
• Transcript

• Writing and Editing Podcast #107: Using Illustrations and Spare, Focused Writing to Tell the History of Healthcare (29 minutes)
• Transcript

• For the Love of History podcast #79: "Medical Quackery with Tegan Kehoe" (40 minutes)
• Transcript 

• Plodding through the Presidents podcast season 4 episode 7: "Treasures of Healthcare History with Tegan Kehoe." (64 minutes)
• Transcript

Press:

• First, Do No Harm? - Brandeis Magazine

• Vitamin Beer, a Wax Scrotum, and Other Historic Healthcare Treasures - Dig Boston

Guest blog posts:

• The Page 99 Test 

Past talks that were not recorded:

• January 13, 7:00 to 8:00 eastern -- "Layers of Innovation: A Heart-Lung Machine and other Medical Artifacts." Mobile Medical Society, Mobile, Alabama (online).