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  Humanities as critical medicine: the necessary practice of uncertainty, adaptability, and discovery

  Jay Baruch

  Dr. Jay Baruch presented for the 15^th annual Richard B. Davis, MD, PhD, History of Medicine Lecture, hosted by the McGoogan Health Sciences Library. Dr. Baruch’s lecture, “Humanities as critical medicine: the necessary practice of uncertainty, adaptability, and discovery” encompassed his more than 30 years as an ER physician and the emotions, difficult choices and moral challenges he has experienced.

  As a practicing ER physician for over thirty years, Dr. Baruch has learned that caring for patients can feel like swimming in choppy waters teeming with uncertainty, crests of emotions, difficult choices and moral challenges. He also discovered how bridging disciplines with skills from his other life as a writer and his humanities-and arts-based work have been critical clinical tools in his practice and informed his “accidental” academic career. The humanities provide sharp navigational tools for explorations into those messy spaces where medical data and decision-making tools cannot reach. In his discussion, he will share some personal challenges and offer examples of how the arts and humanities and learning from people who think differently are necessary in a changing health care system.

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  Negotiating Normalcy: Deafness Cures in American History

  Jaipreet Virdi

  Jaipreet Virdi, PhD, presented the 14th annual Richard B. Davis, MD, PhD, History of Medicine Lecture on April 14, 2023.

  During the late 19th century, entrepreneurs began to glut the direct-to-consumer medical market with a plethora of remedies they professed could miraculously cure deafness. They claimed their medicines and machines fostered a world of unbridled optimism for providing hope to deaf ears. Even as medical specialists denounced these cure-all treatments as quackery in its finest form, the messages of restoring hearing would transfer over to the hearing aid industry.

  Focusing on the marketing of cures for deafness — hearing trumpets, electrotherapy apparatuses and hearing aids — this presentation unravels the many ways deaf people sought to restore or gain hearing. This history provides a broad context for understanding the lived experiences of deaf people and how cultural pressures of normalcy significantly stigmatized deafness.

  Dr. Virdi is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Delaware. A historian of medicine, technology and disability, she has focused her research on the ways medicine and technology impact people with disability. She is author of “Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History” (University of Chicago Press, 2020), is co-editor of “Disability and the Victorians: Attitudes, Legacies, Interventions” (Manchester University Press, 2020) and has published articles on diagnostic technologies, audiometry and the medicalization of deafness.

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  Scientific Discovery: How Meningitis Was Conquered

  Janet R. Gilsdorf

  Janet Gilsdorf, MD, presented at the 13th annual Richard B. Davis, MD, PhD, History of Medicine Lecture on April 22 from noon to 1 p.m.

  Dr. Gilsdorf shared stories based on her book, “Continual Raving: A History of Meningitis and the People Who Conquered It.” The book tells how scientists across the 19th and 20th centuries defeated the deadly brain infection meningitis — not through flawless research but through a series of serendipitous events, misplaced assumptions and flawed conclusions. The result shows not just how a disease is vanquished but how scientific accomplishment can sometimes occur where it is least expected.

  Dr. Gilsdorf, an alum of the UNMC College of Medicine, is the Robert P. Kelch Research Professor Emerita in the University of Michigan Department of Pediatrics. She is an infectious diseases physician at C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she participates in the diagnosis and management of pediatric patients with complex infectious diseases and in the clinical training of medical students, pediatric residents and pediatric infectious diseases fellows.

  She has published more than 100 articles of original research, most centering on the epidemiology, molecular characteristics and pathogenesis of Haemophilus influenzae. She is a past president of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and received the PIDS Distinguished Physician award in 2012.

  She also is the author of “Inside/Outside: A Physician’s Journey with Breast Cancer” (U of Michigan Press) and “Ten Days” (a novel from Kensington Books). She has published several personal essays in the Journal of the American Medical Association Emerging Infectious Diseases, Health Affairs and The Examined Life. In 1999, she was awarded the Journal of Internal Medicine Award for Prose.

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  Resuscitation: Past Beliefs and Current Clinical Trials

  David Hoyt

  David Hoyt, MD, executive director of the American College of Surgeons, gave the 12th annual Richard B. Davis, MD, PhD History of Medicine Lecture on June 29.

  Dr. Hoyt has held numerous positions at the University of California, Irvine, and remains an emeritus professor of surgery. In 2010, he was appointed executive director of the American College of Surgeons.

  His distinguished career has included delivering numerous named lectures and receiving multiple significant awards while serving in positions of leadership. Dr. Hoyt is a member of numerous surgical organizations and has served in multiple board and senior leadership roles therein. He has been a visiting professor at numerous institutions nationally and internationally and is an editorial board member of six journals. He consistently receives significant public research funding and is the author of more than 700 publications and three books.