Abraham Nussbaum

Q: “Where were the saints to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves but to do away with slavery?” A: Dorothy Day.

Reread Ovid during Covid. The sprawling poem of change ends with Aesculapius leaving his shrine to set up shop in the city. When the serpent-son resumes “his heavenly form, he brought the plague to an end and answered the prayers of the city for healing.” Someone should name a vaccine after him.

My favorite read of the HMS med school memoirs because Thomas is the kind of narrator who charms through self-deprecation. He faults his memory, laments his intelligence, praises the nurses, encourages male silence, and fondly remembers needing to donate blood to make money during residency. “MA law in 1937 stipulated that a blood donor was…

Patients often confuse psych hospitals and prisons. Better than anyone else writing today, Montross shows that this is no delusion, but by design. Montross is a psychiatrist and poet who entered correctional spaces on a therapeutic and humane endeavor: to tell untold stories. Very necessary.

Blue pill masquerading as red pill. There is something here, but it is obscured by reductive arguments and sensational claims. That is how a bestseller works, right? (It is the kind of book where the author publishes a picture of his library card to prove he did the research.) What worried me about this page-turner…

Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence was a pioneering Black psychiatrist. She bridged worlds: North and South, Black and white, faith and psychoanalysis, work and home. Her daughter’s biography bridges genre: love letter, case report, family history, and a roadmap. A moving testament to trauma and strength.

What to make of Miss Havisham? She’s not the protagonist, but she is the novel’s compelling character. A portrayal of depression, a powerful personage undone by their unstable mind? Probably, but also: a fairy tale witch in a bridal dress. You could make more of Havisham, and I dream of a full Angela Carter re-write.…

I don’t read much economics, but when I do it’s… an indictment. Every physician needs to read Chapter 13– How American Healthcare is Undermining Lives– and think about how we can stop contributing to the diseases of despair. We need to think about  the work our patients do so that they can afford us to…

Fragmented and unfair, but irresistible: “Nothing I’ve written here is for the well and intact, and had it been, I never would have written it. Everyone who is not sick now has been sick once or will be sick soon.” Radical and radiant. Left me with a list of readings to return– Aristides, Donne, and…

Ulysses has scabrous obscenities, luxuriated profanities, extraneous details, staggering vocabulary, formal experimentation, and a performative use of  anatomical terms. The body is mapped by the church and the state, but also by medicine. It is the most famous novel ever written by a med school dropout and is, slyly, Joyce’s revenge on medicine. Joyce contrasts…

In 1902, Dr. Justina Ford arrived in Colorado. It 48 years for the Colorado Medical Society to admit her to its membership. This books is one of the three books written about this medical pioneer. It would be great for an elementary school history day project, but some historian should write a proper biography.

Colorado issued 3779 medical licenses before Dr. Justina Ford became the 1st Black women to receive one. It took 50 years for the state to license its next Black female doc. In reading about her for a writing project, I found this children’s book. It is one of the best resources about Dr. Ford. Next…