What is Public Health - Galen, Filth, Disease, Revolution, Sanitarians, Statistics, and Sex

This lecture examines the history of public health from its early inceptions to modern day political and public health controversies.

Dr. Ellen Amster's research engages histories of medicine and public health, especially global health, traditional healing, women's histories, and imperialism. From her 2013 book, Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956 (Arabic Translation UIR 2024), she developed a global health study abroad program and a CIHR-funded Morocco-Canada network in maternal and infant health. She is currently working on a project tentatively entitled "Colonial Drag: Transvestism, Hybridity, and Cosmopolitan Identities in Colonial and Post-Colonial French Empire."

For everyone to enjoy, she developed the Hannah History of Medicine and Medical Humanities Research Portal, with hundreds of libraries, archives, museums, digital collections, and grants, to browse for research and fun. It includes public health records for Hamilton, which are conserved at HPL.

• To troll your medievalist friends, the Black Death and the "Bring Out Your Dead" scene from Monty Python (early public health?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEmfsmasjVA
• Extra bonus, the "Bloody Peasant" vs. King Arthur sketch. "Strange women lying in ponds is no basis for a system of government." (kingship, Locke, and Marx in 3 minutes!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qT-C-0ajI
• The song, "I Didn't Come From Your Rib, You Came from my Vagina" song, a response to conservative male politicians' restrictions on birth control and women's health services. Women's bodies and women's rights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiHx2EkMsDA
• For folks interested in the argument that public health is the social contract between citizen (body) and state (body politic), I have developed this idea in a few prior public-facing articles, which I include here below:
• Ellen Amster, History's Crystal Ball: What the past can tell us about COVID-19 and our future, 2020 (a brief summary of our lecture): https://theconversation.com/historys-crystal-ball-what-the-past-can-tell-us-about-covid-19-and-our-future-140512
• Ellen Amster, George Floyd and the American Spring: Secular Martyrs, Democratic Uprisings, and the Radical Religion of Trumpist Fascism (2021): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350324230_George_Floyd_and_the_American_Spring_Secular_Martyrs_Democratic_Uprisings_and_the_Radical_Religion_of_Trumpist_Fascism
• The History of Medicine and Medical Humanities research portal: http://medhumanities.ca - libraries, archives, museums, digital collections, digital exhibits, blogs, grants, fellowships, art and comics for browsing, research, and fun
• The HPL downtown has the records for the city of Hamilton, including Planned Parenthood: https://medhumanities.ca/lam/hamilton-public-library-local-history-archives/
• The history of medicine speaker series: https://medhumanities.ca/lam/the-hannah-history-of-medicine-and-medical-humanities-speaker-series/