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Question of the Week: What monuments would you create to honor significant figures and events in medicine?

  • 1.  Question of the Week: What monuments would you create to honor significant figures and events in medicine?

    Posted 10-11-2021 08:35:00 AM

    The Monument Lab (in partnership with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) just released findings from a year-long audit of a half million records of historic properties created and maintained by federal, state, local, tribal, institutional, and publicly assembled sources. This audit—which assesses the current monument landscape across the country—will be used to inform the Monuments Project which aims to “transform the way our country’s histories are told in public spaces and ensure that future generations inherit a commemorative landscape that venerates and reflects the vast, rich complexity of the American story.” Spoiler: our monuments are overwhelmingly white, male, and war-oriented.

       
    Knowing that there are critical conversations happening about past, present, and future monuments… What significant people or events in medicine deserve monument recognition?

     
    By the way, here’s a really cool feature from Monument Lab: the search interface for the core dataset used in the audit. Use it, for example, to locate the many sculptures of Hippocrates across the US. Or to view the marker on the spot (now a park) where the first human dissection in Arkansas was made in 1874.



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    Stephanie Weiner
    Director, Digital Strategy & Engagement
    Association of American Medical Colleges
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  • 2.  RE: Question of the Week: What monuments would you create to honor significant figures and events in medicine?

    Posted 10-11-2021 10:37:00 AM
    I would add that, Dr. Louise Pearce, best known for developing a treatment for trypanosomiasis, or African Sleeping sickness, and considered one of the most significant female scientists of the 20th Century, and member of the LGBTQ+ community, should have monument status. Especially given that today is #Nationalcomingoutday
    (Image source/credit: Wikipedia)

     

     



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    Penny Schnarrs
    Virtual Communities Program Manager
    Association of American Medical Colleges
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  • 3.  RE: Question of the Week: What monuments would you create to honor significant figures and events in medicine?

    Posted 10-12-2021 11:05:00 AM

    Locally, we honor Dr. Alonzo Kenniebrew: https://www.siumed.edu/diversity/alonzo-homer-kenniebrew-md-forum 

    Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first to come to mind, https://www.nps.gov/people/dr-elizabeth-blackwell.htm 
    Jane Addams, and public health in Hull House.
    Clara Barton, and nursing as a profession.
    Charles Drew, and blood transfusions.

    Martha Ballard, a midwife in New England in the late 1700s, to start the discussion about the role of midwives, and how they were pushed out of medical care? A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812 by Ulrich

    The Our Bodies, Ourselves movement-  https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/our-story/ 

    The slaves who were the subject of horrific medical experimentation? 

    The Puerto Rican test subjects of the birth control pill?

    I would like to find a way to discuss/honor Native contributions to medical care/ medicine.  And some way to discuss the history/legacies of the Indian Health Service.



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    Carolyn Pointer
    Assistant Professor
    Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
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