History of Medicine Graduate Students - History of Medicine at the University of Minnesota

Lisa Boult
The Johns Hopkins Geriatrics Center
2205 Hopkins Bayview Circle
Baltimore, MD 21209
410-550-4136
lboult1@jhmi.edu

Lisa Boult M.D., M.P.H., M.A. holds a B.A. from Radcliffe College and an M.D. from Yale University. She completed a residency in family practice and later joined the faculty at the Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island/ Brown University Program. After moving to Minnesota in 1990, she obtained an M.P.H. degree in epidemiology and completed a fellowship in geriatrics at the University of Minnesota. She lives in Baltimore, where she is on the faculty of the Geriatrics Division of the Department of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and where she does clinical work at the Johns Hopkins Geriatrics Center.

As an undergraduate, she concentrated in medieval history, anthropology and the history of medicine, completing an undergraduate thesis on healing in Anglo-Saxon England. Wanting to integrate work in the history of medicine into her clinical work and teaching, she resumed studying the history of medicine in 1997. Through the generosity of a Bush Foundation Medical Fellowship (grants designed to help mid-career physicians broaden the scope of their work), she was able to do a year of full-time study in the Department of History of Medicine in 1997-1998. She received a Master’s Degree in the History of Medicine from the University of Minnesota and is presently working toward a PhD. Her goal is to integrate these studies into her medical teaching and writing.

Her research interests include end-of-life care; the professionalizing and socializing of physicians; medical education and training; and the history of neurology, psychiatry, and public health.

I received a B.A. in history from the University of Minnesota in 1994 and a M.D. from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 2002. I am now a resident in the University of Minnesota's general surgery program, where I have finished three years of clinical training. Before completing the final two years of residency, I have the opportunity for research, which for me includes basic and clinical science projects as well as a Ph.D. in the history of medicine. My clinical interests are surgical critical care, burns, surgical oncology and palliative care. My interests in the history of medicine include the development of surgical techniques, instruments and operations; the history of surgical education; and the evolution of medical ethics.

I received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Puget Sound in May of 2005. I became interested in the history of medicine through my undergraduate course work in the Science, Technology & Society program, specifically a research project on the evolution of designer babies in the written press. Currently, my interests are centered on the social history of medicine in the U.S. during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More specifically, my interests in the history of medicine include the history of women’s health, diet and nutrition, hygiene, childbirth, reproductive technologies, and genetics. Although my interests are still very broad, I am hoping my coursework over the next year will help to narrow my focus.

I received my undergraduate degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. I originally planned to get my PhD in modern American social history, but then I fell into History of Medicine while writing my senior thesis on the Wisconsin Plan for managing acute and chronic cases of mental illness during the late nineteenth-century. I was instantly hooked on the History of Medicine because it offers a new way of seeing the world. Although I am still defining my interests, I am intrigued by the social history of medicine in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My specific research interests include the history of psychiatry, public health, the history of bioethics, epidemics and women's health.

I am very happy to be pursuing my PhD at the University of Minnesota. I hold a BA from the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a MA in Bioethics from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. My interests in the history of medicine include medical specialization (in particular, the development of the specialty of family practice), health insurance and managed care, and the history of the body. In my work life, I am Essays Editor and manager of peer review activities for the Annals of Family Medicine, a medical research journal. My publications in the medical literature have focused on better understanding the family practice office setting. I live in St. Paul, home of the Ice Palace.

Neal Holtan, MD, MPH, MA, serves as Director of Healthcare Practice for the Partnership Continuum, Inc., a consulting firm headquartered in Minneapolis. He is also the Medical Director of the Minnesota Institute of Public Health and the Saint Paul - Ramsey County Department of Pubic Health. A graduate of Saint Olaf College, the University of Iowa College of Medicine, and the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, he completed a residency in internal medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. He specializes in internal medicine and preventive medicine and recently established his own consulting practice in preventive medicine. Currently, he works as a consultant, researcher, and writer in public health practice and policy in the Twin Cities.

In 1998, Neal received a Bush Medical Fellowship to study the history of medicine at the University of Minnesota where he has now completed course work for the PhD and is preparing for examinations. His areas of interest in history have related to physician involvement in social movements, especially those related to matters of human reproduction and governmental coercion, and in the history of public health. His 1999 thesis discussed the history of the Minnesota Eugenics Society, 1926-1938.

Originally from Oregon, I received my B.S. in philosophy in 1998 from Oregon State University. Post-baccalaureate work in the history of science prompted my decision to enter into a PhD program. In my second year of graduate school, I am refining a wide range of study. Broadly, my interests lie in the history of madness and the development of psychiatry and neurology in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe, particularly in France. From the Enlightenment to the Third Republic, I am curious about the role medical practices and discourses play in cultural history and in definitions of national identity. Further, I am exploring the connection between industrialization, modernization, and explanations for mental disorder exemplified by diagnoses such as neurasthenia, hysteria, and trauma. Lastly, I have an ongoing interest in the development of therapeutics as they relate to human experimentation.

Peter Kernahan, M.D., M.S., FACS, graduated with an A.B. in Anthropology from Harvard College and an M.D. from Northwestern University. He completed a residency in Surgery at Stanford University Medical Center. He has been a Sloan Fellow at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and holds an M.S. in Business Administration. He is an Instructor in the Department of Surgery and began work towards a PhD in the history of medicine in 2004. He has a particular interest in the economic history of surgery in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I received a B.A. in history from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington in 2003. Undergraduate work in medical anthropology, history of biology, and research for an honors thesis on sterilization practices in Washington state mental institutions informed my decision to pursue a doctorate. As a third year student, I am preparing for preliminary examinations and writing a prospectus for a dissertation that will focus on race research in Hawaii from the 1890s (preceding its annexation by the United States in 1898) through the 1930s. More broadly, my interests include nineteenth and twentieth century American history including studies of U.S. imperialism, history of the life sciences, history of American science and medicine, and studies of race and eugenics.

Attempting to write a grammatically correct profile without using the pronoun "I" strikes me as challenging but possible. To have pursued philosophy of mind and body, cross-cultural biomedical ethics, Star Wars, international medicine, traveling, Kuhnian paradigm shifts, and conversational non sequiturs, and to harbor hopes of earning a Master's in the History of Medicine and a future M.D./M.P.H. is to describe my past, present and future goals, both academic and personal. Currently, when medical school applications are not consuming my time, my interests in the history of medicine lead to the history of non-governmental medical organizations: their predecessors, their origins and their early philosophies.

I am from Columbus, Ohio and graduated with honors from New York University with a double B.A. in French and Political Science in 1995. After graduation, I worked as a translator for the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Department in Washington, D.C., translating for health and social priority projects in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. I took a J.D. at Tulane University School of Law in 2001. While in law school I was Managing Editor of the Journal of International and Comparative Law and a Guest Editor to the Journal of Law and Sexuality. I have published two articles in legal journals: an article on international right to die laws and an article on the denial of health insurance to HIV-positive patients. I also worked on a project for older prisoners to gain parole from Angola Prison and in an indigent divorce clinic. My primary interest in coming to the University of Minnesota is to study the historical, social, and religious determinants that affect health care in North Africa. I am specifically interested in AIDS in North Africa and the historical relationship between Muslim societies and non-governmental organizations.

Susan Patow
Patents and Technology Mktg
Room 450 McNamaraCtr
200 Oak St SE
East Bank
Tel. (612) 624-3966
patow001@umn.edu

Susan McFadden Patow earned a BS in Nursing from the Medical College of Virginia, MBA with a focus in healthcare marketing and an MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland. In addition, she completed a Technology Transfer Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. She has worked in a number aspects of health care as a practitioner and an administrator and is currently the senior licensing associate in the Patents and Technology Marketing Office of the University of Minnesota. A first-year PhD student, Ms. Patow is particularly interested in the impact and use of technology on the History of Medicine with a special interest in the history of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

"As a second year Ph.D. student my interests are chiefly in the intersection between medicine and science in 19th century Britain. Epidemic disease, disease causation theory, the precarious line between physician and charlatan, poor law medicine, and the beginnings of public health are the purview of my interests. More specifically, I am interested in the role of local medical officers of health (MOH) from mid-century. The social history of medicine, environmental history, and ecology of disease are the lenses through which I hope to engage with these topics. I received my B.A. from Michigan State University. My work there focused on the development of Dr. John Snow's theory on the mode and communication of cholera."