Harvard Professor of Surgery Kevin R. Loughlin reviews the medical histories of presidents from George Washington to the present day. Loughlin focuses on "secret" medical problems hidden from the public and on causes of death.
Ivor Noel Hume, author and retired Chief Archeologist for Colonial Williamsburg, discusses the atrocities and indignities English colonists at Jamestown inflicted on the Native Americans in the region, including Pocahontas.
Jan Gilliam, manager of exhibit planning at Colonial Williamsburg, outlines the history of its 1773 public hospital, the first facility for the treatment of the mentally ill in British North America.
Medical historian Susan Pryor describes the role of the apothecary in the colonial society, and looks at colonial understanding of disease and treatment.
Dr. Julie Solometo of James Madison University attempts to reconstruct the lives of Native Americans as they stood on the eve of and during contact with European colonists in North America. She examines particularly the impact of disease and drought on Native Americans and colonists both, and at the collapse of the Powhatan Chiefdom.
To listen to this lecture, select "Part 2" under the April 19th listing.
John Mack Faragher of Yale University considers the importance of singing as a pastime for antebellum frontier families and the view of frontier life that surviving lyrics provide. He examines particularly the views of death and mortality presented in many lyrics.
To view this clip, select "Singing on the Illinois Frontier" under "Frontier Settlement Video."
Historic Saranac Lake maintains ownership of Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau's 1894 Saranac Laboratory, which was founded for the study of tuberculosis. The building survives as a tangible reminder of the possibility and optimism Trudeau sustained despite the struggle and loss of so many to this debilitating disease.
The organization offers educational programs and occasional recreational and educational events; the Laboratory is not yet open to the public, although restoration is in progress.
Historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Carl Sferrazza Anthony discuss little-known facts about past presidents like Harding, Cleveland, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Reagan.
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NBC's Robert Bazells reports on AIDS, 25 years after the Centers for Disease Control first issued a report on what was then a new mystery illness. Since that day, the virus has infected 65 million people, and killed 25 million.
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At this workshop, educators will be "joined by immigration scholars and public health historians, visit related historic sites in New York City that vividly tell the story of immigration in the early part of the 20th century, and investigate Ellis Island's un-restored hospital buildings with an architectural historian to uncover their significance." The workshop will "specifically address the impact of the 1891 immigration legislation mandating health as a criterion for admission to the U.S., precipitating construction of the U.S. Public Health Service hospital on Ellis Island to screen and treat arriving immigrants."