Posts by Pamela
18 Tiny Deaths
Forensic medicine is a familiar concept today to anyone who reads mystery novels or watches police procedural dramas on television. But as recently as 1944 only one to two percent of the questionable deaths in the United States were investigated by qualified medical examiners. In 18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee…
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How the United States Sanitary Commission Elbowed Women to One Side in the American Civil War
Last week, while writing about the use of hospital transport ships in the American Civil War, I promised to tell you the story of how a group of men hijacked Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell’s Women’s Central Association of Relief to form the United States Sanitary Commission. It is a story that will feel all too familiar…
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The Boston Massacre: A Family History
Those of you who’ve been hanging out here in the Margins for a while know that I love books that turn what we think about a historical subject upside down, or at the very least expand it. Historian Serena Zabin does both in The Boston Massacre: A Family History. Paul Revere’s iconic engraving of the…
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