Selected Articles and Book Chapters (newest to oldest)
See Online Works tab for items created for the internet.
Latest article is “Pasteur’s lifelong engagement with the fine arts: uncovering a scientist’s passion and personality,” Annals of Science 78: 3 (2021), 334-386, with 8 illustrations). Published online: 29 Apr 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2021.1921275. For the Abstract, see “Pasteur and the Fine Arts” tab. This article is now Open Access and completely free to anyone anywhere for reading or downloading.
“Medical History’s Graphic Power in American True-Adventure Comic Books of the 1940s,” in Handbook of Popular Culture and Biomedicine: Knowledge in the Life Sciences as Cultural Artefact ed. Arno Görgen, German Alfonso Nunez Canabal, and Heiner Fangerau (Springer International, 2019), pp. 179-194.
“The Personal, the Scholarly, and the Political: How Liz Fee’s Early Career Integrated Activism around Sex, Homosexuality, and AIDS,” American Journal of Public Health 109:6 (June 1, 2019), pp. 870-871. See also a longer version on the Gay History Documents page.
“Medical History as Fine Art in American Mural Painting of the 1930s,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 36:1 (Spring 2019), 80-111.
“Medical History’s Moment in Art Photography (1920 to 1950): How Lejaren à Hiller and Valentino Sarra Created a Fashion for Scenes of Early Surgery,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 72:4 (October 2017), 381–421.
(co-authored) Bert Hansen and Richard E. Weisberg, “Louis Pasteur (1822–1895), his friendships with the artists Max Claudet (1840–1893) and Paul Dubois (1829–1905), and his public image in the 1870s and 1880s,” J. of Medical Biography 25: 1 (February 2017), 9-18, published online before print, May 29, 2015, DOI: 10.1177/0967772015575889..
(co-authored) Bert Hansen and Richard E. Weisberg, “Louis Pasteur’s three artist compatriots—Henner, Pointelin, and Perraud: A story of friendship, science, and art in the 1870s and 1880s,” J. of Medical Biography 25: 1 (February 2017), 18-27, published online before print, May 29, 2015, DOI: 10.1177/0967772015575887.
(co-authored) Richard E. Weisberg and Bert Hansen, “Collaboration of Art and Science in Albert Edelfelt’s Portrait of Louis Pasteur: The Making of an Enduring Medical Icon,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 89:1 (Spring 2015), 59-91.
“Rabies,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of American Science, Medicine, and Technology ed. Hugh Slotten 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), II: 321-322.
“Rabies Shots, the Newark Boys, and the American Origins of the Modern Medical Breakthrough,” MDAdvisor: A Journal for the New Jersey Medical Community 5:1 (Winter 2012), 36-40.
“Five Centuries of Medicine in Art from the Collection of Bruce and Lois Fye,” Rochester Art Center (Rochester, MN) short exhibit review with two illustrations in International Journal of Comic Art 12: 2/3 (Fall/Winter 2010), pp. 682-684.
“Five Centuries of Medicine in Art from the Collection of Bruce and Lois Fye, Rochester Art Center (Rochester, MN),” special media essay with cover illustration in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 84:4 (December 2010), 674-677.
“Medical History for the Masses: How American Comic Books Celebrated Heroes of Medicine in the 1940s,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 78:1 (Spring 2004), pp. 148-191.
“True-Adventure Comic Books and American Popular Culture in the 1940s: An Annotated Research Bibliography of the Medical Heroes,” The International Journal of Comic Art 6:1 (Spring 2004), pp. 117-147.
“New Images of a New Medicine” (1999, cited below) was reprinted in Creating a Tradition of Biomedical Research: Contributions to the History of The Rockefeller University ed. Darwin H. Stapleton (New York: Rockefeller University Press, 2004), pp. 67-110.
“Public Careers and Private Sexuality: Some Gay and Lesbian Lives in the History of Medicine and Public Health,” American Journal of Public Health 92:1 (January 2002), pp. 36-44.
“America’s First Medical Breakthrough” (1998, cited below) was reprinted in Major Problems in the History of American Medicine and Public Health: Documents and Essays ed. John Harley Warner and Janet A. Tighe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), pp. 224-232.
“New Images of a New Medicine: Visual Evidence for Widespread Popularity of Therapeutic Discoveries in America after 1885,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 73:4 (December 1999), 629-678.
Reprinted in the book of essays, Creating a Tradition of Biomedical Research, cited above.
“America’s First Medical Breakthrough: How Popular Excitement about a French Rabies Cure in 1885 Raised New Expectations of Medical Progress,” American Historical Review 103:2 (April 1998), 373-418.
Reprinted in a teaching anthology cited above.
“The Image and Advocacy of Public Health in American Caricature and Cartoons from 1860 to 1900,” American Journal of Public Health 87:11 (November 1997), 1798-1807.
“American Physicians’ ‘Discovery’ of Homosexuals, 1880-1900: A New Diagnosis in a Changing Society,” Chapter 1 in Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health ed. Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), third edition, pp. 13-31.
This chapter in a widely used teaching anthology reprints the next item. In “De-medicalizing the Medical Humanities” (The European Legacy 16:3, May 2011, 317-326), Otniel E. Dror of The Hebrew University discusses this chapter as his primary tool in using history to challenge the thinking of medical students. Link to Dror’s article .
“American Physicians’ ‘Discovery’ of Homosexuals, 1880-1900: A New Diagnosis in a Changing Society,” Chapter 6 in Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History ed. Charles E. Rosenberg and Janet L. Golden (Rutgers University Press, 1992), pp. 104-133; second printing, 1996.
This expanded version of the 1989 Milbank Quarterly article sets the medical literature into the context of social history.
“La réponse américaine à la victoire de Pasteur contra la rage: Quand la médecine fait pour la première fois la ‘une’,” in L’Institut Pasteur: Contributions à son histoire ed. Michel Morange (Paris: La Découverte, 1991), pp. 89-102.
“New York City Epidemics and History for the Public,” in AIDS and the Historian: Proceedings of a Conference at the National Institutes of Health ed. Victoria A. Harden and Guenter B. Risse (Bethesda, MD: NIH, 1991), pp. 21-25.
“American Physicians’ Earliest Writings about Homosexuals, 1880-1900,” The Milbank Quarterly 67 (1989), Supplement 1, pp. 92-108.
An expanded version of this article also appeared in two books, cited above.
“The Complementarity of Science and Magic before the Scientific Revolution,” in Good Writing: A Guide and Sourcebook for Writing Across the Curriculum by Linda Simon (St. Martin’s Press, 1988), pp. 278-296.
This undergraduate writing textbook reprinted my 1986 article as a model expository essay—analyzing its style, organization, modes of argument, attention to readers’ needs, etc.
“Western European Bookish Magic,” The Dictionary of the Middle Ages Vol. 8, pp. 31-40 (1987).
“The Complementarity of Science and Magic before the Scientific Revolution,” American Scientist 74:2 (March-April 1986), pp. 128-136.
Reprinted in the book cited just above.
“Medical Education in New York City in 1866‑1867: A Student’s Notebook of Professor Budd’s Lectures on Obstetrics at New York University,” in two parts, New York State Journal of Medicine 85, No. 8 (August 1985), 488‑498, and No. 9 (September 1985), 548‑559.
This article was honored with the Laurance D. Redway Annual Award for Excellence in Medical Writing by the Medical Society of the State of New York in 1986.
“Science and Magic,” Chapter 15 of Science in the Middle Ages ed. David C. Lindberg (University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 483-506.
“The Early History of Glacial Theory in British Geology,” The Journal of Glaciology 9 (1970), 135‑141.
The following biographies in the fields of geology and geography appeared in The Dictionary of Scientific Biography ed. by Charles Coulston Gillispie, under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies, New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 16 vols. 1970-1980: Loring Woart Bailey, 1 (1970), 397; Robert Bakewell, 1 (1970), 413; Joachim Barrande, 1 (1970), 468-469; Francis Arthur Bather, 1 (1970), 506-507; Charles-Eugene Bertrand, 2 (1970), 85-86; Marcel-Alexandre Bertrand, 2 (1970), 89-90; Isaiah Bowman, 2 (1970), 373-374; Heinrich Georg Bronn, 2 (1970), 497-498; James Bruce, 2 (1970), 530; and Georg Christian Fuechsel, 5 (1972), 205-206.