This week’s reading offers a history of Bellevue to explore much larger questions about the development of medicine, health care, and changing perceptions/experiences of and access to health.

History of Bellevue

To cite this work, simply us e the name Oshinsky along with the page number at the bottom of each picture. ex. (Oshinsky, 10) Use the attachments to answer at lest half of the following questions. This week’s reading offers a microhistory of Bellevue to explore much larger questions about the development of medicine, health care, and changing perceptions/experiences of and access to health. In tracing the history of Bellevue, Oshinsky asserts that Bellevue “mirrors an ever-changing New York” (1). At times, Bellevue, as a mirror of New York, arrived at changes that would sweep through the United States early, experienced acutely pressures that challenged healthcare facilities in other communities, and faced difficulties unique to the city.

History of Bellevue

Still, Oshinsky presents American medical history in broad strokes through this history of Bellevue. An episode of RadioLab used the phrase “sculptors of monumental narrative” when exploring parasites, particularly their role in shaping a region and how their eradication shifted the history of that region. When we look at Oshinsky’s sweeping history of Bellevue, could we consider an institution like Bellevue or medicine generally as being a “sculptor of monumental narrative”? Oshinsky’s history of Bellevue focuses on the long history of the institution, while also focusing in on particular epidemics, social and political changes, and physicians and changing practices. What does this approach illuminate?

History of Bellevue

How might a history of Bellevue give us broader insight into the history of medicine? The history of the United States? What might we miss by focusing on a place like Bellevue? Last week, several of our framework articles made the case that disease is socially constructed. How does the overview of the history of Bellevue help shape your thoughts in relation to those framework pieces? Oshinsky writes, Bellevue “stands, for all its troubles, as a vital safety net, a place of caring and a place of last resort” (10). What do you think he means by this? Oshinsky traces some major shifts in how physicians and other healers understood disease.

History of Bellevue

How was disease understood at various points in this long history? How did remedies shift with changing perceptions? Historians of medicine have argued that the germ theory refashioned rather than replacing older ideas about how morality and social position might shape health. Essentially, as American physicians, public health officials, and reformers moved ahead with this new knowledge, they implemented it in ways that reflected existed cultural values and social prejudices, especially ideas about ethnicity, race, and class. In what ways did old values become part of a new explanatory framework with this particular shift?

History of Bellevue

Did you notice this pattern at other points in this history? At various points Oshinsky takes up the question of what was considered a socially acceptable body, whether that came to whose bodies deserved care, whose bodies might experience the risk of experimentation, or whose bodies might be dissected? How was this question answered? What groups played a role in answering it? Historians have suggested that the Civil War was the most devastating biological event of 19th century American history. What effect did it have on medicine and public health? Oshinsky contrasts Bellevue with the AIDS Unit at San Francisco General Hospital.

History of Bellevue

What were the differences? What factors shaped those differences? How did those differences shape how people experienced AIDS in the two cities? What were some of issues Bellevue faced in the 1980s and 1990s. In what ways were these issues a reflection of broader social and economic factors and/or unique to Bellevue? How did this “Rock Bottom” period exemplify or challenge Oshinsky’s observation that Bellevue has served throughout its history “as a vital safety net, a place of caring and a place of last resort” (10)? How did the experience of care change across this long history? How did the practice of medicine change?   https://youtu.be/gQFptAmQIk4

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