About Jan

Hi. I'm Jan Henderson, and this is my blog. I study the history of medicine, and I'm especially interested in how the practice of medicine has changed since the mid-20th century. My interests center on current health issues - healthcare, pharmaceuticals, the doctor/patient relationship, aging and death - with an eye to both the past and the future.

My formal education taught me to value and respect science. I majored in mathematics at Harvard and received a PhD in the history of science and medicine from Yale. I taught the history of science and medicine at the City University of New York and spent a year as a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

My graduate school training advocated an 'internalist' approach to science and medicine: studying texts in their original languages. The more I taught, especially survey courses that ranged from pre-historic medicine men to the promise of genetics, the more I was attracted to an 'externalist' approach, which understands science as a product of its time and culture.

I left academics and alternated between writing about what truly interested me and earning a living. I spent time at a media industry publication, evaluated mainframe artificial intelligence software, and managed technical documentation and marketing in the personal computer industry.

This site combines my long-standing interests in health, medicine, anxiety, mass media, and the history of ideas. For more about this site and my quick overview of the Health Culture, see my first post: The Health Culture. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. For more about me, see My personal odyssey through the health culture.