Monthly Archives: August 2011

Teaching Points: Culture, Medicine, & Society: Commentary on the Class

Posted on August 31, 2011 by

Editor’s Note: In the second part of our inaugural post to the “Teaching Points” series, Contributing Editor Joe Gabriel ruminates on teaching to both medical students and PhD candidates in the humanities. Yesterday I posted the syllabus to a class … Continue reading →

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Teaching Points: Culture, Medicine, & Society: A Graduate Course in the History of Medicine

Posted on August 30, 2011 by

Editor’s Note: Building on successful contributions by Eoin Cannon and Caroline Acker, Points this week inaugurates a five-part series that looks at teaching alcohol and drugs as history, culture, and policy issue.  Each week we’ll feature two posts on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Joseph Gabriel, Teaching Points | Tagged , | 2 Comments

What’s Pashto for “Recovery”?

Posted on August 29, 2011 by

This weekend, the New York Times treated readers once again to the spectacle of opium addiction in Afghanistan, a country, according to the article’s title, “Trapped in a Narcotic Haze.” The article did note in passing that economic forces might … Continue reading →

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Points on Blogs: Drugs, Law and Conflict

Posted on August 18, 2011 by

Good blogs are hard to find.  Literally. One of the weird quirks of our marvelously interconnected age is how challenging it remains to locate good blogs in one’s field of interest.  They’re out there, but existing methods of web searching … Continue reading →

Posted in Joe Spillane, Points on Blogs | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Points Interview: Eric Schneider

Posted on August 17, 2011 by

This week’s Points Interview is number fifteen in the series, and features Eric Schneider talking smack about Smack: Heroin and the American City.  Eric’s book has just appeared in a paperback edition, so this interview is a timely revisiting of … Continue reading →

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Thoreau’s Lament on Cider’s Fall

Posted on August 16, 2011 by

Henry David Thoreau’s (1817-1862) essay, “Wild Apples,” was published posthumously in the November, 1862 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.  In it, Thoreau celebrated the history, beauty, fragrance, taste, and meanings of apples and apple trees – i.e., both regarding apples in general and wild … Continue reading →

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The Elephant in the Newsroom: Drug Policy and Michele Bachmann’s Migraines

Posted on August 15, 2011 by

Ed. Note–This post originally appeared on August 1. We removed it briefly while pursuing an opportunity to speak with Rep. Bachmann about the questions posed below. Unfortunately, the Bachmann camp did not respond to our query. We welcome readers’ insights … Continue reading →

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The Points Interview: Howard Markel

Posted on August 12, 2011 by

The Points Interview returns today after a six-week holiday, with the fourteenth installment of the series featuring Howard Markel’s An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine.  Just released by Pantheon, An Anatomy of Addiction … Continue reading →

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Points on Blogs, Coming Soon

Posted on August 11, 2011 by

Editors’ Note: Next week we begin a new series introducing our readers to other interesting and/or useful blogs.  From the beginnings of the Points blog, we have been conscious–and appreciative–of the work of our fellow bloggers, but have spent precious … Continue reading →

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Beyond Andean Cocaine: Excess Ideas for Further Cocaine Research

Posted on August 8, 2011 by

Editors’ Note: Graduate students, pay attention!  This guest post from SUNY-Stony Brook historian Paul Gootenberg lays out a series of dissertation-worthy research questions in cocaine’s modern history.  Readers of all sorts will observe that many of the unanswered questions have … Continue reading →

Posted in Guest Bloggers | Tagged , | 7 Comments