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Medicine

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Birth Control

Institute of Medicine recommends that birth control be covered by private insurers

Debra Nussbaum Cohen

When I was a young adult and ready to start on the birth control pill, I found that its cost was not covered by my health insurance. Paying the retail price was onerous. It didn’t seem right that insurance wouldn’t cover contraception, though it did cover the cost of giving birth and possibly even abortion. It just didn’t make any sense.

Now, finally, the federal government is ready to rectify the situation, and make contraception more economically accessible to women and men by requiring health insurance to cover its cost.

Dr. Sabina Zimering's memoirs come to the stage

March 27, 2004

On March 27, 2004 at the age of 81, Dr.

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, 1921 - 2011

Ultimately, RIA created “an explosion of knowledge” in every aspect of medicine and was used in thousands of laboratories in the United States and abroad.

Remembering Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow, Nobel Prize winning scientist and mother

Leah Berkenwald

“A Jewish woman whose father-in-law is a rabbi, who keeps a kosher home, who invites her lab assistants to Passover seders, and worries about them catching colds is not the typical image of a Nobel Prize winner,” Emily Taitz writes in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. “But it is the image of Rosalyn Yalow, the first woman born and educated in the United States to win a Nobel Prize in a scientific field.” Rosalyn S. Yalow passed away Monday, May 30, 2011, at the age of 89.

Orgasm Inc. Film

Yet to come: Orgasm Inc. and the invention of female sexual dysfuntion

Leah Berkenwald

Last night I saw Orgasm Inc., a documentary film by Liz Canner about the medicalization of female sexual pleasure and the race to find a cure for so-called "female sexual dysfunction."

Topics: Film, Medicine
Top 11 Labor History Landmarks in New York City

Labor History Landmark: No. 10 The Henry Street Settlement

Leah Berkenwald

The Top 11 Labor History Landmarks in New York City is a blog series on Jewesses with Attitude created in honor of Women's History Month and the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Waist Factory fire. Learn more about the series here, or check out JWA's online walking tour.

Top 10 Jewish Women in Labor History

10 Things You Should Know About Lillian Wald

Leah Berkenwald

Lillian Wald was born in Cincinnati, OH in 1867. Like many German Jews, her parents had emigrated from Europe soon after the revolutions of 1848. Her father, an optical goods dealer, moved his family to Rochester, NY in 1878. The Walds valued culture as well as formal education. Lillian remembered her parents’ home as a place overflowing with books. She went to a school in Rochester that taught in French as well as English.

Giving the gift of Jewish genes

Leah Berkenwald

I just came across a Craigslist posting via Twitter (oy, my life!) looking for a Jewish woman to donate her eggs to a Jewish couple looking to conceive. This couple, through an agency called A Jewish Blessing, is offering $8,000 for an egg from a Jewish donor. A Jewish Blessing was founded by Judy Weiss, RNC in 2005 in response to the growing number of requests from Jewish families for her help in finding qualified and extraordinary young Jewish donors and surrogates.

Topics: Family, Medicine

Isabelle Charlotte Weinstein Goldenson, 1921 - 2005

My mother's inspiration and perseverance resulted in the development of a light-weight wheelchair, multi-directional conveyances which can climb stairs, remote control 'space garments' to move limbs, sensory devices to help the blind, amongst many other breakthroughs and my mother united the worlds of science, technology and medicine in the first-ever collaboration!

Gertrud C. Reyersbach, 1907 - 1999

“I liked all the toys in your office but actually my favorite thing was you.” No one was too poor, too cranky or too old to be welcomed into her office, advised, healed, and encouraged.

Herta Spencer-Laszlo, 1911 - 2007

A pioneering woman in the medical world, Herta published more than 250 scientific papers, including numerous articles on the effects on humans of strontium-90, a major radioactive component of fallout from the atomic bomb tests of the '40s and '50s. She was instrumental in describing mechanisms to rid the body of this deadly isotope, information that was to prove invaluable years later when she helped save lives following the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.… Mostly, Herta taught us that if you have focus, work hard and dream big you can make major achievements that make the world a better place.

Jean W. Rothenberg, 1909 - 2007

…her hearing loss prevented her from hearing all of what she wanted to, but she turned that sorrow into her greatest gift—that of restoring human communication for others with hearing loss.

Loren Galler Rabinowitz crowned “Miss Massachusetts”

June 26, 2010

Loren Galler Rabinowitz a gifted pianist, Bronze-medal winning ice skater, and poet who graduated from Harvard in 2010 with plans to pursue a career in medicine, won the Miss Massachusetts title in 2

Rae D. Landy arrives in Jerusalem

February 2, 1913
Born in Lithuania, Rae D. Landy graduated with the first class of nursing students in Cleveland, OH. She went on to work in Jerusalem with Hadassah and later the United States Army Nurse Corps.

The women honored by the passage of healthcare reform

Leah Berkenwald

Last night the House of Representatives passed the healthcare reform bill in what is being called a historic victory for progressives and healthcare activists, despite the inclusion of abortion restrictions. Still, the bill will make healthcare accessible to many who could not afford it under the current system and will curb some of the most unethical practices of insurance companies, such as dropping coverage when a child gets sick.

Topics: Medicine

Standing up for women's health care

Judith Rosenbaum

These last several weeks, I (like other JWA bloggers) have walked around in a haze of frustration, rage, and despair over politicians' apparent blindness to the centrality of women's health to national health. As a historian, I can attest that as goes women's health, so goes the health of the nation.

Topics: Medicine

Lynn Amowitz: physician for human rights

Leah Berkenwald

Lynn Amowitz was born and raised in North Carolina.  Her community had very few Jews –- so few that her parents founded a synagogue in order for her to have a Bat Mitzvah.  Amowitz suffered anti-semitic harassment from her peers, an experience which, she said, led to her work in human rights.

Topics: Activism, Medicine

Abby Shevitz -- a role model in the global fight against AIDS

Leah Berkenwald

December 1 is World AIDS Day, established in 1988 by the World Health Organization to raise awareness and focus attention on the global AIDS epidemic. World AIDS Day reminds us that for many across the globe, the spread of HIV/AIDS is a very real, very present, part of every day life, and millions are suffering.The global AIDS epidemic can be difficult for some Americans to accept or understand.

Topics: Activism, Medicine

Lillian Wald

Lillian D. Wald was a practical idealist who worked to create a more just society. Her goal was to ensure that women and children, immigrants and the poor, and members of all ethnic and religious groups would realize America's promise of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Gertrude Elion

Gertrude Elion's accomplishments over the course of her long career as a chemist were tremendous. Among the many drugs she developed were the first chemotherapy for childhood leukemia, the immunosuppressant that made organ transplantation possible, the first effective anti-viral medication, and treatments for lupus, hepatitis, arthritis, gout, and other diseases.

Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori wins Nobel Prize

December 10, 1947
Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori became the first American woman to receive a Nobel Prize in science.

Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow becomes first American-born woman to receive Nobel Prize in science

December 8, 1977

On December 8, 1977, Rosalyn Yalow became the first American-born and American-trained woman to receive a Nobel Prize in science when she accepted

Phoebe Yates Levy Pember given charge of Confederate military hospital

November 29, 1862

On November 29, 1862, Phoebe Yates Levy Pember wrote a letter to her sister indicating that she was about “to take charge of one o

Army nurse Frances Y. Slanger killed by German artillery

October 21, 1944

On October 21, 1944, Frances Y. Slanger, R.N. died in Elsenborn, Belgium, a victim of a German artillery attack.

Gertrude Elion wins Nobel Prize

October 17, 1988

The October 17, 1988, announcement that chemist Gertrude Elion had won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine represented the culmination of an unlikely career.

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