Unseen: Treating “Invisible” Illness from Medieval Medicine to the COVID-19 Pandemic User Submitted Online

Jennifer Brea, Pauline Newman ’47 Distinguished Speaker in Science, Technology, and Society Throughout history, medicine and society have had to grapple with how to categorize and treat (or not) illness which could not be objectively measured by the technology of the time. Syphilis, tuberculosis, cancer, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, psychiatric illness, myalgic encephalomyelitis, and now, “long COVID,” have all passed through periods where lack of diagnostics or lack of viable therapeutics relegated patients to metaphor, stigma, and poor treatment. Why, over hundreds of years, has medicine disregarded many “new,” unrecognized, or poorly understood illnesses? Register for this event: https://vassar.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QmhnZ59TSHytQYRLGNIIyQ