Please join us for the sixth event in the 2013–2014 History of Medicine lecture series, sponsored by the Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health at the New York Academy of Medicine: Dr. Heather Varughese John, Independent Scholar, will deliver the Iago Galdston Lecture, speaking on medical education in New York City as shown through the anonymously published account, Intern, by “Dr. X.”

Heather Varughese John, MD, PhD

The Iago Galdston Lecture

Who is Dr. X? Physicians in Training and the Mass-Market Memoir

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, Room 20 (second floor)

Lecture at 6 p.m.; light refreshments from 5:30 p.m.

The New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street, New York, NY 10029

Physicians-in-training are almost as ubiquitous in popular culture as they are on hospital floors, yet their status as not quite fully fledged physicians is not always recognized. The mass-market memoir has helped increase the visibility of these physicians as trainees, as well as raise awareness of the dilemmas posed by an educational model of learning how to treat patients, by treating patients. The first in a long line of narratives to do this was a 1965 best-seller, Intern, by “Doctor X.”

Despite the precedent Intern set for exposing difficult realities underlying medical education, the physician-authors behind Doctor X and his successors have remained inscrutable figures. This talk will explore not only what these narratives have to say about medical education, but who their authors were, and why they wrote what they did, when they did. These narratives richly reflect the ways in which social change, and rights movements in particular, transformed the American medical profession in the late 20th century.

Heather Varughese John, M.D., Ph.D., is a recent graduate of the Program in the History of Science and Medicine at Yale University. Her doctoral dissertation, “Practicing Physicians: The Intern & Resident Experience in the Shaping of American Medical Education, 1945–2003,” examines medical trainees’ efforts to reform their own training. She is an independent scholar in Los Angeles.

The lecture is free and open to the public, but advance registration is requested. You can register for this event here: Who is Dr. X? Physicians in Training and the Mass-Market Memoir.

We look forward to seeing you at this and other events in the 2013–2014 series.  For more information about many other upcoming history of medicine events in the New York area, see the calendar page of our blog, Books, Health, and History: http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/calendar/