Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine最新文献

Introduction: In Brazil, the Aedes aegypti mosquito is considered the primary vector of arboviral diseases, such as Dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya. Effective mosquito population control is crucial for reducing the transmission of these diseases. In this study, we investigated the toxicity of Citrus sinensis (sweet orange) peel essential oil (EO) on A. aegypti larvae under laboratory conditions.

Methods: Ten larvae, in duplicate, at L3 and L4 stages were exposed to different concentrations of the EO (0.2 mg mL-1, 0.5 mg mL-1, and 1 mg mL-1), and the survival rate was assessed at predetermined time intervals (1h, 2h, 4h, 24h, and 48h).

Results: The results demonstrated that the EO of C. sinensis was toxic to mosquito larvae at all tested concentrations, with a decrease in survival rate observed as the EO concentration increased.

Conclusions: The EO of C. sinensis showed promising potential as an alternative for larval control of A. aegypti. However, further studies on its bioavailability, stability, and formulation optimization are needed to confirm its viability and to develop sustainable delivery systems.

In 1993, geneticist Dean Hamer and his colleagues published a groundbreaking study suggesting that a region on the X chromosome-Xq28-might be linked to male homosexuality. Widely covered in the press and championed by LGBTQ rights advocates, the study lent scientific weight to the argument that sexual orientation is biologically rooted rather than solely the product of psychosexual developmental failure. This posed a significant threat to the cultural authority of conversion therapists, who had long relied on psychoanalytic frameworks that pathologized same-sex desire as a "curable" condition. In response, conversion therapists launched a coordinated counteroffensive, rejecting the emerging biological evidence about homosexuality and doubling down on psychodynamic theories about same-sex desire developed in the mid-20th century. This article argues that the publication of Hamer's research drew conversion therapists into the heart of the United States' culture wars, where they forged interfaith political coalitions and constructed alternative knowledge-production networks to preserve the plausibility of sexual reorientation. Their opposition to genetic research was more than scientific skepticism; it was a strategic political effort to defend heteronormativity, enforce rigid gender roles, and delegitimize queer and trans identities. By tracing how conversion therapists selectively engaged with emerging scientific discourses around LGBTQ individuals being "born that way," this article reveals how marginalized actors helped shape-and distort-the boundaries of scientific authority in service of a broader anti-queer agenda.

Oocyte or egg donation has been part of the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) landscape since the late 1980s. By the early 1990s, ART clinics, agencies, and family law offices began to place advertisements in college newspapers seeking egg donors to build egg banks and for particular couples. Couples themselves also began to seek out specific donors that matched criteria they were looking for. These ads grew from blanket calls for egg donors between particular ages to asking for intelligence defined by SAT scores, specific races, eye and hair colors, and more. Although scholars such as sociologist Rene Almeling and political scientist Erin Heidt-Forsythe have written about the eugenic assumptions at play in egg donations, this has mostly emerged from looking at clinics and agencies who broker eggs. Focusing instead on both clinical and individual advertising in elite university newspapers more easily reveals eugenic afterlives in how potential egg donation recipients talk about the genetic inheritability of intelligence and race. Considering that ads are placed in elite university newspapers, these egg recipients are targeting presumably intelligent students whose genetic material would contain supposedly superior DNA to pass on to potential offspring. Race is also assumed to be a stable biogenetic concept. These ads reveal how egg donation recipients are implicated within larger societal inequalities and power dynamics surrounding race, kinship, ability, and privilege.

This paper focuses on the rise and fall of the Utica State Hospital, Utica, New York, once known for its pioneering use of moral treatment, as an example of how psychiatric institutionalization shaped ideas about mental illness, disability, and patient rights in America. Through architecture, patient narratives, and managerial reports, the paper explores how the institute ultimately fell out of use and how institutionalization, even with good intentions, could reinforce exclusion and harm toward the mentally ill and the disabled. The paper further traces the resonance between this legacy and today's psychiatric and disability studies, drawing attention to the recurring societal impulse to define and segregate abnormality.

In 1992, the AIDS Task Force of Alabama (AFTA) secured a $1.8 million federal grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to open Agape House, Birmingham, Alabama's first community-maintained AIDS boarding house for adults. Although AIDS boarding houses existed all over the country throughout the 1980s and 1990s, they have received little attention from scholars. The goal of this project is to understand the rise of Agape House and resources that were wielded to make it possible. Beyond help from a federal institution, Agape House received considerable support from local religious organizations. This analysis of AIDS boarding houses offers a local look at how the AIDS epidemic was thwarted. Popular queer history often emphasizes the work of national organizations, like AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) to explain queer resistance to AIDS and responses to the lack of federal intervention. While important, the centrality of larger organizations to our understanding of AIDS resistance has obfuscated the work of local grassroots organizations. Ultimately, this project aims to answer the following, how did changes in knowledge surrounding AIDS impact the evolution of care? What motivated groups, specifically religious ones, to participate? And how did Agape House survive while similar houses closed?

The community of Heilig Kreuz, outside Mainz, Germany, has long been something of a historiographical enigma. Its first internal records, dating to the mid-15th century, testify to the presence of a canonry "at the church of the Blessed Virgin in the fields outside the walls of Mainz." In the scant scholarship on Heilig Kreuz, it has been characterized as replacing an earlier, informal community of lepers on the same site. In this paper I argue that, rather, the changing institutional form of the community was an attempt to guarantee continuity of care for the vulnerable. The codex containing the "customs and oaths" of the house testifies to a process of formalizing religious observance and affirming religious status that can be seen in other leper hospitals in the region throughout the later 15th century. The oaths for canons and clerks pledging "service to the persons residing there," in a formula resembling that of many hospital rules concerning service of the sick, and the fact that the statutes were recorded "to avoid perils" that might otherwise befall the community, can be understood in the context of the efforts of the archbishops of Mainz to exercise more direct control over the city's hospitals.

When COVID-19 survivors reported ongoing symptoms or new health concerns following their infections in 2020 and early 2021, many medical practitioners and health agencies questioned the connection between novel viruses and long-term health impacts. Medical historians studying epidemics understand the connection between viral infection and health complications emerging immediately or years or decades later. In this essay, I explore the similarities between the medical fallout of the 1918 influenza and COVID-19 pandemics. Despite the differences between the viruses, these novel strains produced similar medium- and long-term health difficulties, including cardiovascular dysfunction and crushing fatigue. As I demonstrate, a significant difference between these two pandemics is in the response by medical practitioners. Following influenza, practitioners expected new and worsening health issues and took their patients' complaints seriously, offering support through food delivery, convalescent care, specialist oversight, and in-home nursing. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, many practitioners characterized ongoing or new symptoms as anxiety. Patients led efforts to recognize Long COVID as an authentic medical condition, and today, physicians around the country refer their patients to Long COVID clinics. The value of medical history is apparent in this comparison-if practitioners understand how historical epidemics impacted various populations, they expect that in the epidemic aftermath or the period following an acute epidemic crisis, not all patients get well. Including the history of epidemics in public health education, continuing education programming, and even medical school curricula can resist epidemic erasure and empower medical practitioners to expect the unexpected.

The Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) is often framed as a triumph of North American medical innovation, an institution converging research, clinical care, and neurosurgery under the leadership of Wilder Penfield. Such narratives fail to account for Penfield's emotional labor and the networks of expertise that shaped the MNI. Using primary sources that reveal the transnational influences embedded in its design, this paper interrogates the foundation and evolution of the MNI particularly by looking at the early years of Penfield's career. It situates the MNI within the broader historiographies of medical space and scientific mobility drawing from Penfield's letters to illustrate the early influences that led to the establishment of the MNI. It proposes that history of emotions and history of mentalities can be effective methodologies to understand the diverse medical research communities of the early 20th century. Using his letters to his mother, Jean Jefferson Penfield, this paper interprets the emotional states of a young, self-doubting Penfield within a network of renowned neurologists of that period. In a wider context, through the case study of the MNI, this paper demonstrates that international collaboration and the physical mobility of researchers - as in the example of the American-born Penfield's global journey in search of knowledge and his path to becoming a naturalized citizen of Canada - are essential for the advancement of scientific research.

In this study, I examine how museums of traditional medicine in Asia construct and present narratives about zootherapy. Through analyzing displays and their contextual framing, I investigate how animal-derived remedies are represented, which species and medical applications are included, and how museums address conservation and ethical concerns. The study is based on fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2025, including visits to five museums dedicated to traditional medicine. These institutions include the Museum of Traditional Medicine in Isfara, the Museum of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine, the Hu Qing Yu Tang Traditional Chinese Medicine Museum, the Pharmacy Museum in Lisbon, and the Suzhou Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Exhibit documentation, textual analysis, and comparative research methods were used to assess how zootherapy is represented in these museums. The findings reveal that zootherapy exhibits include a wide range of species, from invertebrates such as insects and mollusks to large mammals like bears, elephants, and tigers. Some exhibits provide detailed descriptions of their medicinal uses, while others lack contextualization or critical engagement with conservation issues. The depiction of zootherapy in museums varies significantly, with some institutions presenting it as an enduring medical tradition and others portraying it as an obsolete practice rooted in historical beliefs rather than modern pharmacology. The absence of ethical considerations in museum narratives is a key concern, particularly regarding endangered species. The study also highlights the role of traditional medicine museums in shaping public perceptions of zootherapy, influencing how these practices are understood in both historical and contemporary contexts.