The first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States was Elizabeth Blackwell, in 1849. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on her autobiography plus the life stories of four other pioneering 19th century women physicians. At that time the Victorian notion of separate spheres ruled society: The world of business and politics was the sphere of men, and the world of home and church was the sphere of women, who were not allowed to enter professions such as medicine. Keenly aware of their ground-breaking significance, most early women physicians chose to emphasize that their work was not a transgression into the world of men, but rather a logical extension of their traditional position as women, responsible for the care of their family’s health.
I was therefore delighted to come across this article about women medical graduates of the time who turned women’s traditional task of needlework to the service of expressing their professional selves. Be sure to check out the photos in this article, which offers a short history on the entrance of women into the profession of medicine.
Jordan Pennells, a PhD student in bioengineering at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, addresses the question “how has ageing persisted within the Darwinian framework of evolution?”
Here’s his concluding sentence:
In the drive towards the cure for ageing, evolutionary medicine has the potential to further our understanding of why human diseases arise, and elucidate the unanticipated costs of subverting this intrinsic biological process.
That phrase the cure for ageing caught my eye because it suggests that aging is not a necessary and unavoidable process of life, but rather a condition to be studied and overcome. But I can’t help but wonder what the result would be if we did, in fact, discover how to cure aging.
Tag line: “The assisted living industry is booming, by tapping into the fantasy that we can all be self-sufficient until we die.”
Geeta Anand, formerly a reporter for The New York Times, is a professor at the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. In this article she uses her own experience caring for aging parents to look at the assisted living industry. Here’s her conclusion:
Assisted living has a role to play for the fittest among the elderly, as was its original intent. But if it is to be a long-term solution for seniors who need substantial care, then it needs serious reform, including requirements for higher staffing levels and substantial training.
“In the era of Big Data, we’ve come to believe that, with enough information, human behavior is predictable. But number crunching can lead us perilously wrong.”
We come across a lot of statistics in our daily lives, particularly in consideration of whether a particular medication will benefit us. In this article Hannah Fry, professor at University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, explains how statistics work, particularly in the context of scientific study results.
If you ever took an introductory psychology course, you undoubtedly learned about Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, usually pictured as a pyramid with several levels. At the bottom of the pyramid are basic needs, such as food, clothing, shelter. Only as each level of needs, starting at the bottom, is met can an individual move up to the next higher level. At the pinacle is the achievement of self-actualization, or the pursuit of creative goals and the achievement of one’s highest potential.
This article by Christian Jarrett reports on research by Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at Barnard College, Columbia University, aimed at reformulating Maslow’s work and linking it to contemporary psychological theory.
Jarrett concludes:
The new test is sure to reinvigorate Maslow’s ideas, but if this is to help heal our divided world, then the characteristics required for self-actualisation, rather than being a permanent feature of our personalities, must be something we can develop deliberately.
He writes further that Kaufman says he believes that his work can help people reach their highest potential: “‘ Capitalise on your highest characteristics but also don’t forget to intentionally be mindful about what might be blocking your self-actualisation … Identify your patterns and make a concerted effort to change. I do think it’s possible with conscientiousness and willpower.’”
© 2019 by Mary Daniels Brown
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Retreading for Retirement 