Bruno J. Strasser
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brunostrasser.bsky.social
Bruno J. Strasser
@brunostrasser.bsky.social
Historian of Science, Technology, Medicine. Just out: Bruno J. Strasser & Thomas Schlich, The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air (Yale U Press, 2025)
brunostrasser.com
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Our book is out! The surprising history of masks worn by plague doctors, factory workers, trench soldier, hospital nurses, and the rest of us.

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

@yalepress.bsky.social
@yalebooks.bsky.socuial
Thrilled to see our book, The Mask: A History of Breathing Bad Air, featured on Nature’s list of 10 essential science reads of the year! www.nature.com/articles/d41...
December 2, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
In 1848, railroad worker Phineas Gage survived a 13-pound iron rod blasting through his skull. He lived, but his personality was never the same. His accident would change how we understand the brain forever. 🧵/1
October 4, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
The hematologist Oswald H. Robertson pioneered the idea of "blood banks" in WWI by packing glass jars of citrated blood from universal donors in an ice-filled chest that he had constructed from ammunition cases. He convinced countless others to donate blood during the war.
September 30, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Violet Affleck’s impassioned call at #UNGA80 for masking and clean #indoorair is the latest episode in the long —and always controversial— history of masks. To explore the earlier chapters and better understand what’s happening today, check out our book!
tinyurl.com/579pz264
September 24, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
Excited to share this year's program for the Séminaire romand d’histoire des sciences et des techniques! The colloquium is co-organized with @brunostrasser.bsky.social (Geneva), Simona Boscani Leoni (Lausanne), & Gianenrico Bernasconi (Neuchâtel) #histSTM #histsci

www.epfl.ch/labs/lhst/la...
September 17, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
OK, a🧵: Our new paper studies workers' political consciousness in times of class demobilization.

We show there's more to workers' politics than right-wing resentment. Listening to workers, we reconstruct their moral critiques of money, power & recognition.

Link journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
September 9, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
📰Entretien de @brunostrasser.bsky.social dans le Journal de l'#UNIGE à l'occasion de la parution du livre «The Mask. A History of Breathing Bad Air» dont il est co-auteur : www.unige.ch/lejournal/re...
👉 yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
«Le masque est toujours un objet complexe» - - UNIGE
www.unige.ch
September 5, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
@brunostrasser.bsky.social presents his book "The Mask" written with Thomas Schlich, a book that tells the story till the 1970s.

Published by @yalepress.bsky.social @yalebooks.bsky.social

#nocovid #eahmh25
August 27, 2025 at 11:11 AM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
Protecting Bodies at Work: Technical Devices, Materialities of Health, and Political Imaginaries #infoclioevent
Protecting Bodies at Work: Technical Devices, Materialities of Health, and Political Imaginaries
Protecting Bodies at Work: Technical Devices, Materialities of Health, and Political Imaginaries September 18th 8:30-9:00 Welcome 9:00-9:10 Introduction 9:10-10:00 The Health of the Artisan * Ricardo Córdoba (Universidad de Córdoba): The prevention of occupational hazards in the practice of craft trades, Iberian Peninsula, 14th-15th centuries * Sarah Seinitzer (Universität Wien): The Use of Garlic to Maintain the Balance of Metalworker’s Body 10:00-10:20 Coffee Break 10:20-11:10 Underground Worlds I * Emeline Retournard (Université Clermont Auvergne): The costume and protection of miners in Europe from the High Middle Ages to the early modern period. A multidisciplinary approach * Charles-Antoine Wanecq, Bastien Cabot (Université de Lille ; Sciences Po): A worker's perspective on safety and hygiene devices: the archives of miners' safety delegates in France from 1890 to the 1980s 11:10-11:20 Coffee Break 11:20-12:10 Underground Worlds II * Pascal Raggi, Sébastien Mellard (Université de Lorraine): Mineworkers' helmets in France: their emergence, use and representations (from the late 1940s to the early 21st century) * Grace Simpson (Universidad Complutense de Madrid / Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie): Boots instead of espadrilles': changing attitudes to protective mining gear in the Asturian coal basins through the lens of the company committee, 1958–1964 12:10-12:30 Brainstorming 12:30-14:00 Lunch-workshop I 14:00-15:15 Breathing Modernities * Marie Thébaud-Sorger (CNRS): Living and working in the heat and noxious air: Charles Leroux's universal textile and the individualisation of protection * Erika Wicky (Université Grenoble Alpes): Anti-Miasma Devices designed to protect Colour Grinders (1789-1830) * Véronique Stenger, Yohann Guffroy, Bruno J. Strasser (Université de Genève): The Mask: Materiality and Imaginaries of Occupational Health in 19th Century France 15:15-15:30 Coffee Break 15:30-16:20 (Post-)Colonial Contexts I * Santosh Kumar Rai (University of Delhi): Protecting Bodies at Work: The Lives of Handloom Weavers in Colonial North India * Shreya Kundu (University of Ashoka): Precarious Bodies and Marginal Lives of Labouring Children in British India: Health and Technology at the Crossroads (1870s- 1940s) 16:20-16:30 Coffee Break 16:30-17:20 (Post-)Colonial Contexts II * Rose Angeline Abissi (Université de Douala): The physical ''protection'' of workers in the colonial context in Cameroon between 1908 and 1957 * Christian Papinot (Université de Poitiers): Exposure to occupational risks and (non-)use of protective equipment of construction workers in Madagascar 17:20-18:00 Brainstorming 19:30 Dinner at the Bains des Pâquis September 19th 8:30-9:00 Welcome 9:00-9:50 Safety at Sea * Guillaume Linte (Université Aix-Marseille): Protecting the seafarer's body: naval hygiene and technological innovation in 18th-century France * Baptistine Airiau-Bomont (Sorbonne Université): “L’hygiène ne saurait l’incriminer et la tradition le défend.” The navy sailors' uniform, between symbolism and protection for sailors at work (1856-1914) 9:50-10:00 Coffee Break 10:00-11:15 Expertises, Gender, and Policies * Marie Charvet (Nantes Université): How a production tool became a sanitary protection device: the difficult acclimatisation of spin-dryers in 19th century French public washhouses * Judith Rainhorn (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): The toolbox of expertise. Dr Alice Hamilton and bodies at work during the Progressive era (United States, 1914-1930) * Almira Sharafeeva (LMU München): Protecting Women’s Bodies at Work: Soviet Occupational Health Policies and the Politics of Risk (1920s-1930s) 11:15-12:00 Brainstorming 12:00-13:30 Lunch-workshop II 13:30-14:20 Safety Education * Nadège Mariotti (Université de Lorraine): Safety Films in Mining and the Steel Industry: Audiovisual Devices and Prevention Imaginaries since 1938 * Sarah-Louise Rehahn, Katrin Petersen (DASA Arbeitswelt Ausstellung, Dortmund): Reaching out for a wide audience: exhibitions as educational tools for protecting bodies (and minds) at work 14:20-14:45 Coffee break 14:45-16:00 From Occupational to Environmental Health * Petra Seitz (University College London): Protecting white-collar bodies at work: The Northern European cellular office * Arthur Delacquis (Sorbonne Université): Hoods, caps and leftist propaganda–Aluminium Péchiney and the requests for action against fluoride fumes in l’Argentière- la-Bessée (1970-1982) * Marie Thirion (Université Grenoble Alpes): « Un ballo in maschera » - Materiality and symbolic significance of the gas mask in Porto Marghera 16:00-17:00 Brainstorming & Farwell Organisiert von University of Geneva CS 01. September 2025 veronique.stenger@unige.ch Online via Zoom Website der Veranstaltung Programme
dlvr.it
September 1, 2025 at 6:32 AM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
🚨September 18-19🚨

Don't miss the international conference :
"Protecting Bodies at Work. Technical Devices, Materialities of Health, and Political Imaginaries"

Program: shorturl.at/rmniy

You can attend online: shorturl.at/Be9mF (Zoom link)

🗃️ #AcademicSky #MedievalSky
Conference - Section of Biology - UNIGE
shorturl.at
August 28, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
Safe melted plastic syringe blocks? Unsettling presentation on single disposables in medicines by Jeremy Greene at #eahmh25
August 28, 2025 at 9:35 AM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
With Ernest Mangesho we are moving to Tanzania. The project "After the Single Use" comprises eigth countries

#eahmh25

wellcome.org/research-fun...
August 28, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
The Mask is discussed by David Gentilcore, Christoph Gradmann, @ahlie.bsky.social and @luchen.bsky.social

#eahmh25 #histmed
August 27, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
#EAHMH25 Fascinating ongoing Lunch Roundtable around Bruno Strasser and Thomas Schlich’s book Making the Medical Mask: a History of Breathing Bad Air
August 27, 2025 at 11:27 AM
Projit Mukharji opens his lecture at #EAHMH25 with the following point: 1/3 of all human beings live either in China or India. Yet, most scholarship in #histmed is about Western biomedicine.

@eahmh.bsky.social
August 26, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Dora Vargha opening EAHMH 2025 in Berlin! @eahmh.bsky.social

#EAHMH25 #histmed
August 26, 2025 at 4:17 PM
1/12 - In our book, The Mask, we show 58 striking images.

Remember those depictions of plague doctors wearing a beaked mask? Such visual elements were common in the 17th C and were always satirical.

Here is one by F. Bertelli, from Il Carnevale Italiano…1642 (The Met, NY).

tinyurl.com/uvzjs9py
August 21, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
If you're in Berlin on August 29, come along to the launch (again) of Medicine on a Larger Scale (open access CUP 2025)!
#histmed #histstm #sts
August 13, 2025 at 8:36 AM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
In the past five years, masks have become a topic of debate regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. But there's more history to the face covering and it's controversies. 
“Worse Things Than Dying”: The Entangled History of the Anti-Mask and Anti-Vaccination Movements - Yale University Press
Thomas Schlich and Bruno J. Strasser— In May 2024 at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington, DC, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., recalled that, during the pandemic, he was asked whether... READ MORE
yalebooks.yale.edu
August 12, 2025 at 4:01 PM
The final negotiation round for the Global Plastic Treaty Begins today. Check out our essays in The Lancet on how plastics became so central in healthcare and what cam be done to reduce their use.
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
#PlasticTreaty
Plastics in health care: rethinking medical device innovation, use, and disposal for sustainability
Around the world, some 16 billion plastic syringes and 15 billion face masks are thrown away each year.1,2 Unknown in the first half of the 20th century, the global production, circulation, and dispos...
www.thelancet.com
August 4, 2025 at 6:38 AM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
Hello there! I am currently reading your book—24% in. So fascinating! I’m at the end of a course on nursing history and also worked through COVID. This book is so fascinating and somewhat ❤️‍🩹 healing (so many emotions about the pandemic). 1/
July 31, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
So glad to see this published in the latest @thelancet.com Trying to embed planetary care in human health care - making climate action less vulnerable to ideological delusions. Bioethics should be planetary health ethics too!
#bioethics #planetary #STS
@nam.edu @humanitiesau.bsky.social
July 30, 2025 at 6:41 AM
Reposted by Bruno J. Strasser
Save 30% on #NewBook "The Product of Medicine" by Caitjan Gainty @caitjan.bsky.social , which answers the question: What does the surgeon’s table owe to the factory floor? #USHistory #Medicine
buff.ly/EI4Asqb
April 7, 2025 at 3:15 PM