Warwick Anderson

The winner of the first Basic Prize in History of Science is a controversial study of the rise of medicine in Australia and its relation to racial thinking. In nineteenth-century Australia, the main commentators on race and biological differences were doctors. But the medical profession entertained serious anxieties about the possibility of "racial denigration" of the white population in the...

The modern bathroom is an ingenious compilation of locked doors, smooth porcelain, 4-ply tissue, and antibacterial hand soap. Despite this miracle of indoor plumbing, we still can’t bear the thought that anyone else should know that our bodies produce waste. Why must we live by the rules of this intense scatological embarrassment? In Spectacles of Waste, leading historian of medicine...