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health

Illustration by Lauren Simkin Berke

Mutations

Is it possible to understand the persistent lag in vaccination rates as a function of failed metaphor? That is to say, as a failure of language—the language of data, the language of science, the language of political rhetoric (to name just a few vocabularies)—to meet individuals at their particular coordinates on the social map? The virus and our national response to it has been figured and refigured.

Healing Thyself

English is a treasure trove of words, each with a precise meaning. It is also a source of confusion and frustration, since so many of those words have subtle connotations and refuse to stand still.

Illustration by Deb Lucke

Hoofbeat Healing

Physical therapist Karen "Kay" Stanley-White heals people in an unusual way—by putting them on a horse. Sometimes she puts them on backward. All with the goal of improving function in those with movement disorders or injuries. 

Good for You

My wife and I, both in our late thirties, have a friend named Patricia who lives by herself in a very small apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Her taste is Japanese. Patricia is the mother of another good friend, a woman more or less our age [...]

To Hygeia

Goddess, I have watched your motions gratify the world.
Votaries of all casts and ages, genders, voices
bow to you as they must, for nothing follows without you.