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Recent Newspaper & Online Columns by Kate Scannell MD

The unbearable otherness of illness and disease

By Dr. Kate Scannell, Syndicated columnist
First Published in Print: 06/23/2013

By the time she was finally given a hometown burial near Sinaloa, Mexico last February, Julia Pastrana -- one of the most famous "human curiosities" of her time -- had been dead for 153 years.

Major news agencies covered the story about her corpse's transport home from a locked storage facility in a Norwegian research institute where it had been kept since 1996. But before that, her body had been embalmed, encased in glass, exhibited around the world, stolen from a warehouse, and subsequently recovered from a trash bin. Read More