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This year, I’m v. excited to participate in the Smoker, a UMMS musical roast, dating to late 1910s. These shows enable us to examine student acculturation and emotional coping. Yet, what happens when pernicious stereotypes are used to boost trainee morale? A historical 
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Some context: medical school lampoon shows in the US have existed since the 1880s, as documented by Kenneth Ludmerer. And skits were performed at annual specialist meetings like American Neurological Association, as Delia Gavrus documents in her 2011 BHM article. 2/
Song lyrics from 1934 ANA show included:
We were always virgins
Till the neuro-surgins [sic]
Thought our humours would be better if trephined
For the sake of scients [sic]
We were willing clients,
But it spoiled our peace of mind. 3/
![Song lyrics from 1934 ANA show included:We were always virginsTill the neuro-surgins [sic]Thought our humours would be better if trephinedFor the sake of scients [sic]We were willing clients,But it spoiled our peace of mind. 3/](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Es0_IWoU0AIbVQn.jpg "Song lyrics from 1934 ANA show included:We were always virginsTill the neuro-surgins [sic]Thought our humours would be better if trephinedFor the sake of scients [sic]We were willing clients,But it spoiled our peace of mind. 3/")
We were always virgins
Till the neuro-surgins [sic]
Thought our humours would be better if trephined
For the sake of scients [sic]
We were willing clients,
But it spoiled our peace of mind. 3/
Yes, the shows exemplified the medical humor, practices, and values that embody and persist in the profession (racism, sexism, ableism, you name it). As Iris Chandler, @TessLanzarotta, @MRamos_histmed demonstrate, today's medicine is still haunted by this legacy. 4/
Okay, now that's out of the way, let's I want to talk about Bernadine Healy, a cardiologist and the first woman director of the NIH. In 1982, Healy was a rising star at Johns Hopkins, and had recently split from her husband, a surgeon also on faculty. 5/
One of Hopkins medical student groups, the Pithotomy Club depicted Healy in their annual skit nights. The club's members were exclusively male, the shows ribald. In the skit, Healy was portrayed in drag, wearing blonde wig and fishnets, and performing pornographic acts. Healy 6/
As @Gladwell reported in a 1992 article for the Washington Post, Healy was traumatized. But the Hopkins faculty told her "boys will be boys." Only one woman reached out to Healy (and surely many more privately), and expressed her discomfort with sexual harassment. 7/
Healy left Hopkins, but she would pillory the Club in print, at conferences, everywhere. The scandal eventually contributed to the shuttering of the Club in the mid-1990s, and its property being sold to Hopkins. 8/
I'm now very lucky to be attending a school, where such writing and performing is not condoned. Previous Smoker shows have skillfully tackled DEI in medicine, women as surgeons, burnout, residency strikes, and resilience rhetoric, and many other subjects. 9/
Nevertheless, this history and the Healy anecdote in particular is a critical reminder of how such lampoon shows relied and may continue to rely upon structural oppression, in order to promote the wellbeing of a few (mostly white male) medical trainees. 10/
Who's wellbeing matters? What does historicizing such shows and performances tell us? #physicianwellbeing, #docsonstage, #histmed, #WomenInMedicine @AlexKolenda @RanaSays @lizzieevens @agnesjuliet @KellyODonn @CoherenceMed @jbullockruns @meekslisa @DocsWith @ColinWestMDPhD
