Andrea Tone

Andrea Tone, Ph.D. holds the Canada Research Chair in the Social History of Medicine at McGill University. A professor of history, she holds joint appointments in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and the Department of History. Her scholarship explores women and health, medical technology, sexuality, psychiatry, and industry, particularly the intersection between patient experience, cultural contexts, and technological and economic change in nineteenth and twentieth-century America.

She is the author of several books and edited volumes, including, The Age of Anxiety: A History of America’s Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers (Basic Books, 2009), Medicating Modern America: Prescription Drugs in History, with Elizabeth Siegel Watkins (New York University Press, 2007), and Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America, which was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and which inspired an Emmy-award winning documentary on The Pill.

She is currently working on a project funded by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research on the CIA, brainwashing, and Cold War psychiatry. Her research on women’s health has been featured on ABC, PBS, National Public Radio, CTV, the CBC, the History Channel, and in Newsweek, Macleans, and the New York Times. She lives with her daughter in Montreal.