John Parascandola, PhD, taught at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland, and served in the federal government as chief of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine and as the historian for the Public Health Service. He is the author of four books including The Development of American Pharmacology: John J. Abel and the Shaping of a Discipline, winner of the George Urdang Medal, and Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America, which won the George Pendleton Prize. He is currently an affiliate of the Department of History at the University of Maryland.