These include Raspail, Scientist and Reformer (1969), The Citizen-Patient in Revolutionary and Imperial Paris (1993, paperback 2002) and Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) et la médecine de l’esprit (1999, Spanish translation 2002). She also translated, edited, or co-edited From Parnassus: Essays in Honor of Jacques Barzun (1976), The Clinical Training of Doctors: An Essay of 1793 (1980), Jacques Tenon’s ‘Memoirs on Paris Hospitals’ (1997), and The World of Dr. Francisco Hernández (2002), a work that deals with a 16th-century Spanish physician and explorer and that grew out of her association with the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She is now preparing an English edition of her book on Pinel for the series by Ashgate: The History of Medicine in Context.

The goal of her writing and teaching has been to bring the history of medicine into the mainstream: to convince colleagues, readers and students that the history of health and healing, of epidemics and hospitals, of physicians, surgeons, nurses and patients is part of social, cultural, and even of economic and political history. With this goal in mind, she has published numerous articles and reviews, in English and French, on the history of public health, the nursing profession and the politics of health in 18th and 19th-century France.