Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Dr. Edward Jenner invented vaccines because of an observation he and he alone made. You see, milkmaids were renowned for their beauty. At a time when...
Have you ever heard that you should tilt your head backwards during a nosebleed? Or that you should urinate on a jellyfish sting? Or that in case of a seizure you should put a spoon into the victim...
It may seem hard to believe, but as late as 1942, male patients in some mental hospitals were castrated to quiet them. This extreme treatment did have some scientific basis, since testosterone, the...
Pathologists study the causes and effects of disease mostly through laboratory examination of samples taken from body tissues. But what does a paleopathologist do? Given that “paleo” comes from...
There are a number of common words that have different meanings for scientists; ‘cultures’ are in Petri dishes, ‘medium’ isn’t just the size of a T-shirt, and ‘cleavage’ is the process of cell...
Mithridates VI ruled the ancient Asian kingdom of Pontus in the first century. The king was terrified of being poisoned—not an unreasonable worry, given that assassins at the time were adept at...
Physicians today are unlikely to encounter “Gilder’s palsy.” But prior to the 19th century this ailment had to be considered when a patient presented with tremors, irritability, increased...
In 1918, as war raged in Europe, the government of the United States of America waged war on a different and much more nebulous opponent: venereal disease.
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