When Joseph Merrick died at age 27, his body didn’t go into the ground in one piece. Instead, the bones of the so-called “Elephant Man” were bleached and put on display at Queen Mary University of London’s medical school, and some of his flesh was saved for medical study. Yet for ...read more
What cigarette do doctors says causes less throat irritation? In the 1930s and 40s, tobacco companies would happily tell you it was theirs. Doctors hadn’t yet discovered a clear link between smoking and lung cancer, and a majority of them actually smoked cigarettes. So in ...read more
If you headed to Coney Island at the turn of the century, you might wade in the water, eat some ice cream, or try out a rollercoaster at the newly opened amusement park, Luna Park. But your boardwalk promenade might also include a visit to the equivalent of a fully functional ...read more
The blue benches outside London’s Queen’s Hospital were reserved for men with shattered faces and smashed dreams. The colorful paint job warned the locals that they might want to avert their eyes, shielding them from coming face-to-face with the awful reality of the war and ...read more
Severed limbs and two almost-complete skeletons have been unearthed in a shallow burial pit in Manassas, the Virginia city where about 15,000 Union soldiers died at the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862. The bones, which belonged to Northern fighters, illuminate the grim, ...read more
Donald had an astonishing memory, but never cried for his mother. Virginia never played with other children and was the daughter of a woman described as “not by any means the mother type” by her husband. Herbert didn’t speak; his mother, a physician, said she couldn’t understand ...read more
The modern birth control pill was conceived in 1950. That year, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, asked a doctor named Gregory Pincus to develop an oral contraceptive for women. Pincus succeeded very quickly: He released a contraceptive pill in 1957 as “Enovid,” ...read more
If you opened up the Leavenworth Times, a Kansas newspaper, in the 1850s, you’d see an ad for Sir James Clarke’s Female Pills. These pills, the advertiser bragged, were ideal for bringing on women’s periods—and were “particularly suited to married ladies.” Then there was Madame ...read more
PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, leapt to the public’s consciousness when the American Psychiatric Association added the health issue to its diagnostic manual of mental disorders in the 1980s. But PTSD—known to previous generations as shell shock, soldier’s heart, combat ...read more
It’s hard to keep up with the treatment recommendations coming out of the medical community. One day something is good for you, and the next day it’s deadly and should be avoided. Addictive drugs like heroin were given to kids to cure coughs, electric shock therapy has been a ...read more
James Marion Sims developed pioneering tools and surgical techniques related to women’s reproductive health, and is credited as the “father of modern gynecology.” The 19th-century physician has been lionized with statues in New York City, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania. But ...read more
The health site Stat News mistakenly reported this week that the American Psychoanalytic Association had informed its 3,500 members that they’re no longer bound by the Goldwater Rule, a longstanding—and controversial—policy against commenting on the mental health of public ...read more
Dr. James Barry was actually born Margaret Ann Bulky around 1789 in County Cork, Ireland, at a time when women were barred from most formal education, and were certainly not allowed to practice medicine. She was the second child of Jeremiah (a grocer) and Mary-Ann Bulky. While ...read more
On a moonlit night in 1796, Harvard University student John Collins Warren and a pack of shadowy figures snuck into Boston’s North Burying Ground with tools in their hands and mischief on their minds. The trespassers crept over to the cemetery’s freshest grave, belonging to a ...read more
Bound in leather and held in the collections of the British Library, the 10th-century volume known as “Bald’s Leechbook” is widely considered to be one of the world’s earliest medical textbooks. According to one of its recipes, a potion of garlic, onion or leek, wine and oxgall ...read more
The barber pole’s colors are a legacy of a (thankfully) long-gone era when people went to barbers not just for a haircut or shave but also for bloodletting and other medical procedures. During the Middle Ages bloodletting, which involves cutting open a vein and allowing blood to ...read more
Commonly seen on doctor’s prescription pads and signs in pharmacies, Rx is the symbol for a medical prescription. According to most sources, Rx is derived from the Latin word “recipe,” meaning “take.” Among several alternative theories, however, is the belief that the Rx symbol ...read more
1. Bloodletting For thousands of years, medical practitioners clung to the belief that sickness was merely the result of a little “bad blood.” Bloodletting probably began with the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians, but it didn’t become common practice until the time of classical ...read more
1. A gruesome battle sparked the idea for the Red Cross. In 1859 Swiss entrepreneur Jean Henri Dunant went in search of French Emperor Napoleon III, whom he hoped would help with a business venture in French-controlled Algeria. Dunant never did gain a meeting with the emperor. ...read more
Several thousand years ago, whether you were an Egyptian with migraines or a feverish Greek, chances are your doctor would try one first-line treatment before all others: bloodletting. He or she would open a vein with a lancet or sharpened piece of wood, causing blood to flow out ...read more
Early History Ancient Greek, Roman and Chinese myths feature fanciful accounts of transplants performed by gods and healers, often involving cadavers or animals. While these tales are considered apocryphal, by 800 B.C. Indian doctors had likely begun grafting skin—technically the ...read more
This week marks the 93rd anniversary of the ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the related Volstead Act, which banned the manufacture, sale and transport of intoxicating beverages. Over the next 14 years, seasoned alcoholics and recreational dabblers ...read more
Born in Budapest in 1893 into a noble Austro-Hungarian family, Albert Szent-Györgyi interrupted his university studies to serve as an army medic during World War I. Disillusioned with the war and eager to return to academia, he shot himself in the arm, claimed he had been wounded ...read more
For 35 years, Alain Touwaide has been tracking down and deciphering texts containing centuries-old medical knowledge, from the writings of the Greek physician Hippocrates and his followers to medieval compilations of earlier pharmaceutical manuscripts. A historian of sciences at ...read more
