Tales from the past

A look back at the history of medicine and health.

Displaying 1 - 12 of 47

Credit: By Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine - Emergency hospital during influenza epidemic (NCP 1603), National Museum of Health and Medicine.

No, 1918’s pandemic flu didn’t prey on the vigorous young

16 Oct 2023

4 min read

Influenza

A meningococcal vaccination session in Burkina Faso in 2017. Credit: GAVI/2017/Juliette Bastin

How Africa defeated meningitis A

5 Oct 2023

11 min read

Meningitis Videos

The inspiration for Wegovy and Ozempic. Vaclav Sebek/Shutterstock

Wegovy was inspired by Gila monster venom – here are some other drugs with surprising origins

15 Sep 2023

5 min read

Cross-posts Innovation

Rachida Moussa (in red), a community health worker in Niamey, Niger, pictured with children living in one of the communities she visits regularly. Credit: Isaac Griberg

Back to basics: the journey of “health for all”

26 May 2023

12 min read

WHA UHC

A child is treated in an early version of the iron lung at Children’s Hospital Boston in 1932. Credit Courtesy of March of Dimes

Book Excerpt: How the Iron Lung Transformed Polio Care

23 May 2023

15 min read

Cross-posts Polio

The black rat, or ship rat, was thought to have helped transmit the Black Death. Credit: Shutterstock / Carlos Aranguiz

The Black Death may not have been spread by rats after all

3 Feb 2023

6 min read

Cross-posts Explainer

US health data pioneer Ernest Codman at work on his national registry of patient outcomes, 1925. Credit: Roy Mabrey/Boston Medical Library

From a ‘deranged’ provocateur to IBM’s failed AI superproject: how data has transformed healthcare

24 Jan 2023

19 min read

Cross-posts Data

An image of a blind harpist adorns the walls of the tomb of Nakht and his wife Tawy. Trachoma, an infectious eye disease, was common in ancient Egypt and remains a leading cause of blindness today. Source: flickr

5 ancient diseases and what the ancients said about them

21 Sep 2022

12 min read

Malaria Tuberculosis Rabies

Hippocrates lecturing to his students under the plane tree. Image credit: Wellcome Images

Funny medicine: Hippocrates and the four humours

4 Aug 2022

8 min read

Explainer Malaria

The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe. By James Belich.

Book Review: A Global History of the Black Death

2 Aug 2022

7 min read

Cross-posts Educational Book club

Wooden box containing tube of calf lymph, England, 1888. Credit: Science Museum, London. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Why smallpox vaccines weren’t produced in Britain’s African colonies

13 Jul 2022

6 min read

Research summary Pandemic preparedness Explainer

The plague in Florence, 1348; illustrating Boccaccio's Decameron. Wellcome Images

Q&A: How the Black Death’s origins were cracked

23 Jun 2022

11 min read

Explainer Pandemic preparedness

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