Tales from the past

A look back at the history of medicine and health.

Displaying 13 - 24 of 54

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

A nurse gives a baby the malaria vaccine. The RTS,S vaccine is a complementary malaria control tool – to be added to the core package of measures for malaria prevention. Credit: WHO/Fanjan Combrink

It Took 35 years to Get a Malaria Vaccine. Why?

9 Jun 2022

10 min read

Cross-posts Malaria Vaccine development

SS and police officials speaking among themselves during a roll call of Polish prisoners. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Vaccine subterfuge: How vaccine-makers fooled the Nazis from inside a concentration camp lab

18 May 2022

10 min read

Vaccine development

A 1966 photograph that accompanied Merck's press release about the successful vaccine depicted Jeryl Lynn comforting the crying Kirsten as the younger girl received her vaccination with the Jeryl Lynn Strain from Dr. Robert Weibel. Credit: The National Museum of American History

Mumps: The story of the second fastest vaccine ever developed

22 Apr 2022

7 min read

Mumps Vaccine development

The preparation of measles vaccine using chicken eggs. WHO via Images from the History of Medicine (NLM)

Wanted: A vaccine against the measles

14 Apr 2022

9 min read

Measles Vaccine development Vaccine safety

Hieronymus Fracastorius (Girolamo Fracastoro) shows the shepherd Syphilus and the hunter Ilceus a statue of Venus to warn them against the danger of infection with syphilis. Engraving by Jan Sadeler I, 1588/1595, after Christoph Schwartz.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark

Sick words: The etymology of disease

7 Apr 2022

7 min read

Malaria Rabies COVID-19

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