Tales from the past

A look back at the history of medicine and health.

Displaying 25 - 36 of 58

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

A poster displayed widely in India to promote the reward for reporting a smallpox case, depicts a hero slaying the smallpox demon with a needle | WHO (1979)

How India overcame smallpox

31 Mar 2022

4 min read

COVID-19 Outbreaks Country stories

Rabies vaccination in Pasteur's laboratory in Paris. Lithograph by F. Pirodon, 188-, after L.-L. Gsell.. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Louis Pasteur, monster slayer

23 Mar 2022

8 min read

Rabies

Captain Peter Bernard's pups in a sled harness, Collinson Point, Alaska. Photo by John Raffles Cox – Source: Canadian Museum of History

The frostbitten dog-sledders who outran an epidemic

25 Feb 2022

7 min read

Educational

Mesmeric therapy. Oil painting by a French (?) painter, 1778/1784.

6 historic experiments that helped pave the way for modern clinical research

16 Feb 2022

7 min read

Burying Black Death Victims in Tournai, Belgium. Gilles Li Muisis, Annales, Bibliothèque Royal de Belgique, MS 13076-77, f. 24v.

The Black Death was not as widespread or catastrophic as long thought – new study

10 Feb 2022

6 min read

Cross-posts

HMS Centurion fires on the Nuestra Señora de la Covadonga. Despite the loss of 1700 men, most of them to scurvy, Anson’s capture of the Spanish treasure-ship redeemed his mission in the eyes of the navy and the British public. From the "National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London" – Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0 license

Groundhog Day on the high seas: A fable of science communication

9 Feb 2022

6 min read

Educational

Q&A: “We have the momentum” – fighting to end a 60 year-old cholera pandemic

23 Dec 2021

12 min read

Cholera

How to gauge a plague: new analysis sheds light on the meaning of a 6th century pandemic

26 Nov 2021

4 min read

Pandemic preparedness Outbreaks

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