Science

We’re repeating a lot of the same mistakes from the 1918 “Spanish Flu” H1N1 outbreak.

The history of unpleasant odor, or miasma, has unexpected relevance in the time of COVID-19.

The lessons of the 1918 flu pandemic.

Schools closed, handshaking ceased and people wore handkerchiefs over their faces as the virus ravaged what was then the nation’s capital.

In the 1790s a plague struck the new American nation and killed thousands. Noah Webster told the story of pandemics and invented a field.

Outbreak narratives from past diseases can be influential in the way we think about the COVID pandemic.

Like so many black scientists past, the African who brought inoculation to the American colonies never got his due.

Past public health crises inspired innovations in infrastructure, education, fundraising and civic debate—and cleaned up animal carcasses from the streets.

A look at how Jim Crow affected the treatment of African Americans fighting the Spanish flu.

“America First” is a fairly useless strategy in the quest for a COVID-19 vaccine.

On the eve of America’s Bicentennial, a mysterious illness terrifies the country and sends disease detectives racing the clock to find answers.

If partisans see problems and potential solutions through a political lens, it will weaken our response.

Social distancing isn’t a new idea—it saved thousands of American lives during the last great pandemic.

It’s been 180 years since Charles Wilkes voyaged to the Antarctic continent and his journey has never been more relevant.

Medical xenophobia has dangerous ramifications.

The most important design object of our time was more than a century in the making.

People’s stories described a sluggish process of discovery: you had to discover the earthquake, even though it had already been shaking you for what felt like a very long time.

Government inaction or delay have shaped the course of many infectious disease outbreaks in our country.

A century ago, Catholic nuns from Philadelphia recalled what it was like to tend to the needy and the sick during the great influenza pandemic of 1918.

Dr. Larry Brilliant, who helped eradicate smallpox, says past epidemics can teach us to fight coronavirus.

Dr. Maurice Hilleman caught the 1957 flu when even the military and WHO couldn't.

Until the mid-1800s, doctors didn’t bother washing their hands. Then a Hungarian medic made an essential, much-resisted breakthrough.

What we can learn from the Spanish flu.

How midlife crises—and menopause—came to be defined by the experience of men.

When a remarkable new invention by Louis Daguerre was announced by the French, it was American inventor Samuel Morse who sensed its commercial potential.

There’s a fatal history behind the claim that African Americans are more resistant to diseases like Covid-19 or yellow fever.

On Hosea Easton’s and David Walker’s attempts to debunk scientific racism.

The differences between the global response to the Great Flu Pandemic and today’s COVID-19 outbreak could not be more striking.

How mesmerism threatened early 19th-century gendered constructs of virtue and honor.

The historian Frank M. Snowden discusses the politics of restricting travel during epidemics and more.