Science

To be black and conscious of anti-black racism is to stare into the mirror of your own extinction.

Extending the narrative of Philadelphia's epidemic past 1793 yields lessons that are more complex and less comforting than the story that's often told.

In discussions about facial-recognition software, phrenology analogies seem like a no-brainer. In fact, they’re a dead-end.

COVID-19 isn’t an automatic death sentence, but the fear, vilification and isolation are the same.

Three new books consider the life, and impact, of Franz Boas, the "father of American cultural anthropology."

For hundreds of years, false theories of “innate difference and deficit in black bodies” have shaped American responses to disease.

Including musical notation of its songs, kahs, and coos.

A conversation with Mike Davis about what must be done to combat the COVID-19 pandemic – and all the other monsters still to come.

Unlike cholera, physical and sensory proximity can spread COVID-19 among the populations most vulnerable to it.

Native communities’ vulnerability to epidemics is not a historical accident, but a direct result of oppressive policies and ongoing colonialism.

We do not often think of Paine as a revolutionary inventor. But in a very real sense, that is what he believed himself to be.

As COVID-19 races through New York, we asked Lorna Ebner to tell us about previous attempts to mitigate disease in the city.

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.

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.