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Jonas Salk
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Could You Patent the Sun?

Decades after Dr. Jonas Salk opposed patenting the polio vaccine, the pharmaceutical industry has changed.
Small box from the late 1800s containing small vials of homeopathic remedies.

A Short History of Homeopathy: From Hahnemann to Whole Foods

In the 19th Century, homeopathy was popular because of its use of small doses, its emphasis on the curative power of nature, and its holistic treatment of the body.
tampon

The Tampon: A History

The cultural, political, and technological roots of a fraught piece of cotton.

The Accidental, Psychedelic Discovery of LSD

After the drug was dismissed by the pharmaceutical company that developed it, a researcher started experimenting on himself with it. Powerful hallucinations ensued.

The True Story of Phineas Gage Is Much More Fascinating Than the Mythical Textbook Accounts

Each generation revises his myth. Here’s the true story.
Cover of "Empire of Necessity" featuring a painting of violence being wrought on enslaved men.

The Bleached Bones of the Dead

What the modern world owes slavery. (It’s more than back wages).
Map of Mexico
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Birth of a Trade War

The Mexican origins of the birth control pill, and the trade dispute with the U.S. it generated.

“Destroyer and Teacher”: Managing the Masses During the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic

Revisiting the public health lessons learned during the 1918–1919 pandemic and reflecting on their relevance for the present.
Image of one of the victims of the Tuskegee experiment.

AP Exposes the Tuskegee Syphilis Study: The 50th Anniversary

Read the original article that unearthed the Tuskegee experiment.
Vintage photograph of condom testing, depicting a table full of condoms blown up like balloons, and two men inspecting them.

Margaret Sanger's Bold, Gutsy Response to a 1929 Raid on a Birth Control Clinic

A feminist rant for the ages.
Dave Edmonston

The Measles Vaccine Came From His Body. He Went Anti-vax. Not Anymore.

As a boy, David Edmonston was the source of today’s measles vaccine. Now he regrets vaccine doubts.
The cover of an edition of Good Housekeeping Magazine depicting a woman leaning on a chair and reading in front of a bookshelf and a pile of books.

How Midcentury Women’s Magazines Fought Cancer

Journalists at Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and other women’s magazines were informing readers how to recognize, protect against, and talk about cancer.
A painting of Marie-Louise Coidavid.
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The First and Last Queen of Haiti in Exile

Queen Marie-Louise outlived most of her family, yet her story about the revolution and its aftermath was rarely consulted by those writing the era’s history.
Cover of "Excited Delirium," left, and author Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, right.

The Racist, Xenophobic History of "Excited Delirium"

A new book takes on a diagnosis invented to cover up police killings: that men of color are “combusting as a result of their aggressiveness.”
A stylized drawing of an insulin vial.

The Insulin Empire

Insulin transforms a sick body. It also has the potential to reconstitute our political economic realities.
Uncle Sam sleeping on the job, avoiding looking at x-rays of damaged lungs.

Asbestos Is Finally Banned in the U.S. Here’s Why It Took So Long.

The carcinogenic effects of asbestos have been known for decades. We should have banned it long ago.
A woman in a dress shows off her drawings.

Pioneering D.C. Artist Inez Demonet Helped WWI Soldiers Put Their Lives Back Together

Meet the Washington artist who pioneered the field of medical illustration — and helped repair the lives of soldiers returning from WWI.
Morlok quadruplets with a teacher next to a chalkboard.

Sleepwalking to Madness in Mid-Century America

On Audrey Clare Farley’s “Girls and Their Monsters.”
A 1938 poster from the Women’s Field Army of the American Society for the Control of Cancer.

Should We Abandon the Idea That Cancer Is Something To ‘Fight’?

Is the century-old battle metaphor doing more harm than good to doctors and patients alike?
Poster encouraging cancer patients to seek information from various government agencies, showing a woman holding a caduceus.

After the War on Cancer

Raising awareness helped turn cancer from a stigmatized disease into a treatable one. But it hasn’t made affording that treatment any easier.
Hands holding pregnant woman's stomach.

Black Women and the Racialization of Infanticide

Loss of control over knowledge of the female body cemented women’s status as second-class citizens.
Class photo of white men medical students on the steps of a building.

Race and Early American Medical Schools: Review of "Masters of Health"

Medical schools in the antebellum U.S. were critical in the formation of a medical community that shared ideas about racial science.
Photo of the Penn and Slavery Project augmented reality tour

A Bare and Open Truth: The Penn and Slavery Project and the Public

When a university denied its legacy, students and faculty stepped in to do the research.
A room full of empty hospital beds.

Modern Medicine Has Improved Our Lives, But What About Our Deaths?

Anthropologists study the hormones in hair to compare the stress levels of people nearing death today with those who died 100 years ago.
African-American man holding a medical bag, posing behind horse-drawn carriage.

Doctors Without Borders

On the Black doctors who received their medical degrees and a new sort of freedom in Europe.
Graph of the data from the genome study, in which every data point is represented by a line which connects to other lines to show family trees

Largest Human Family Tree Identifies Nearly 27 Million Ancestors

Researchers create massive genealogical network dating back 100,000 years
Chlorodyne bottles and other medicines on display with a wooden background

Potions, Pills, and Patents: How Basic Healthcare Became Big Business in America

Basic healthcare in the 20th Century greatly impacted the way that the drug business currently operates in the United States.
Vintage homepathic medicines

In the 1800s, Valentine’s Meant a Bottle of Meat Juice

An act of love in the form of a medicinal tonic.
Collage illustration showing many faces behind a zig-zagging line graph.

Without Context, COVID Tallies Are Misleading

Counting both uninfected and infected people helps us better understand a pandemic.
Drawing of Transylvania University Medical Department

The Murderous Origins of the American Medical Association

How a bloody gun duel between two doctors in Transylvania sparked a frenzy of outrage—and helped create the American Medical Association.

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