Doctors

Postcard of the Napa State Hospital in Napa, Calif., circa 1905. Over 1,900 Californians were recommended for sterilization while patients here.

California Once Targeted Latinas for Forced Sterilization

In the 20th century, U.S. eugenics programs rendered tens of thousands of people infertile

Vanessa Brandon worried that her cancer was a burden on her family: “I don’t want my sickness to become their sickness.”

Could Immunotherapy Lead the Way to Fighting Cancer?

A new treatment that uses the body's own immune system to fight cancer is offering hope to patients with advanced disease

The trepanated skull of a Neolithic woman. The fact that the hole is rounded off by ingrowth of new bone suggests that the patient survived the operation.

No, Getting a Hole Drilled in Your Head Was Never a Migraine Cure

The ancient and controversial procedure was used for a slew of reasons, but to 'let the headache out' was not one of them

A South Korean athlete receives acupuncture treatment

When Treating Sports Injuries, Does the West Do It Best?

As the Olympics kick off in South Korea, two radically different approaches to training and treating athletes will be on display

Will blue packets replace pink ones soon?

Heart-Stopping Arrow Poison Could Be the Key to Male Birth Control

A non-toxic version of the compound interrupts fertilization in rats

Approximately 80 percent of all pharmaceuticals used by Americans are produced overseas.

A Saline Shortage This Flu Season Exposes a Flaw in Our Medical Supply Chain

Most IV saline bags used in U.S. hospitals are made in Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria has shown how troubling it can be to rely on one producer

Ephraim McDowell is memorialized in the U.S. Capitol Statuary Hall Collection

This American Doctor Pioneered Abdominal Surgery by Operating on Enslaved Women

Glorified with a statue in the U.S. Capitol, Ephraim McDowell is a hero in Kentucky, but the full story needs to be told

An illustration of Washington's imagined deathbed scene, painted about 50 years after his death.

George Washington’s Hard Death Shows the Limits of Medicine in His Time

He’s one of the United States’s most revered figures, but his last hours were plagued by excruciating illness

Harriot Hunt was accepted into Harvard Medical school and treated hundreds of patients over her 25-year-career, blazing a trail for future generations of female physicians.

The Medical Practitioner Who Paved the Way for Women Doctors in America

Harriot Hunt refused to let her gender limit her ambitions—or those of the next generation of physicians

An illustrated depiction of a scene of Lincoln lying in state

When You Die, You'll Probably Be Embalmed. Thank Abraham Lincoln For That

The president was an "early adopter" of embalming technology, helping to bring the modern death industry to the mainstream

Nicholas Culpeper fought against the medical establishment of the time by taking the radical action of writing in English, not Latin.

How Nicholas Culpeper Brought Medicine to the People

His 17th-century text is still in print today

A statue of Frank Pantridge outside the Lisburn Civic Centre in Northern Ireland. His defibrillator sits beside him.

The Irish Cardiologist Whose Invention Saved LBJ

Frank Pantridge miniaturized the defibrillator, making it portable

Guillaume Rondelet was an early anatomist who founded his own dissecting theater, which was a thing people did in the sixteenth century.

A Sixteenth-Century Hot Date Might Include a Trip to the Dissecting Theater

Anatomy theaters were an early site for science as spectacle

A man named Georgios Papanicolaou invented the Pap smear, but Elizabeth Stern helped figure out how to interpret it.

Why The Pap Test Could Also Be Called the Stern Test

Elizabeth Stern played a vital role in cervical cancer testing and treatment

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