Medicine

An emergency hospital at Camp Funston, Kansas, 1918. “Of the 12 men who slept in my squad room, 7 were ill at one time,” a soldier recalled.

How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America

The toll of history’s worst epidemic surpasses all the military deaths in World War I and World War II combined. And it may have begun in the United States

A woman sells live poultry at the market in Gaosheng Township, where Long purchased chickens and later died from bird flu.

Is China Ground Zero for a Future Pandemic?

Hundreds there have already died of a new bird flu, putting world health authorities on high alert

A Hybrid III model crash test dummy.

These Dummies Gave Us a Crash Course on Auto Safety

Many of your car's safety features owe a lot to these inanimate people

Aimee Stapleton and other researchers at the University of Limerick have found that lysozyme—in tears, saliva, mucus, milk and chicken eggs—accumulates an electric charge when squeezed.

Your Tears Can Generate Electricity

A protein found in human tears can create electricity when placed under pressure, potentially paving the way for better biomedical devices

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

Marie Curie in one of her mobile X-ray units in October 1917

How Marie Curie Brought X-Ray Machines To the Battlefield

During World War I, the scientist invented a mobile x-ray unit, called a "Little Curie," and trained 150 women to operate it

A mid-century Band-Aid tin.

Get Stuck on Band-Aid History

Small injuries are a commonplace problem, but before the Band-Aid, protecting papercuts and other such wounds was a huge hassle

Close-up of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" (1893)

The Founder of Primal Scream Therapy Has Died. What Exactly Is Primal Scream Therapy?

Arthur Janov believed encountering trauma from childhood could help free people from adult neuroses

The glowing end of a tapeworm took fourth place in the competition. 200x magnification

Revel in the Big Details of Tiny Things With These Prize-Winning Images

Skin cells, tape worms and fuzzy mold are among this years top photos

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

Circadian rhythms dictate the patterns of sleep and wakefulness for much of life on Earth

Nobel Prize Awarded to Three Scientists Who Mapped the Body's Internal Clock

Circadian rhythms dictate the daily patterns of life on Earth, and understanding these patterns is crucial to overall health

Rock Hudson in 1954.

The Hollywood Star Who Confronted the AIDS 'Silent Epidemic'

Rock Hudson died of AIDS-related complications in 1985

Nobody has ever been charged with the Tylenol poisonings.

The 1982 Tylenol Terror Shattered American Consumer Innocence

Seven people lost their lives after taking poisoned Tylenol. The tragedy led to important safety reforms

A comparison of the man's brain activity before and after he had vagus nerve stimulation.

Experimental Treatment Partially Awakens Man in Vegetative State

Scientists are hopeful but cautious about the initial results of the test

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

Doctors Once Prescribed Terrifying Plane Flights to "Cure" Deafness

Stunt pilots, including a young Charles Lindbergh, took willing participants to the skies for (sometimes) death-defying rides

Irregular heart rhythms

Turning Irregular Heartbeats Into Music

A set of piano pieces could help doctors better understand heart rhythm disorders

The device is a pen-sized mass spectrometry device its developers are calling MasSpec Pen.

Scientists Invent a Pen That Can Detect Cancer in Seconds

This handheld mass spectrometer could make surgeries to remove cancerous tissue quicker and more accurate

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

Astronaut Rick Mastracchio poses with the bacteria grown with antibiotics on the International Space Station

Why Bacteria in Space Are Surprisingly Tough to Kill

Learning how space changes microbes might help fight antibiotic resistance here on Earth

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