History of Medicine
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Body of evidence
The long-ago discoveries of Frederic Lewy are still influencing care.
Hammer and nails
Will AI be for hospitalists what the steam drill was for John Henry?
Carminative
A little-known word and long-lasting snack from a long-ago physician.
Deep in the ticks of Texas
A young physician's job in the animal industry led to a new understanding of disease spread.
Trust your gut
Throughout history, medical researchers have taken some extreme steps to prove their theories.
The ward of Damocles
Our narrator encounters Dr. Cicero and Dr. Dan O’Klees.
A berth on the Tsukuba
Understanding beriberi took research around the world over centuries.
Fighting the Speckled Monster
Vaccination has been an issue for a very long time.
A digestible problem
A young physician remembers army surgeon Dr. William Beaumont, his patient Alexis St. Martin, and the study of gastric secretions.
The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh
A look at admission and discharge in 1780.
Ignaz and Cassandra
Two voices called out warnings, but they fell on deaf ears.
A newfangled column
The first stethoscope was created with a rolled-up sheaf of papers in 1816.
The little brown bottle
The first documented recommendation of nitroglycerin for angina pectoris was described by Dr. William Murrell in 1877.
Morpheus
For thousands of years, ancient civilizations in Asia Minor have been cultivating the opium poppy.
Pott-y language
Tuberculosis with spinal involvement is often referred to as Pott's disease.
Quincke's legacy
A nineteenth-century physician described angioedema, invented diagnostic lumbar puncture and described a sign of aortic insufficiency, but was still rejected for a Nobel Prize.
August 1865
An important transition occurred in medicine nearly 250 years ago.
The fascinating foxglove
We were rounding on the hospital service when one of our patients, already hypotensive, went into atrial fibrillation. The most appropriate drug wound up being one with a long and illustrious history.
Just for the record
A computer crash prompts reflection on EHRs.