Plagues & Cures
History's deadliest outbreaks and the medicine that answered them
The Great Plague of London: The Last Great Outbreak and the Year Pepys Watched a City Empty
The Great Plague of London killed tens of thousands in 1665. Here is what Londoners believed caused it, what the doctors tried, and who they blamed.
The Ice Pick Lobotomy: Walter Freeman's Ten Minute Cure for the Mind
Walter Freeman toured America performing transorbital lobotomies through the eye socket in about ten minutes, sometimes with no surgeon present at all.
Victorian Arsenic Cosmetics: How Wafers and Belladonna Drops Poisoned Women for Beauty
Victorian arsenic cosmetics promised pale, translucent skin and wide, dark eyes. Here is what wafers and belladonna drops actually did, and who got blamed.
Black Death Florence 1348: How a City of 100,000 Buried Half Its People
The Black Death Florence suffered in 1348 killed roughly half the city. Boccaccio watched it happen, then turned the horror into the Decameron.
Bleeding the Patient: Two Thousand Years of Bloodletting and the Four Humors
Bloodletting history's most famous case: George Washington's doctors bled him four times in his final hours, following centuries of medical theory on the four humors.
John Snow and the Broad Street Pump: The Map That Ended a Cholera Epidemic
In 1854 Soho, a doctor ignored miasma theory, mapped cholera deaths by hand, and traced an epidemic to one water pump. Epidemiology was born.
Inside the Plague Doctor Costume: Why 17th Century Physicians Wore Bird Masks
A French court physician's fix for 'miasma' produced the plague doctor costume: the beaked mask, waxed coat, and cane behind medicine's most iconic image.
The Radium Girls: The Factory Workers Who Glowed in the Dark and Paid for It
The Radium Girls hand-painted radium onto watch dials, pointing their brushes with their lips. Their employer knew the danger and let them die anyway.
Philadelphia 1918 Flu: The Parade That Killed a City
The Philadelphia 1918 flu catastrophe began when the city marched 200,000 people down Broad Street against warnings, becoming one of the deadliest cities of the pandemic.