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Tales from the past

A look back at the history of medicine and health.

Displaying 13 - 24 of 50

The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe. By James Belich.

Book Review: A Global History of the Black Death

2 Aug 2022

7 min read

Wooden box containing tube of calf lymph, England, 1888. Credit: Science Museum, London. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Why smallpox vaccines weren’t produced in Britain’s African colonies

13 Jul 2022

6 min read

Research summary Pandemic preparedness Explainer

The plague in Florence, 1348; illustrating Boccaccio's Decameron. Wellcome Images

Q&A: How the Black Death’s origins were cracked

23 Jun 2022

11 min read

Explainer Pandemic preparedness

A nurse gives a baby the malaria vaccine. The RTS,S vaccine is a complementary malaria control tool – to be added to the core package of measures for malaria prevention. Credit: WHO/Fanjan Combrink

It Took 35 years to Get a Malaria Vaccine. Why?

9 Jun 2022

10 min read

Cross-posts Malaria Vaccine development

SS and police officials speaking among themselves during a roll call of Polish prisoners. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Vaccine subterfuge: How vaccine-makers fooled the Nazis from inside a concentration camp lab

18 May 2022

10 min read

Vaccine development

A 1966 photograph that accompanied Merck's press release about the successful vaccine depicted Jeryl Lynn comforting the crying Kirsten as the younger girl received her vaccination with the Jeryl Lynn Strain from Dr. Robert Weibel. Credit: The National Museum of American History

Mumps: The story of the second fastest vaccine ever developed

22 Apr 2022

7 min read

Mumps Vaccine development

The preparation of measles vaccine using chicken eggs. WHO via Images from the History of Medicine (NLM)

Wanted: A vaccine against the measles

14 Apr 2022

9 min read

Measles Vaccine development Vaccine safety

Hieronymus Fracastorius (Girolamo Fracastoro) shows the shepherd Syphilus and the hunter Ilceus a statue of Venus to warn them against the danger of infection with syphilis. Engraving by Jan Sadeler I, 1588/1595, after Christoph Schwartz.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark

Sick words: The etymology of disease

7 Apr 2022

7 min read

Malaria Rabies COVID-19

A poster displayed widely in India to promote the reward for reporting a smallpox case, depicts a hero slaying the smallpox demon with a needle | WHO (1979)

How India overcame smallpox

31 Mar 2022

4 min read

COVID-19 Outbreaks Country stories

Rabies vaccination in Pasteur's laboratory in Paris. Lithograph by F. Pirodon, 188-, after L.-L. Gsell.. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Louis Pasteur, monster slayer

23 Mar 2022

8 min read

Rabies

Captain Peter Bernard's pups in a sled harness, Collinson Point, Alaska. Photo by John Raffles Cox – Source: Canadian Museum of History

The frostbitten dog-sledders who outran an epidemic

25 Feb 2022

7 min read

Educational

Mesmeric therapy. Oil painting by a French (?) painter, 1778/1784.

6 historic experiments that helped pave the way for modern clinical research

16 Feb 2022

7 min read

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