Medicine

11 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it.

1. When the cure was often more lethal than the diseaseFor centuries, seeking medical help could be a death sentence. From drilling into skulls to administering toxic heavy metals as tonics, historical medicine frequently blurred the …
2. The Victorian era's deadly marketplace of unregulated 'cure-alls'Explore how a lack of medical oversight birthed a lucrative industry of patent medicines. This video examines why these dangerous concoctions became cultural staples and the speci…
3. Before it was science, medicine was a battle against demonsFor centuries, humans didn't view disease as a biological accident. If you were seriously ill, it wasn't just your body failing; it was a supernatural attack. From malevolent spir…
4. From Typhoid Mary to the Iron Lung: Deciphering medical historyMedical historian Richard Barnett breaks down the internet's most persistent questions about our past. This deep dive explores the origins of controversial treatments and the stor…
5. The end of a millennia-old death sentence for diabetesBefore the 1920s, a diagnosis of diabetes was effectively a terminal sentence. It took a volatile collaboration in Toronto and a desperate 14-year-old boy to break a medical stale…
6. The pioneers of air evacuation: America's first female combat nursesWorld War II forced a revolution in military medicine, necessitating the birth of air evacuation. This video explores the vital role of flight nurses, among the first American wom…
7. Desperate measures: the bizarre medical attempts to survive the Black DeathAs the Bubonic plague decimated Europe between 1347 and 1351, doctors turned to increasingly strange and creative remedies to combat the rising death toll.
8. Why ancient physicians believed healing required both a scalpel and a confessionIn the ancient world, medicine was rarely a purely clinical affair. From Mesopotamia to Greece, the line between physical ailment and spiritual transgression was blurred. Physicia…
9. Why aspirin is arguably the most fascinating pharmaceutical in human historyAspirin is far more than a simple pain reliever. This video explores its complex legacy, tracing how a common medication became entangled in global politics and warfare while bala…
10. Would you have survived the brutal reality of a Victorian operating theatre?Alice Loxton explores the grim history of 19th-century medicine at London's Old Operating Theatre Museum. This video examines the high-stakes world of Victorian surgery, where lac…
11. How an 18th-century medical breakthrough shaped our understanding of modern public health crisesMuseum director Hartwig Fischer and research director Carl Heron examine a historical smallpox vaccination poster. This discussion connects the origins of early immunization to th…

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