Medicine

Strange cases and the doctors who solved them.

5 rabbit holes

• New
  EpidemicsTyphoid MaryNew York, 1907. Wherever a cook named Mary Mallon works, people fall ill with typhoid. She herself is perfectly healthy. Health officials discover she is a carrier, the first known healthy carrier in America, and lock her away on an island. She spends nearly three decades there.3 stages · 22 min
• New
  Self-experimentsThe doctor who put a tube into his own heartGermany, 1929. A 25-year-old junior doctor, forbidden by his boss to try a risky idea, does it on himself: he pushes a thin rubber tube through a vein in his arm all the way into his heart, then walks to the X-ray room to prove it. He is mocked and leaves cardiology.2 stages · 22 min
• New
  EpidemicsThe pump that killed SohoLondon, 1854. Cholera kills hundreds of people in a few days around Broad Street. Most doctors blame bad air. A physician named John Snow goes door to door, marks the deaths on a map and points at one water pump.3 stages · 56 min
• New
  BrainPhineas Gage and the iron rodSeptember 1848, Vermont. An explosion drives an iron rod over a metre long through the head of railway foreman Phineas Gage. He survives, talks, and rides home in a cart. His doctor later writes that Gage was “no longer Gage”. But how much did he really change?3 stages · 25 min
• New
  Self-experimentsThe doctor who drank bacteria1984, Perth. Doctors know that stomach ulcers come from stress and acid. A young doctor, Barry Marshall, thinks a bacterium is to blame, but few colleagues believe him. So he drinks a culture of it himself.3 stages · 21 min