Does smoking cause lung cancer? How could you ever know? The second in a three-part series on causality, I’m joined by Dr. Shoshana Herzig to discuss how Austin Bradford Hill and Richard Doll set out to try and answer this question — and along the way revolutionized the way we […]
In 1495, a mysterious and deadly plague struck the city of Naples. Over the next 500 years, the medical attempts to understand and treat this new disease — syphilis — would mold and shape medicine in surprising ways. In this episode, Tony Breu and I will perform an historical […]
What was behind the mysterious increase in lung cancer deaths at the turn of the 20th century? The first of a three-parter investigating the cigarette-smoking link and causality, this episode looks at that early debate, which largely focused on environmental pollution. Along the way, we’re going to talk about toxic […]
What killed Charles II of Spain, the inbred monarch whose autopsy famously showed a heart the size of a peppercorn, a head full of water, and a bloodless body? This episode addresses that medical mystery by not only delving deep into Charles’ unfortunate past, but by exploring some of the […]
