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 […]
Alexis St. Martin and William Beaumont have one of the strangest relationships in the history of medicine — a young French-Canadian fur trapper with a hole in his stomach from an errant shotgun blast and the American army physician who cared for him, and then made his own career by […]
Malariotherapy — infecting comatose syphilis patients with malaria to cure them of the disease — was once the cutting edge of medicine, and earned its inventor, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1927. In this episode, we’re going to talk about the fascinating story behind this […]
The invention of dialysis — essentially artificial kidneys for people with kidney failure — revolutionized medicine. It also started a debate about medical rationing and ethics that rages to this day. Producer Cam Steele brings us a story about the God Squad, the group of lay people and doctors tasked […]
