french revolution

Episode 41: Animal Magnetism

 in Podcasts  tagged alternative medicine / benjamin franklin / ebm / french revolution / guillotine / lavoisier / Mesmer / mesmerism / vitalism by

  Mesmerism has had an outsize influence on medicine, despite the rapid rise and fall of its inventor Dr. Franz Mesmer and hostility from the medical establishment. This curious story covers the healing powers of magnets, secret societies in pre-Revolutionary France, fundamental questions about what makes someone alive, and one […]

Episode 38: Blood on the Tracks (PopMed #2)

 in Podcasts  tagged bloodletting / epidemiology / epistemology / french revolution / history / Laennec / leeches / louis / paris clinical school by

  The first population study in history was born out of a dramatic debate involving leeches, “medical vampires,” professional rivalries, murder accusations, and, of course, bloodletting, all in the backdrop of the French Revolution. The second of a multipart series on the development of population medicine, this episode contextualizes Pierre […]