germ theory


Episode 67: Fever on the Frontier

In the early 19th century, a strange new illness, seemingly unknown to medicine, ravaged settler communities in the American Middle West. As fierce debates about this new disease, now called milk sickness, raged – was it from toxic swamp gasses? arsenic in the soil? infectious microorganisms? from the poor constitutions […]


Episode 45: The French Disease at 500

  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 […]