History & Commentary

An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem....

The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history—even more so now, when the notion of plague has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern....

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is essential listening for understanding the history, philosophy, and evolution of science....

Since early 2020, the world has experienced a series of catastrophic events - a global pandemic caused by a so-called novel coronavirus; international lockdowns and border closings causing widespread business closures, economic collapse, and massive unemployment....

Medical Bondage moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how 19th-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals....

Over the past 50 years, rates of autoimmunity and chronic disease have exploded. In this provocative book, Dr. Thomas Cowan argues for a direct causal relationship to a corresponding increase in the number of vaccines American children typically receive....

The harrowing, dramatic and profoundly moving story of the Australian and New Zealand nurses who served in the Great War....

A journalist takes listeners into the science and history of intermittent fasting, an ancient practice in the middle of a red-hot resurgence, exploring the body's power to heal itself....

A fascinating account of the world’s most famous disease - polio - told as you have never heard it before. Epidemics of paralysis began to rage in the early 1900s, seemingly out of nowhere....

A journey through history's most famous limbs, organs, and appendages, from TikTok medical historian Dr Suzie Edge....

Seamus O'Mahony debunks the great fallacies that drive modern medicine....

Upon its first publication 20 years ago, And The Band Played On was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of investigatve reporting....

In the mid 1980s, Canada's worst public health disaster was unfolding. Catastrophic mismanagement of the country's blood supply allowed contaminated blood to be knowingly distributed, infecting close to two thousand Canadians with HIV.

Grief Works is a compassionate guide that will inform and engage anyone who is grieving and provide clear advice for those seeking to comfort the bereaved....

A bizarre, rollicking trip through the world of fringe medicine, filled with leeches, baking soda IVs, and, according to at least one person, zombies: Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling examines the growing universe of non-traditional treatments....

Beginning with opium, the “joy plant,” which has been used for 10,000 years, Thomas Hager tells a captivating story of medicine. His subjects include the largely forgotten female pioneer who introduced smallpox inoculation to Britain, the infamous knockout drops, and much more....

Author Cory Franklin, MD, who headed the hospital's intensive care unit from the 1970s through the 1990s, shares his most unique and bizarre experiences....

This book concentrates on the medical downfall of the Tudors, examining their gynecological history and medical records....

Picking up where Berton Roueche's The Medical Detectives left off, The Deadly Dinner Party presents 15 edge-of-your-seat, real-life medical detective stories written by a practicing physician....

Dirty Electricity tells the story of Dr. Samuel Milham, the scientist who first alerted the world about the frightening link between occupational exposure to electromagnetic fields and human disease.

The history of disease is the history of humankind: an interpretation of the world as seen through the extraordinary impact—political, demographic, ecological, and psychological—of disease on cultures.

Dr. Andrew Lam, an award-winning author and retinal surgeon, distills the long arc of medical progress down to the crucial moments that were responsible for the world's greatest medical miracles....

As a psychiatrist in training fresh from medical school, Carl Erik Fisher found himself face-to-face with an addiction crisis that nearly cost him everything.

Mark Gober dives into fundamental beliefs about health and disease, and goes a layer deeper by examining the nature of consciousness....

Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War examines how intoxicants have been put to the service of states, empires, and their armies throughout history....