Himmelsbriefe: Heaven-Sent Chain Letters
For more than a thousand years, people have used letters allegedly written by Christ as both doctrinal evidence and magical charms.
Legacies Lost and Found
Say Anarcha tells the story of the enslaved women experimented on by a self-aggrandizing gynecologist. Its related online archive aims to reinvent the nature of bibliography.
Home Pregnancy Tests
Before the arrival of home pregnancy tests, women had to seek answers at the doctor’s office, which was costly, inconvenient, and potentially embarrassing.
Death by Ice Cream
In the late nineteenth century, ice cream, a popular but poorly understood dessert, brought illness and death to America’s fairs and festivals.
How Physicians Became Scientists
The introduction of formal peer review to journals aided medical doctors in their quest to bring more scientific rigor to their field.
Abortion Remedies from a Medieval Catholic Nun(!)
Hildegard von Bingen wrote medical texts describing how to prepare abortifacients.
Libraries and Pandemics: Past and Present
The 1918 influenza pandemic had a profound impact on how librarians do their work, transforming libraries into centers of community care.
Community Care in the AIDS Crisis
The Shanti Project’s work in caring for people with AIDS provides valuable lessons in the efficacy of mutual aid in fighting disease.
How Scientists Tried to Find a Universal Flu Vaccine
The quest to “conquer” influenza with a shot that could be used every year started out with high hopes, and ended up a hot mess.