/r/historyofmedicine
A place to discuss the history of medicine, the fascinating evolution of medical science, the anecdotes of the people who have made medicine what it is today. Topics of discussion may include (but is not limited to!) the history of medical procedures, treatments, and devices, historical persons of interest, the history of epidemiology and public health, and other related areas of interest.
This subreddit is dedicated to the discussion of the history of medicine, as well as the histories of epidemiology and public health. Submissions and comments should be on topics related to these subjects except when otherwise permitted.
Also check out our wiki (Note: wiki is in development. Have a suggestion? Message the moderators).
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Please follow the twenty-year rule: only post and comment about topics prior to 1993. This is to avoid the discussion of current events, which is more appropriate for other subreddits.
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/r/historyofmedicine
Praxeda Fronczak was a Red Cross Nurse from Buffalo who went to Poland after World War One during the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921) to help combat a typhus epidemic, teach nursing, and evacuate and treat refugees. She did amazing work in Poland and kept an extensive diary and scrapbook of her time there.
https://library.buffalo.edu/news/2023/12/21/praxeda-fronczak-a-red-cross-nurse-in-poland-1919-1921/
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/973910e6aa854000bb62895199933b1
I know the steth was invented by Laennec, but curious as to who first used the phrase lub-dub to describe the sound of the heart
Hello, I'm looking to see if there are any books or papers that deal with the history of case studies especially things wrestling with the positive medical benefits but potential ethically concerns. This is a really broad topic so any thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Hi team! Anyone read any good books (or chapters in books) about how anxiety has been treated as a symptom or diagnosis across time? Podcast tips also welcome!
On February 16, 1806 Meriwether Lewis applied Dr. Rush's pills to George Gibson. The pills were a compounded mix of calomel (a purgative) and jalap (another purgative). What was the purpose for that?
I'm reading a play called 'The Welkin' set in mid 1700's and a midwife references 'Culpeper's remedy'. It then describes that remedy as 'In the. On the bed. When you. You know. With your hand and the. Ointment and the. Rubbing.'
I've tried to research what they believed to be going on and why it has that name, but can only find stuff on Culpeper's herbal medicines. Does anyone here know?
During WWII, all sides agreed not to use poison gas, based on the horrific experiences of WWI, however neither side fully trusted the other to completely abide by this. To prepare for this possibility, the US developed mustard gas bombs to be used if Germany broke the treaty first. Unfortunately, on 02Dec1942, an unanticipated disaster ensued.
An American Liberty ship, the USS John Harvey, was docked in Bari, Italy with 2,000 secret mustard gas bombs on board, when a Luftwaffe air raid destroyed her. Since the cargo was top secrets, nobody knew that the oily mixture in the water, on surfaces, and atomized in the air were poisonous, until days later when patients started presenting with difficulty breathing, burns and blisters. They were diagnosed with "Dermatitis NYD" (not yet determined), and there were 617 casualties, including 83 deaths. The top brass knew what happened, but that information was suppressed and not communicated to doctors treating the victims.
Several years later, two clinical researchers at Yale reviewed the clinical findings from this disaster and noticed that mustard had a strong suppressive effect on cell division, and they used that knowledge to develop mechlorethamine, the first effective treatment for Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. This discovery launched what is now call "chemotherapy" for cancer.
And, if you studied pharmacology over the last few decades, you may be familiar with the "Blue Bible of Pharmacology", Goodman & Gilman's Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. G&G were the two researchers at Yale who discovered mechlorethamine for the treatment of NHL.
Source: https://www.history.com/news/wwii-disaster-bari-mustard-gas
Hi, I hope this is the correct subreddit for this question. I am writing a short story for a school assignment and it features a student from Warsaw in Petrograd who falls ill to leukemia. He does not have citizenship. I found some articles about Russian medicine in 1923, but I haven't found much that specifies if everyone qualified for free healthcare. What would treatment in this case for him be like?
Thank you for any answer in advance!
Hello all, not sure if this the right place to look, but I recently acquired a vintage Cambridge Instruments Simpli-Scribe Electrocardiograph machine and all that is missing is the power supply. I would like to test its functionality however I am coming up empty handed in my search for the proper power cord online. Any advice or leads would be very much appreciated! Thanks again
I'm doing research for a novel I'm writing, but I'm struggling to find information on sepsis. The book is set in the late 1800s.
In the scene, a character receives an appendectomy after the appendix has burst. He then goes into sepsis and dies. My question is: What treatment would doctors give for sepsis back then? Bloodletting? Anything else?
The Elixir sulfanilamide disaster that killed more than a hundred people and hastened the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/histories-product-regulation/sulfanilamide-disaster
Could any one suggest to me a book/article that covers some big points about the development of medicine from its earliest beginnings(prehistoric medicine) to the ancient Egyptian civilization.