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Articles on History of medicine

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Policemen wearing masks provided by the American Red Cross in Seattle, 1918. Wikimedia Commons

Why historians ignored the Spanish flu

For nearly 50 years academic and popular writers ignored the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. A hundred years later, historians can’t get enough of it.
Edward Jenner, who pioneered vaccination, and two colleagues (right) seeing off three anti-vaccination opponents, with the dead lying at their feet (1808). I Cruikshank/Wellcome Images/Wikimedia Commons

A short history of vaccine objection, vaccine cults and conspiracy theories

Some people have objected to childhood vaccination since it was introduced in the late 1700s. And their reasons sound remarkably familiar to those of anti-vaxxers today.
Gone are the days when we were told to suck out a snake’s venom. So what’s the current treatment and how have treatments changed over time? State Library of NSW/Hood

Hissstory: how the science of snake bite treatments has changed

Snake bite treatments have changed remarkably over the past 200 years. But most, if not all, made sense in their historical context.
‘Doctor, whenever I get up I feel dizzy for half an hour.’ ‘Then wait for half an hour before getting up.’ Alexander the Great trust to physician Phillip, Henryk Siemiradzki

Five things the ancient Greeks can teach us about medicine today

Medicine has changed beyond recognition in the last 2,000 years. So why should we still care what the founders of Western medicine thought?

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