Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThe Caduceus Mix-Up: Hermes' Staff of Commerce vs the Rod of Asclepius
Episode 13543
The winged staff wrapped by two snakes on ambulances, uniforms, and drug ads is the caduceus, and this episode explains why it historically has nothi…
1 week, 2 days ago
Malaria's Plasmodium Parasite: Liver Stealth, Sticky Red Cells and Vaccines
Episode 13542
The name malaria comes from the medieval Italian for bad air, and for centuries people blamed the smell of swamps such as Rome's Pontine marshes for …
1 week, 2 days ago
MASH Units Beyond the Sitcom: Korean War Helicopters and Triage Tags
Episode 13541
The Mobile Army Surgical Hospital is best known from the television sitcom, but the real units were large, fast moving medical operations. This episo…
1 week, 2 days ago
Leprosy (Hansen's Disease): Hijacked Nerve Cells, Armadillos, Alice Ball
Episode 13540
About 95 percent of people are naturally immune to leprosy, and casual contact does not spread it, yet the disease drove societies to banish its vict…
1 week, 2 days ago
Lead Poisoning: Roman Sapa, Midgley's Leaded Gas and Turmeric Adulteration
Episode 13539
Lead may sit in modern bodies at levels up to a hundred times higher than in pre industrial people, and Beethoven's suffering is linked in this episo…
1 week, 2 days ago
Laudanum's Long Run: Paracelsus' Secret Pill to Deadly Pharmacy Mix-Ups
Episode 13538
Laudanum is a tincture of about 10 percent powdered opium, roughly 1 percent morphine, dissolved in alcohol, and in the mid 19th century a bottle cou…
1 week, 2 days ago
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Ottoman Engrafting, Newgate Trials and Pope
Episode 13537
As a seven year old, Lady Mary had her name engraved on the drinking glasses of London's Kit Kat Club, yet her father denied her a formal education. …
1 week, 2 days ago
The Royal Touch for Scrofula: Angel Coins, Henry IV and Charles II's 92,000
Episode 13536
For centuries the kings and queens of England and France claimed they could cure the King's Evil, scrofula, a form of tuberculosis that swells the ly…
1 week, 2 days ago
Karl Landsteiner: Discovering ABO Blood Types, Polio and the Rh Factor
Episode 13535
In the late 19th century, a blood transfusion could save a patient or make the blood clump, the kidneys fail, and the patient die, and no one knew wh…
1 week, 2 days ago
Sokushinbutsu: Japan's Self-Mummified Monks and the 3,000-Day Tree Diet
Episode 13534
Egyptian mummies were made by embalmers after death, but in Japan some Buddhist monks prepared their own bodies for preservation while still alive. T…
1 week, 2 days ago