67 - Fever on the Frontier
In the early 19th century, a strange new illness, seemingly unknown to medicine, ravaged settler communities in the American Middle West. As fierce debates about this new disease, now called milk sick...
21 Mar 202248min
66 - Burnout
Burnout seems to stalk healthcare workers; between a third and a half of doctors and nurses had symptoms of burnout BEFORE the COVID-19 pandemic. Major medical associations have recognized burnout as ...
8 Jan 202253min
65 - The Last Breath
How can we medically tell whether or not someone is alive or dead? The answer is much more complicated than you'd think. In this episode, which is a live podcast I gave with Tony Breu at the Massachus...
5 Nov 202140min
64 - A Vicious Circle
During World War II, the US Army launched a seemingly routine experiment to find the ideal way to screen soldiers for tuberculosis. Jacob Yerushalmy, the statistician in charge of this project, would ...
4 Okt 202140min
63 - Signals
What does it mean when different physicians disagree about a diagnosis? I am joined by Dr. Shani Herzig as we explore this issue in the second part of my series on the development of diagnosis. We're ...
23 Aug 202140min
62 - The Sisters Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell -- the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States -- and her sister Emily Blackwell are some of the most important physicians of the 19th century, firmly establishin...
10 Mai 202141min
61 - Etymologies
Words matter. At its best, etymology gives us insight not only into the origins of words, but why they remain so important today, especially in medicine, where we've been accruing jargon for millennia...
29 Mar 202139min
60 - Santa's Salmonella
For a special holiday treat, we're going to explore two tales of salmonella disease detectives -- the first about Mary Mallon ("Typhoid Mary") and the birth of the genre; and the second about a myster...
24 Des 202038min
