John M. Burkey— Good patient care requires careful listening. Sometimes this listening is not so difficult, however, as knowing what to do about what is heard. This story began several years ago when I was confronted by a patient with a complaint that at first did not appear to be related
Dr. Richard Frank— We have entered an era in cancer medicine in which new therapies are becoming available seemingly on a monthly basis. The reason for this is that tremendous advances in the scientific understanding of cancer and in drug development are enabling researchers to design therapies specifically targeted to
John M. Burkey— Greetings from the “bad news room.” This is how a physician I worked with described my office because one of my roles as senior audiologist in our ear, nose and throat (ENT) practice is to tell patients that they have hearing loss. Since we are a busy
Coca-Cola was bottled and sold for the first time on March 12, 1894. Since then, the soft drink company has undergone a striking number of changes and expansions: new flavors, new containers, new markets, and new industries. Despite the company’s varied history, Coke’s newest venture, Fairlife milk, might still surprise
Dr. Richard Frank— The day was December 12, 1799. A freezing rain whipped the Virginia countryside including Mount Vernon, where President George Washington lived and maintained his plantation. He inspected his lands for many hours that day, riding horseback and braving the harsh elements just as he had done throughout
Rob DeSalle and Susan L. Perkins— Alexander Fleming once coyly said about his discovery of penicillin, “When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic.” As lore has it, he “accidently” discovered penicillin as
Lee Jackson, author of Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth, wrote a series of posts for the Yale University Press London Blog to explain how the inventors of ‘sanitary science’ nevertheless lived in what remained a notoriously filthy city. Some of these entries will be appearing here on the
On this day in 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The announcement of the 2014 winners is a reminder that the selections invariably provoke discussion and sometimes criticism, but Mother Teresa seems like an almost uniquely uncontroversial choice. Yet in the age of big data and quantitative
Mark Harrison— All diseases are mirrors of society but some—especially epidemic diseases—lead us to reflect on the way we are heading. Ebola is one such disease. Although it is still largely confined to tropical Africa and is unlikely to decimate other parts of the world, its lessons are relevant to
Although he encountered enormous skepticism, Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner persevered in his research on the causes of degenerative brain diseases, convinced the scientific community of his findings, and, in 1997, received the Nobel Prize. He argued that conditions including scrapie in sheep and goats, mad cow disease in cattle, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans were