Health Apr 14 April 14-15, 1865: The tragic final hours of Abraham Lincoln The macabre details of Abraham Lincoln’s final hours were described in a report written by a 23-year-old Army captain named Charles A. Leale, a doctor who was at Ford's Theatre the night the president was assassinated.
Health Mar 24 The day we discovered the cause of the ‘white death’ Robert Koch’s greatest evening unfolded 133 years ago today, when he solved the riddle that had plagued doctors for centuries: what, exactly, caused tuberculosis?…
Health Feb 07 What a 1925 novel by Sinclair Lewis can teach us about health care today Feb. 7 marks the 130th birthday of Sinclair Lewis, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. At first glance, one might ask what does an American novelist have to do with a column devoted to medical discoveries and…
Health Jan 28 How playing with dangerous x-rays led to the discovery of radiation treatment for cancer When the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s announced his discovery of the x-ray in December of 1895, he was lauded on the front page of just about every newspaper in the world. Indeed, many journalists called this phenomenon “X-Ray…
Health Dec 14 Dec. 14, 1799: The excruciating final hours of President George Washington It was a house call no physician would relish. On Dec. 14, 1799, three doctors were summoned to Mount Vernon in Fairfax County, Virginia to attend to a critically ill, 67-year-old man who happened to be known as “the father…
Health Nov 19 69 years ago, a president pitches his idea for national health care Back in 1945 -- a mere seven months into a presidency he inherited from Franklin D. Roosevelt -- Truman proposed a “universal” national health insurance program. In his remarks to Congress, he declared, “Millions of our citizens do not now…
Health Oct 15 Before Ebola, Ellis Island’s terrifying medical inspections Oct. 15, 1966 marked the day that Ellis Island (along with Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty) was officially listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Health Sep 29 How the Tylenol murders of 1982 changed the way we consume medication Early on the morning of Sept. 29, 1982, a tragic, medical mystery began with a sore throat and a runny nose. It was then that Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old girl from Elk Grove Village, a suburb of Chicago, told her…
Health Aug 15 Home run king Babe Ruth helped pioneer modern cancer treatment Besides being a beloved baseball star, Babe Ruth was one of the first cancer patients to receive a combination of chemotherapy and radiation, a practice that doctors still use today.
Health Jul 30 How Medicare came to be, thanks to Harry S. Truman Forty-nine years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson found himself in Independence, Missouri. Although he was surrounded by a gaggle of politicians, distinguished guests and Secret Service agents, the president was armed only with a fountain pen, a bottle of ink…