The medical mystery that helped make Thomas Edison an inventor
Deafness allowed Edison to shut himself off from “all the meaningless sound that normal people hear.” But what caused his deafness is still debated by doctors and hearing experts to this day.
George Gershwin’s too-short life ended on a blue note
The cause of his untimely death was most likely glioblastoma, the same type of brain cancer that killed Senators Edward M. Kennedy in 2009 and John McCain this September.
Elvis’ addiction was the perfect prescription for an early death
Like so many rock stars, Elvis employed an all-too-willing physician to feed his addiction and hasten his death.
How a hotel convention became ground zero for this deadly bacteria
From July 21 to July 24, 1976, more than 2,000 members of the Pennsylvania chapters of the American Legion attended their annual state convention at a Philadelphia hotel. By Aug. 15, 182 Legionnaires who attended the convention were ill with…
Although Will Mayo rose to become an assistant in surgery and a demonstrator in anatomy at Michigan, one of his professors told him he would never succeed in medicine.
Nellie Bly's investigative work became a classic in the annals of psychiatry and a cogent warning against inhumane treatment of the mentally ill.
FDR’s health finally gave out after years of carrying the weight of the United States, and ultimately the free world, on his muscular shoulders.
On this day in 1964, Dr. Luther Terry released an earth-shaking, 150,000-word report entitled, "Smoking and Health."…
There were points in his life when Dostoevsky wrote he was grateful for his seizure disorder because of the “abnormal tension” the episodes created in his brain, which allowed him to experience “unbounded joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion and completest…
