Tag: medical

When smallpox appeared in Derby, Connecticut, fear spread almost as quickly as the disease. C.P. Cook was taken to the town pesthouse, isolated from everyone…

In the spring of 1925, Washington, D.C., found itself in the grip of a growing smallpox outbreak. Health officials were scrambling to contain the disease…

What Mr. and Mrs. Thomas C. Freyer experienced near Marshall’s Lake was alarming. In the middle of the night, a skunk entered their camp and…

At the turn of the twentieth century, desperation often drove the sick toward strange and unsettling remedies. In New Orleans, one such treatment drew men,…

A walk through the woods near Manayunk turned into a terrifying ordeal for 16-year-old Mary Schulz in the spring of 1895.  What began as a…

At the height of the early twentieth century, a single word could bring a train, a hotel, a ship, or an entire neighborhood to a…

When X-rays were first announced to the world in late 1895, they seemed almost miraculous. For the first time, doctors and experimenters could look beneath…

At the turn of the 20th century, transatlantic travel promised adventure, discomfort, and plenty of opportunities for sharp-eyed swindlers. Passengers trapped together on a steamship…

In 1920, a Chicago courtroom heard a medical malpractice case that would sound painfully familiar even today.  Mrs. Hulda Anderson, the wife of a letter…

In 1910, a Los Angeles man brought forward the kind of medical malpractice claim that still makes patients uneasy more than a century later: he…