This Pathological Life

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral composed of silk-like soft flexible fibres that are resistant to fire, heat, electricity, and chemical damage. Known from antiquity as a miracle product and believed to possess magical powers, there was only one problem;

In 1920-1930’s, Dr Charles Huggins had an unusual problem: prostatic cancer cells appeared in his metabolic experiments that he was conducting on the Prostate of Dogs. With further experimentation, he was able to demonstrate that Prostate Cancer maintained its normal

Inherited bleeding disorders before the modern era were a death sentence. Haemophilia, also known as the Royal Disease (specifically Haemophilia B), is an X-linked coagulation disorder that the Heir to the Throne Alexei Romanov inherited in the early 1900’s. However,

The Story of Typhoid Mary An outbreak of Typhoid occurred 1906 in a wealthy family in Oyster Bay, New York. Typically, a disease of ‘deprived’ people, investigators concluded that the source must have been contaminated water or freshwater clams. However, in

The eradication of Smallpox: an unmatched medical triumph. Smallpox was a devastating disease described as the scourge of the world. The Variola virus was responsible for countless deaths from antiquity to the twentieth century and left most survivors with lifelong

In the 19th Century there was an increasing numbers of Black Tumours reported in medical literature – described as Melanose in 1806 when Rene Laennec published that the Blackness of these tumours was not related to black carbon deposits found

Anatomy of a Pandemic Through the prism of COVID-19 and epidemiology, we examine different epidemics and pandemics throughout history. In the last twenty years, there have been three outbreaks of Coronavirus (MERS, SARS, and COVID-19) but only COVID-19 reached pandemic

What is Pathology? Pathology is by definition: the study of disease. Pathology is about understanding. This episode uses the story of Mary Papanicolaou and her husband George who discovered the pap smear. Dr Travis Brown says, “What I’m hoping is