Distillations magazine

Unexpected Stories from Science’s Past

Health & Medicine

Bodies, minds, and the things that help and harm them

Health & Medicine

The Rotten Science Behind the MSG Scare

How one doctor’s letter and a string of dodgy studies spurred a public health panic.

Health & Medicine

The Murky Ethics of Wastewater Surveillance

By monitoring sewage, scientists can track disease outbreaks in near real time. But will the technology leave long-term privacy risks in its wake?

Health & Medicine

Fighting through the Fear

Lessons from the Polio Pioneers in an era of misinformation.

Large, damaged ancient Egyptian statue
Health & Medicine

Diagnosing the Dead

Can scrutinizing the ailments of historical figures really teach us anything?

Health & Medicine

Does Louis Pasteur Still Matter?

Or will the scientist’s 200th birthday be his last hurrah?

illustration of a person with cholera
Health & Medicine

John Snow Hunts the Blue Death

In showing that cholera spreads through tainted water, an English doctor helped lay epidemiology’s foundations.

Health & Medicine

Bacteriophages and the Fight Against Cholera in Cold War Afghanistan

Could a Soviet-era therapy offer a new defense against antibiotic-resistant superbugs?

Health & Medicine

Searching for Isabel Morgan

Reconsidering the fate of an overlooked polio fighter.

Cartoon of men in powdered wigs fighting
Health & Medicine

Vicious Doctors and Cruel Diseases in 18th-Century Jamaica

A scientific dispute takes a violent, absurd turn.

Health & Medicine

Wayne Woolley’s Marvelously Equipped Mind

What drove a blind biochemist to experiment with LSD?

Health & Medicine

COVID-19 Health Passports: What’s Old Is New Again

To speed reopening, government and business leaders are pushing a modern version of a centuries-old idea.

Health & Medicine

Quacks, Plagues, and Pandemics

What charlatans of the past can teach us about the COVID-19 crisis.

Health & Medicine

Joseph Goldberger’s Filth Parties

A crusading doctor’s stomach-churning efforts to beat back pellagra in the American South.

Health & Medicine

Stress Baking and the Comfort of Connection

Baking homemade bread anchors us to millennia-long traditions.

Health & Medicine

Hashime Murayama and the Art of Saving Lives

A wildlife painter who ran afoul of xenophobic authorities during World War II found refuge and renewed purpose in the lab.

Health & Medicine

The Nurse Who Introduced Gloves to the Operating Room

Caroline Hampton and the forgotten origins of the first personal protective equipment.

Health & Medicine

The Story of Serum Therapy

How a 19th-century invention could save lives today.

Health & Medicine

Who Needs a Mammogram?

In the fight against breast cancer, entrenched interests and outmoded ideas may be hurting patients.