Blaming People for Getting Sick Has a Long History
Four major theories of disease transmission dominated scientific discourse in the nineteenth century. As one scholar writes, all were political.
The Origins of the CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began during World War II to prevent the spread of malaria to troops stationed in the South.
Cracking the Malaria Mystery—from Marshes to Mosquirix
It took science centuries to understand malaria. Now we’re waiting to see how the 2019 vaccine pilot works.
Disease Theory in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man
Shelley's third novel, about the sole survivor of a global plague, draws on the now-outdated miasma theory of disease.
With the Coronavirus, Science Confronts Geopolitics
The containment of COVID-19 raises pressing questions related to the freedom of scientific information, civil liberties, and human rights, one scholar explains.
When New Yorkers Burned Down a Quarantine Hospital
On September 1st, 1858, a mob stormed the New York Marine Hospital in Staten Island, and set fire to the building.
How the Plague Reshaped the World
The bacterium that causes the plague emerged relatively recently, as bacterium go. And yet the pandemics it's created have altered the world.
Scientists Are Putting Mosquitoes on Human Diet Drugs
Humans and mosquitoes share a surprising amount of genes and have similar hunger controls.
The Man Who Invented Modern Infection Control
He's hailed as the "father of infection control" and the "savior of mothers," but the truth about Ignaz Semmelweis is more complicated than that.
Did Venereal Disease Lead to Abolition?
Many abolitionists seeking to end slavery in the British West Indies were concerned less with human rights, more with the preponderance of interracial sex.