Tag: medicine

For people with severe, depression, deep-brain stimulation offers an uncertain but potentially life-altering solution.

In STAT, Eric Boodman examines delusional parasitosis, a psychiatric condition neither science nor medicine understand much about.

A raw look at the discomfort, confusion, and anger of being diagnosed and dealing with endometriosis, a painful reproductive disorder with mysterious origins, and no cure.

Louis Picker, an AIDS vaccine researcher in Portland, hopes to lay the groundwork for an HIV cure within the next two decades.

Writing for New York magazine, Steve Fishman tells the story of the most extensive face transplant yet performed, including the entire scalp, ears, and eyelids, and the two men involved.

Writing for The Boston Globe, Neil Swidey makes a compelling case for how the rising tide of food allergy fakers may endanger actual sufferers, as restaurants begin to take “allergy” requests less seriously. But his piece is more than just an anti-faker missive, it’s also a fascinating history of food allergies in America, and their place in the restaurant world. […]

The first recorded cases of cancer show how the Ancient Egyptians used cauterisation (using red-hot instruments to burn off tissue and seal off wounds) to destroy tumours and to treat a variety of infections, diseases and bleeding lesions. Until the mid-18th century, surgery was the only effective option for addressing several conditions. But it was […]

The Laidlers’ story is a microcosm of the changing debate over so-called alternative medicine and its cousin, integrative medicine. In 2007, Americans spent $2.9 billion on homeopathic medicine, a treatment based on the belief that minuscule amounts of what causes symptoms in a healthy person will alleviate symptoms in someone who is ill. From nutritional supplements […]

The world’s first experiments with blood transfusion occurred in the mid-1660s in England. The procedure, which was first carried out between dogs, was gruesome: the dogs were tied down, the arteries and veins in their necks opened, and blood transferred from one to another through quills (most likely made from goose feathers) inserted into the […]

The human lapses that occurred after the computerized ordering system and pill-dispensing robots did their jobs perfectly well is a textbook case of English psychologist James Reason’s “Swiss cheese model” of error. Reason’s model holds that all complex organizations harbor many “latent errors,” unsafe conditions that are, in essence, mistakes waiting to happen. They’re like a forest […]

While empathy courses are rarely required in medical training, interest in them is growing, experts say, and programs are underway at Jefferson Medical College and at Columbia University School of Medicine. Columbia has pioneered a program in narrative medicine, which emphasizes the importance of understanding patients’ life stories in providing compassionate care.

Von Hagens has no shortage of donors. His exhibitions have used 1,100 bodies – but he claims to have another 12,100 living donors signed up. One is Emma Knott, a PR consultant in London. “I was so inspired after I saw the exhibition], which is why I made that decision,” she says. But does she have reservations? “Not really, I mean let’s face it I’m going to be dead.” For her, the attraction lies in encouraging people to get excited about science and anatomy.

The extraordinary life of Janet Vaughan, who changed our relationship with blood.

The emerging popularity of testosterone has opened up whole new business models for entrepreneurial doctors. Chains of shops that provide the hormone have exploded all over the United States, especially across the South. How many millions more men might be willing to try testosterone if it was easy to acquire, and a clinic happened to […]

What might a more-efficient trial system look like? One collaboration in Chicago offers a possible way forward. Working together, several of the city’s academic medical centers have established a joint network for conducting clinical trials. Participating institutions now routinely interview all of their hospitalized patients, regardless of diagnosis, to keep detailed records on their health […]

Yesterday I saw my appendix. It was pink and tiny, quite hard to see, but how interesting to be introduced to it for the first time. In for a routine colonoscopy (my fourth, on account of a family history), I refused sedation as I always do, and I had the enormous thrill of witnessing parts […]

Zoos contact Virga when animals develop difficulties that vets and keepers cannot address, and he is expected to produce tangible, observable results. Often, the animals suffer from afflictions that haven’t been documented in the wild and appear uncomfortably close to our own: He has treated severely depressed snow leopards, brown bears with obsessive-compulsive disorder and […]

“It’s well-documented that the government’s attempts to meet its obligations to the Native Americans have failed miserably; the primary cause is insufficient funding. Currently, prisoners receive significantly higher per capita health-care funding than Native Americans. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reports the federal government spends about $5,000 per capita each year on health care […]

“In the jargon of economics, the demand for therapeutic drugs is ‘price inelastic’: increasing the price doesn’t reduce how much the drugs are used. Prices are set and raised according to what the market will bear, and the parties who actually pay the drug companies will meet whatever price is charged for an effective drug […]

Jalees Rehman | December 2012 | 8 minutes (1,957 words) Jalees Rehman is a cell biologist and physician at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who’s been featured on Longreads in the past. Below is an essay first posted at SciLogs, which he has allowed us to repost here for the Longreads community. * * * […]

Edith Zimmerman is founding editor of The Hairpin and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. She’s also written for GQ, Elle, The Awl and This American Life.  I’m not a doctor, but … (always a confidence-inspiring way to start a sentence!), these pieces on healthcare were two of the best articles I […]

For years, doctors attempted to create artificial hearts that mimicked the real heart—using methods that recreate blood pumping. Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier instead developed a continuous-flow device that has worked on calves and some humans, including patient Rahel Elmer Reger: The little quilted backpack held two lithium-ion batteries and the HeartMate II’s computerized controller, […]

In the 1940s, U.S. doctors led experiments that intentionally infected thousands of Guatemalans with venereal diseases. A closer look at how it happened, and who knew: John Cutler, the young investigator who led the Guatemalan experiments, had the full backing of US health officials, including the surgeon general. “Cutler thought that what he was doing […]