The Poor Historians: Medical History Misadventures

In the 1990's a curious thing happened.  When a patient arrived very ill to the emergency department, doctors and nurses were astonished to find crystals in her blood with a foul odor.  Why were they…

This is a historic episode.  We'd like to welcome the newest addition to the Poor Historians Podcast crew, the exceptionally talented and enthusiastic new medical history intern, Alba!  This is her f…

Esteemed retinal surgeon and accomplished author, Dr. Andrew Lam joined us on the show to discuss multiple foundational stories to explain how modern cardiology came to be.  This comes from a chapter…

This episode has a fun twist.  Aaron and Mike will go through the case of the famous American author and mastery of mystery and suspense, Edgar Allen Poe's.  They'll be presented with his final momen…

You've probably heard her name before but do you know the real story behind this infamous moniker?  The story of Typhoid Mary is a complicated one having to do with public health, an infectious disea…

New episode this week with special guest @janeyjonesliteraryprincess who joined us to talk about her new book, "The Edinburgh Seven." It's the tale of seven women, led by the inimitable Sophia Jex-Bl…

These two titans of medical history were contemporaries whose scientific sparring was as interesting as it was helpful.  By butting heads over topics in microbiology,  Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, …

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease of historic proportions.  Not only is it still around, infecting an estimated 10+million people in 2021 alone, but in a prior era, in Victorian England, having t…

This episode will be a deviation from our normal format.  Unfortunately, the entire episode we'd recorded for release this week was lost to the cyberspace aether.  A whole episode just gone from exis…

As the resident Doctor of Osteopathy (D.O.) on this podcast, Max will lead his MD colleagues through an examination of the roots of osteopathic medicine from its founding by Andrew Taylor Still, its …

We'll look inward this week to talk about the history of our own specialty as emergency physicians.  People may not be aware that the practice of emergency medicine is relatively new in the house of …

With the success of "The Last of Us" show, we thought we'd take some time to look at historically important cases of fungal infection.  We'll investigate a possible explanation for all those witch tr…

There are many misconceptions and myths surrounding the death of the great magician and skeptic, Harry Houdini.  Though many believe he may have died during one of his dangerous escape performances, …

In this week's episode we'll trace back the beginnings of the modern intensive care unit and critical care medicine as we know it.  Much of this arose thanks to two particular infectious diseases--po…

We're back!

Many people know that insulin is an important part of the treatment for diabetes.  In this episode we'll talk about how insulin was discovered and first used to treat a disease that, thro…

Apologies but we'll have to delay the episode another week.  Technical issues + scheduling conflicts + illness have all made for difficulty getting the episode done on our usual schedule.  

Also, the …

While we've discussed numerous famous Victorian era surgeons, we haven't taken this deep of a dive into their facilities.  This week we bring you a conversation with Monica Walker, PhD, all the way f…

Doctors and the Hippocratic Oath just go together like Turner and Hooch.  That analogy makes as little sense as it does to keep harping on the Hippocratic Oath as a rite of passage for graduating phy…

This week we are joined by Laurie Fink, PhD, from the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) to discuss their anatomical collection as well as their super cool exhibit on quackery in medicine.  Exhibits f…

Let's mix one part anatomy lesson with one part historical overview of a very important blood vessel that has been a problem for numerous famous figures including Lucille Ball and Albert Einstein.  W…