history, Foundations

Researchers continue to debate whether US President Abraham Lincoln was coming down with smallpox as he delivered his famous Gettysburg Address, and if he had been immunized.

Soranus of Ephesus’s manual shaped the way midwifery was practiced for more than a millennium.

A contaminated ham put bacteriologist Émile Pierre-Marie van Ermengem on the path to discovering the microbe that produces botulinum toxin.

Trofim Lysenko’s attacks on geneticists had long-term effects on Russian science and scientists, despite a lack of evidence to support his beliefs about biological inheritance.

One hundred years after its invention, BCG has stood the test of time as a vaccine against tuberculosis.

A famous account of multiple personality disorder in the early 20th century foreshadowed a century of controversial diagnoses and debate among psychiatrists.

The “mother of plant virology and serology,” Helen Purdy Beale, developed techniques to understand the nature of viruses that went unappreciated for decades.

As a deadly smallpox outbreak ravaged Boston, one of the city’s leaders advocated for a preventive measure he’d learned about from Onesimus, an enslaved man.

Neuroscientist Rita Levi-Montalcini began her Nobel Prize–winning work in a makeshift laboratory in Italy during the Second World War.

Lore has always surrounded argonauts, pelagic octopuses that build shells and travel the seas.

In the past, it was not uncommon for researcher to test their experimental therapeutics and vaccines on themselves. Some even volunteered to be exposed to pathogen-carrying vectors.

Electron microscopy revealed that a deadly disease of birds was not a form of flu, but a different type of virus entirely.

The medical scientist made important contributions to polio treatment and Australian environmental policy—despite substantial resistance.

Microbiologist Maurice Hilleman foresaw the global spread of a novel influenza strain in 1957. His vaccine saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Kim Peek, the inspiration for the title character in Rain Man, brought public attention to savant syndrome.

Advances in imaging technology over the last century have allowed increasingly sophisticated glimpses into the ancient processes of mummification.

An analysis of the En Tibi herbarium’s plants and handwriting has given clues to the identity of its maker.

Frederik Ruysch’s collections blended specimens for scientific discovery with macabre art.

Most know Rachel Carson for her work on the dangers of chemical pollutants, but the writer’s earlier prose took readers on a tour of a mysterious underwater world.