If you were a time traveler, would you survive the Black Death? Smallpox? Tuberculosis? What about the unknown diseases of the future? And is it safer to travel back or forward in time? We attempt to answer these...

Since humanity’s earliest days, we’ve been plagued by countless disease-causing pathogens. Invisible and persistent, these microorganisms and the illnesses they incur have killed more humans than anything else in history. But which...

By combining historical demography and epidemiology, we can (sort of) determine how people throughout history have died.

We’ve made a lot of progress recently in curing two deadly diseases that have been difficult to treat!

Your body usually does a great job defending you from all kinds of viruses, fungi, and bacteria. However, there are some pathogens out there that can hide from your immune system and stay dormant in your body, waiting for their...

From Angola to the former Yugoslavia, land mines are a lethal legacy of wars over long ago. Cambodia is among the most affected countries, with millions of buried explosives that kill and maim people each year. Now, an organization is...

Usually when we think about animals and disease, we think about illnesses that they transmit to us - like swine flu or Lyme disease. But illness is often a two-way street, and while animals can pass pathogens to us, we can also pass our...

Today we know pathogens -- viruses, bacteria, and certain other microbes -- are responsible for many diseases. But linking specific diseases to the microbes that cause them has been surprisingly tricky, and some research practices lead...

By studying population-level epidemiological trends, researchers have noticed that an old vaccine for tuberculosis may provide some protection against COVID-19.

Most people know that they don't need their appendix, but what other organs can humans live without?

No one knows exactly how many landmines still litter the world, but it's safe to say: millions, waiting to kill and maim unsuspecting civilians. Clearing them is slow, expensive and dangerous. The founder of Apopo, Bart Weetjens, talks...

Thanks to strontium, oxygen, and rings in a tusk, scientists now have evidence that extinct mastodons may have participated in yearly migrations.

Learn why tuberculosis, TB, is the world’s most infectious disease and how medical advancements are improving treatment. -- In 2008, two 9,000-year old skeletons were found with their bones infected by an all too familiar bacterium....

Science can help create understanding where there is none, but is it possible to study and understand terrorists if we're too busy doing everything we can to stop it? Terrorism is notoriously difficult to study because governments...

This week, we're back in Europe to learn about Realism and Naturalism. In the 19th Century, playwrights like Eugene Scribe, Alexandre de Dumas Fils, and Emile Zola remade the French theater, first with Realism, and later with Naturalism....

In the African grasslands, a gazelle suffering from tuberculosis takes its last breath. The animal's corpse threatens to infect the water, but for the vulture, this isn't a problem: it's a feast. With a stomach of steel that can digest...

The urushiol molecules in poison ivy have the ability to trigger a harmful immune response in most people because the immune system mistakenly labels them as a threat.

The path to better medicine is paved with accidental yet revolutionary discoveries. In this well-told tale of how science happens, neuroscientist Rebecca Brachman shares news of a serendipitous breakthrough treatment that may prevent...

In the decades following World War II, life changed in many ways, and a fair number of those changes were for the better. Many of those improvements were driven by advances in science and technology, in fields like biology,...

Paul Andersen details examples of natural selection in the world. He starts by explaining how changes in global temperatures are causing plants to adapt. He explains how mutations cause changes in phenotype which give organisms varying...

Tuberculosis had a big impact on George Orwell's life and on his novel "1984." Drawing parallels between Orwell's struggle with TB and the themes of isolation, surveillance, and control in the novel, it delves into how Orwell's personal...

New and lethal strains of TB are emerging worldwide which cannot be treated by conventional drugs. One estimate puts the number of new MDR TB cases per year as high as 400,000. After 40 years without any research into new drugs, the...

This year alone, eight million people will become infected with tuberculosis. Like the common cold, TB spreads through the air when sufferers cough, sneeze, spit, or just talk. One needs only to inhale a few germs to catch it. This...

The Victorian Era lasted throughout most of the 1800s. This period of time was known for its technological advancements and for its increased social mobility. And with that came new beauty trends that spread from Britain to the United...