Images of the effects of Thalidomide are firmly etched into the public consciousness. What was originally seen as a safe…
Poliomyelitis is a peculiarly nasty, highly contagious disease of the central nervous system that all too often leaves its victims…
Doctors first noticed something strange in the Japanese coastal town of Minimata towards the end of April 1956. Patients were…
It goes by the name of ‘potcheen’ in Ireland, ‘hooch’ or ‘moonshine’ in North America and batti sarai in India.…
The ‘sleeping’ or ‘sleepy’ sickness that swept the world in the 1920s had nothing in common with the tropical disease.…
Despite its name, the flu pandemic of 1918 did not start in Spain. In fact it spread there rather late…
Fate played a cruel trick on the natives of Fiji. The islands emerged from appalling inter-tribal wars in 1874, hopeful…
The first documented account of cholera appears in an Indian medical report of 1563, but the disease seems to have…
Since the Black Death, London had suffered several outbreaks of plague and had established a quarantine system to restrict infection…
The New World that Columbus discovered in 1492 was rich in wonders but devoid of immunity to old-world diseases. Smallpox,…