health

The Chicago Physician Who Understood the Paradox of Radiation

Emil Herman Grubbe Discovered That X-Rays Could Cure, but He Was Right for the Wrong Reasons

Radiation is a paradox. On the one hand, it’s a lifesaving tool. As powerful energy that can pass through solid matter, it’s often used in medicine for everything from diagnostic X-rays to cancer therapy. But radiation also can be deadly. If handled carelessly, it causes cancer.

No one was better witness to the split personality of radiation than Chicago physician Emil Herman Grubbe, who lived from 1875 to 1960. He was the first to recognize that radiation might cure cancer. But he, like many American innovators, learned it the hard …

By Timothy J. Jorgensen |

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Meet the Deadly Bacteria Whose Story Is a Curious Mix of Hope and Danger

The ‘Elizabethkingia’ Strain Could Cure Malaria, but It’s Also Sickened Dozens in Wisconsin

By Lisa Margonelli |

Back in 1948, Milton Berle had a TV show where he’d greet his audience with “Good evening, ladies and germs!” This was considered hysterically funny, and so absurd: Germs were …

We All Have a Little Internet Zombie in Us

Kids Need Good Teachers to Learn Healthy Online Habits—Parents Included

By Joe Mathews |

You can’t protect children from smartphones—but you can teach them how to use them in healthy ways, in part by modeling good behavior yourself, said panelists at a Zócalo/UCLA event …

What Constant Screen Time Does to Kids’ Brains

Internet Exposure Can Improve Children's Learning—but It's Still No Substitute for Real-World Experience

An 8-year-old American child has never known a world without an iPhone. For today’s kids, smartwatches, video chats, and virtual reality aren’t harbingers of the high-tech future that adults have …

National Oversight or Not, All Health Care, Like All Politics, Is Local

Leaders of Britain’s NHS and America’s Mayo Clinic Enviously Eye Each Other’s Domains

By Andrés Martinez |

At first glance, America’s fragmented, private health care delivery system and Britain’s state-run National Health Service have little in common. But both nations’ contrasting approaches to caring for their populations …

Is Universal Health Care an Impossible Fantasy?

It’s Difficult to Imagine a Single-Payer System That’s Both Politically and Practically Viable in America

For more than a century, America has argued about how to share the costs of health care. Drawing from new government-sponsored insurance programs in Germany and England, Progressive reformers made …


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