medical – Yesterday Today

The Story of Painless Parker, an Early 20th Century Street Dentist Who Pulled 357 Teeth in One Day

Please help us to continue our work bringing you the best in history on a daily basis. The cost of subscriptions to journals, archives and other media is expensive. We also have the added internet costs. You can help us by subscribing to this page for $5 per month or if you like you canContinue reading “The Story of Painless Parker, an Early 20th Century Street Dentist Who Pulled 357 Teeth in One Day”

The Radium Girls: The Living Dead Women in the 1920s

In the 1920s, People Thought Radioactive Water Was Good for the Health

Back in the 1920s, people thought that drinking radium, and thorium, infused water was healthy. One of the more famous varieties of this water was sold under the brand name Radithor. It was eventually famously implicated in the illness and subsequent death of an industrialist named Eben Byers, which was accompanied by the headline ofContinue reading “In the 1920s, People Thought Radioactive Water Was Good for the Health”

30 Intimate Photographs That Capture Everyday Life in French Psychiatric Hospitals in the 1950s

Jean-Philippe Charbonnier (August 28, 1921 – May 28, 2004) was a French photographer whose works typify the humanist impulse in that medium in his homeland of the period after World War II. In 1954, Charbonnier documented French psychiatric hospitals, and some of the photographs were published in Réalités in January 1955, in which he employedContinue reading “30 Intimate Photographs That Capture Everyday Life in French Psychiatric Hospitals in the 1950s”

The Radium Girls: The Living Dead Women in the 1920s

The Story of Painless Parker, an Early 20th Century Street Dentist Who Pulled 357 Teeth in One Day

Official Baby Care Guides by the Department of Hygiene, Kansas State Board of Health From the Early 20th Century

When it comes to childrearing advice, we’ve come a long way, baby. Modern parenting isn’t easy. Childcare books and blogs are filled with so much contradictory advice, it makes you want to throw your own tantrum. But there’s good news: You don’t live in centuries past, when baby advice wasn’t merely contradictory; it was alsoContinue reading “Official Baby Care Guides by the Department of Hygiene, Kansas State Board of Health From the Early 20th Century”

Faces From the Front: Incredible Before and After Photos Show World War I Soldiers’ Horrific Facial Injuries

These incredible before and after photographs show how British and French soldiers had to have their faces completely rebuilt having been maimed during World War One. The photos are part of a book, Faces from the Front, looking at the early development of plastic surgery. It highlights the work of young surgeon Harold Gillies, whoContinue reading “Faces From the Front: Incredible Before and After Photos Show World War I Soldiers’ Horrific Facial Injuries”

Magic Massage From Dr. Swift

Victorian era advertisement for a massage treatment to cure female “hysteria.” You don’t have to be Einstein to figure out exactly what the “doctor” is doing, and as shocking as it may seem to modern sensibilities, treatments such as this were considered perfectly acceptable in the 19th and early 20th century. The ad definitely appearsContinue reading “Magic Massage From Dr. Swift”

With Copper, Foil and Paint, a Little-Known American Sculptor Saved Scores of World War I Soldiers From a Faceless Future

Born in Philadelphia in 1878, Anna Coleman Ladd was a classically trained sculptress who in 1917 founded the American Red Cross Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris. Anna was inspired to offer her talent as an artist to help soldiers in France after reading an article about Francis Derwent Wood and his “Tin Noses Shop”Continue reading “With Copper, Foil and Paint, a Little-Known American Sculptor Saved Scores of World War I Soldiers From a Faceless Future”