Articles tagged as Disease | Smithsonian Magazine

This illustration shows how the STIMband fits on a patient's head.

Could This Head Gear Help Treat Parkinson’s Disease?

Students at Johns Hopkins University have created an at-home brain-stimulating device to ease Parkinson’s symptoms

June 25, 2015

Evidence (some anecdotal and some clinical) suggests that hookworms could suppress the immune response in people with allergies and other inflammatory diseases.

Cool Finds

Can Hookworms Cure Hayfever?

Maybe. But we need to learn a lot more about them before they hit pharmacy shelves

June 23, 2015

The outbreak, which spread surprisingly fast, hit farms that produce liquid eggs

June 10, 2015

New Research

Scientists Are Stopping Malaria With Viagra

Viagra can help boost the spleen’s ability to filter out infected blood cells

May 14, 2015

New Research

Most Countries Have No Plans For When Antibiotics Stop Working

World Health Organization sounds the alarm on “one of the biggest threats to the future of global health”

April 30, 2015

Health officials confirm that rubella no longer originates in North or South America

April 30, 2015

Syphilis rates increased by 13 percent between 2012 and 2013

April 16, 2015

Vacant casemates became open-air cells for more than 500 inmates serving time for desertion, mutiny, murder and other offenses.

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

How Samuel Mudd Went From Lincoln Conspirator to Medical Savior

Banished to an island prison in the Gulf of Mexico, the doctor who set Booth’s broken leg saved dozens of lives in a yellow fever outbreak

April 14, 2015

The virus that has struck out Pacific sea star populations could now be affecting their Echinoderm cousins

April 6, 2015

Trending Today

How Armadillos Can Spread Leprosy

These tank-like creatures are the only animals besides us known to carry leprosy

March 2, 2015

New Research

Statisticians Reveal the Best Place to Wait Out a Zombie Apocalypse

You’ll want to head for the Rocky Mountains

February 27, 2015

The Black Death is immortalized by the plague masks of Venice, like this stylized version used in a Carnival costume.

Plague Pandemic May Have Been Driven by Climate, Not Rats

The bacteria responsible for the Black Death were reintroduced to Europe multiple times, possibly due to the changing climate

February 23, 2015

A surgeon using an endoscope, similar to the device involved in the UCLA outbreak

A drug-resistant bacteria usually found in the gut has infected seven people and contributed to two deaths

February 19, 2015

A nurse at the ELWA Ebola Treatment Unit in Monrovia, Liberia, picks up disinfected boots

The developer called a halt after fewer than 10 people had been treated in the trial’s first month

February 2, 2015

New Research

Could GM Mosquitoes Pave the Way for a Tropical Virus to Spread?

Modified insects designed to stop dengue fever could make it easier for another disease-carrying species to take root

January 8, 2015

The Guinean village of Meliandou, where the 2014 ebola epidemic first broke out.

New Research

The First 2014 Ebola Victim Likely Caught It by Playing Around a Bat Tree

Evidence builds that insect-eating bats are natural reservoirs for the disease

December 31, 2014

We just have so much to look forward to

December 31, 2014

Health workers wearing protective clothing prepare to carry an abandoned dead body presenting with Ebola symptoms at Duwala market in Monrovia August 17, 2014.

The viral outbreak doesn’t appear to be slowing

December 30, 2014

New Research

Congratulations, Humanity! We’re Living Six Years Longer Than We Did in 1990, on Average

Global life expectancy is increasing, especially in the developing world

December 18, 2014

New Research

Superbugs Could Become a Top Cause of Death by 2050

If left unchecked, antibiotic-resistant bacteria could kill more people than cancer by 2050

December 11, 2014