disease
The rat as hero
After adopting two baby rats as pets, Joe Shute slowly overcomes his aversion and learns to appreciate the intelligence of creatures that are really quite like us
The West’s industrial-sized chicken farms could be as dangerous as any wet market
It wasn’t Henri IV’s Sunday poule au pot or Herbert Hoover’s less sexy-sounding chicken in every pot, but even in…
And end to decent dying
From 22 March 1986: They used to say that war is the ruin of serious soldiering. Too much disorder, too…
Envy is the greatest blight of all
Gstaad Hippocrates is known as the father of Western medicine and he discovered and named a disease known as ‘micropoulaki’…
COVID-19 vs the American spirit of resistance
If the coronavirus were as deadly as the bubonic plague, which killed about a third of the population of Europe…
How Spain got blamed for the Spanish flu — and where to find Ebola on a map
Plagued by stigma The World Health Organisation told doctors to stop naming diseases after people, places and animals so as…
The man who discovered Ebola
By some quirk of fate, just as news reached the papers that the Scottish nurse who had contracted Ebola while…
Your immune system’s war isn’t Saving Private Ryan — it’s Homeland
Before I read this book, I imagined the immune system as a defensive force, like the Germans on the beaches…
How Ebola got its name
It should perhaps be called Yambuku fever, since that was the village in Zaire (as it was then, now the…
Panic about Ebola in Africa – not here
Got Ebola yet? Early symptoms are very difficult to distinguish from either winter flu or, indeed, a particularly bad hangover.…
Dealing with trolls the Swedish way
How to deal with a troll In Scandinavian mythology, trolls were shady creatures who lived below ground and varied in…
How to avoid bankers in your nativity scene
With an eye to the blasphemy underlying some of the loveliest Renaissance painting, Honor Clerk will be choosing her Christmas cards more carefully this year
