Come listen to captivating narratives on true and often little-known back stories behind medical innovations, mystery illnesses, human “guinea pigs”, and much more. Researched and written by physician-author, Rod Tanchanco, each episode is a thrilling journey into human resilience, inventiveness, and compassion, all told in Tanchanco’s riveting style.
Strange Odor Helps Doctor Unravel Cause of Children’s Disease: PKU
A doctor is approached by a distraught couple desperately looking for help for their two young children who have worsening intellectual disability. No one else could find anything wrong. The doctor-chemist resolved to find the cause, and opened the doors to the secrets of PKU: Folling’s Disease
11 Jun 2024
Farmer Jesty: The Unlikely Smallpox Vaccine Pioneer (Part 2)
We pick up the story with Jesty about to head off to London after he was invited by the Original Vaccine Pock Institute - a group opposed to, and probably envious of Jenner’s fame. They wanted to honor Jesty as ”the earliest inoculator of smallpox.”
4 Jun 2024
Farmer Jesty: The Unlikely Smallpox Vaccine Pioneer (Part1)
In the late 1700s, an English farmer had an idea on a safer way to vaccinate his family against smallpox. Outraged villagers drove him out for doing such an unthinkable act. Three decades later, the same idea was introduced by the doctor and gained worldwide fame for the discovery. How will the disgraced farmer try to lay claim to the discovery?
21 May 2024
Back From Apparently Dead!
In 1947, a 14-year-old boy undergoing surgery for a congenital chest deformity went into cardiac arrest. For over an hour, the medical team tried to resuscitate him, including using an experimental contraption to shock the boy’s heart. The event ushered in the use of defibrillators and the concept of CPR.
7 May 2024
New Virus Ebola Ravages Towns in Africa
A store keeper working in a bat-infested cotton factory in Sudan. A school headmaster in Zaire treated for malaria with contaminated needles. Both become sick with fever, headaches, and diarrhea, followed by bleeding and death. Soon scores of people suffer the same fate. Hear the story of when the Ebola virus first struck in 1976, the ensuing hunt for the cause, and the incredible international response to the catastrophe.
24 Apr 2024
Medical Reviewer Shields the U.S. from Thalidomide Catastrophe
The FDA assigned newly recruited Frances Kelsey an easy case to work on. But when she found the data for the new drug application for thalidomide questionable, she refused to approve it, pitting her against a formidable multinational drug company, and saved a nation from an unspeakable tragedy.
9 Apr 2024
Dying Man’s Determined Wife Pressures Docs to Invent a New Pacemaker (Part 2)
Arne Larsson was a Swedish businessman suffering from a severe heart block and was in a terminal state at the Karolinska hospital. Just when all the options seemed exhausted, his wife Else-Marie discovers that animal experiments on a cardiac pacemaker were being conducted at the same hospital. The race was on to convince a surgeon and an engineer to create the device that would save her husband.
(This episode is the second of a 2-part story.)
2 Apr 2024
Dying Man’s Determined Wife Pressures Docs to Invent a New Pacemaker (Part 1)
Arne Larsson was a Swedish businessman suffering from a severe heart block and was in a terminal state at the Karolinska hospital. Just when all the options seemed exhausted, his wife Else-Marie discovers that animal experiments on a cardiac pacemaker were being conducted at the same hospital. The race was on to convince Dr. Ake Senning and Dr. Rune Elmqvist to create and implant the device that would save her husband.
19 Mar 2024
Canadian Boy First Human Saved by Insulin
The rich history behind the discovery of insulin is thoroughly well-known. This episode centers on the first life it saved: a 13-year-old emaciated boy on the brink of death in Canadian hospital ward.
19 Mar 2024
President’s Daughter Endures Mastectomy Without Anesthesia
In an era before anesthesia, antibiotics, or antiseptics, undergoing major surgery for cancer was an excruciating choice. Hear the ordeal of Abigail “Nabby” Adams-Smith, only daughter of President John Adams, as she faced no other options but to “fly to the knife.”
19 Mar 2024
Dr. Alzheimer Discovers a Disease in a Mental Asylum
At the turn of the 20th century in a mental asylum in Frankfurt, Germany, the paths of a 51-year-old deranged woman and a brilliant young psychiatrist named Dr. Alois Alzheimer crossed paths. Hear the story of how one of the most famous but dreaded medical eponyms came to be.
19 Mar 2024
Introducing: MediSagas - tales in medicine
Come listen to captivating narratives on true and often little-known back stories behind medical innovations, mystery illnesses, human “guinea pigs”, and much more. Researched and written by physician-author, Rod Tanchanco, each episode is a thrilling journey into human resilience, inventiveness, and compassion, all told in Tanchanco’s riveting style.
Just dive right in to hear what its all about!
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