On March 24, 1882, Robert Koch stood before a scientific audience in Berlin and identified Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This important announcement proved that tuberculosis was caused by a specific bacterium rather than heredity or vague environmental factors: 🧵

There’s no such thing as the history of science (and this is a blog post about it) (inspired by a great 2017 article by Lorraine Daston) williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2026/03/25/t... 🗃️

Just this week, I taught a lecture connecting the variolation practices of folk practitioners in Turkey/India, of enslaved Black people like Onesimus to the observations about what we would later describe as "herd immunity" underlying Jennerian vaccination, which we tend to think of as "scientific"

I've lived in the UK for 24 years and I still crave the onion loaf from Hackney's on Harms in the Chicago suburbs. The Brits simply do not make good onion rings.

Tonight! Join us at the Rochester Academy of Medicine or online! @ayahnerd.bsky.social

TOMORROW! Let's talk about why women's ghost stories can become vital texts, pathways of remembrance and calls to action...

Short video about my new Ghostbusters painting. www.youtube.com/shorts/TQytv... #caricature #art

I was having a piece of cold KFC for lunch (don't judge) when my cat, Bobo, stuck his head in the bucket and ran off with the last piece. I wanted to get a photo because it was so funny but I also wanted to get that chicken away from him before it resulted in us both making bad life choices. 😂

Bad news for all those Tech Bros. "It was once believed that clones were identical to the original, but it has become clear through this study that mutations occur at a rate three times higher than in offspring born through natural mating." shorturl.at/DMQuY

maybe, just maybe, we should wait on the results of these studies BEFORE we tell each other that AI will "revolutionize" medicine/academia/the world. Im not doubting its utility for certain kinds of work, but the fantasies of AI bros are not reason to force ChatGPT subscriptions on all of us

Bad news for all those Tech Bros. "It was once believed that clones were identical to the original, but it has become clear through this study that mutations occur at a rate three times higher than in offspring born through natural mating." shorturl.at/DMQuY

"eugenics and scientific or medical racism etc wasn't real science™" Be for real, come on. Science has always been part of heinous things, was implicated in and facilitated colonization, slavery, the Holocaust more. All of this IS part of the story of science. WHY are you sanitizing this?

Is your reading boring you? Just turn your book’s sewing cords into a face! In a medical work by Julien le Paulmier, printed at Paris in 1578, and in 1582 bought by Henry Bust (a fellow of Magdalen College Oxford) from the Oxford bookseller Richard Garbrand. Now @theulspeccoll.bsky.social K.14.48.

A vital insight has been revealed. www.sciencealert.com/world-tb-day...

#WorldTuberculosisDay #TheVictorianBookoftheDead A giant spider, representing tuberculosis, gathers TB sufferers in its web. Lithograph by Basilio Cascella, c. 1920 wellcomecollection.org/works/z78wstfz "Italians, help the Red Cross in assisting tuberculosis patients."

It was @oispooky.bsky.social's research that led to #AThousandBlows being made. Without her work, this show could never have been imagined. Sarah has a book coming out next year on Victorian boxers, and I'm so excited for it! Do follow her for fascinating insights into this Victorian underworld.

📣 🎉Today is the official release day of my book, even tho many of you have it in hand already. 🙏 to all who purchased. Availability: Amazon has the paper w/ discount, Bookshop/OUP on back order. Should be an e-version that is missing. I will check w/ my press. More: www.annaolaw.com/book-migrati...

I’m not a dietitian, but if you eat pizza right at midnight your body doesn’t know if the calories go towards yesterday or today so they don’t count.

This is a great list of techniques for getting real information out of a Google search and avoiding AI slop and paid results. (One thing not included is that if you add "-ai" to a search, you block the AI summary) cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has...

Deformities (Real or Imaginary) Series 14: 𝐈𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐚, 𝟏𝟔𝟔𝟗 drawing by Ignazio Fabroni, MS Rossi Cassigoli 199, f. 30r, Florence National Library, Florence. #CSMBR #MedicalHistory #Hernia #Fabroni #Workrelatedillness

1930 March 23: Russian surgeon Sergei Yudin performed the first transfusion of cadaver blood into a human bit.ly/1aK9f10 Painting by Mikhail Nesterov (1933) #histmed #medicalhistory #bloodtransfusion

So very happy to be able to announce this. Book now available direct from Barnthorn and Amazon. Signed copies available direct from me if you are mad enough to want one. Big thanks to @luketurner.bsky.social and @drlindseyfitz.bsky.social who were a huge help in getting me to the publication stage.

Another "elephant" of the past, this time from Johann Hartlieb’s Kräuterbuch (Book of Herbs), dating from the middle of the 15th century. #skystorians

It is being reported on the ground in Cuba that everyone on a ventilator at this hospital died overnight. As a Cuban, I'm devastated.

When you interpret things literally.

Quick Notting Hill studies, for a painting. #caricature #art

We’re saying it was science because Science has ALWAYS been capable of horrendous things and implicated in slavery, colonialism, the Holocaust. Not because we believe that racism, ableism etc are scientifically ‘valid’ or ‘defensible’ Begging you to think beyond memes.

I describe it as such as a historian of disability because I want to remind scientists and the world that the history of science IS the history of eugenics, scientific racism and medical racism, and more. I’m not comforting them with the idea that it was a ‘pseudoscience.’ This is your history.

What an absolute BLAST of book this is! Pure joy from start to finish. The sheer exuberance of these rollicking, riotous, fabulous pages. Francis Spufford is a storytelling genius. Thank you for giving me so much fun. Read this book, everyone - make your life sing!

Disembodied footsteps, a phantom black dog with a serious attitude problem, and the Dun Cow in the courtyard - all to be found at the end of a ley line. My post for the Our Warwickshire blog on the folklore of Warwick Castle👇 www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/arti...

My husband @tealcartoons.bsky.social is crazy talented. If you need a bit of a distraction from the AI slop dominating the internet these days, do check out his human-made caricatures!

My book is about the Scottish surgeon, Joseph Bell, who taught Arthur Conan Doyle and inspired the creation of Sherlock Holmes. It's got a little bit of everything: Jack the Ripper, Victorian forensics, and even a ballistics expert named Dr Watson. I'll be doing a cover reveal in the coming weeks!

Just got page layouts back for my upcoming book, SLEUTH-HOUND: THE CASE OF THE REAL SHERLOCK HOLMES. Interestingly, my US publisher has added this cautionary note at the beginning re: AI. This has never appeared in my previous books. Good to see it, though one wonders how effective it will be.

Just pre-ordered via @bookshop.org — looks fantastic. bookshop.org/p/books/sleu...

For #Caturday: a poignant photo by Paul Koudounaris of a beloved pet's tombstone. Despite popular belief, the cat's name was not Dewey. This was the surname of the cat's family. "'He was only a cat,' but he was human enough to be a great comfort in hours of loneliness and pain."

Just got page layouts back for my upcoming book, SLEUTH-HOUND: THE CASE OF THE REAL SHERLOCK HOLMES. Interestingly, my US publisher has added this cautionary note at the beginning re: AI. This has never appeared in my previous books. Good to see it, though one wonders how effective it will be.

My husband @tealcartoons.bsky.social is crazy talented. If you need a bit of a distraction from the AI slop dominating the internet these days, do check out his human-made caricatures!

For #Caturday: a poignant photo by Paul Koudounaris of a beloved pet's tombstone. Despite popular belief, the cat's name was not Dewey. This was the surname of the cat's family. "'He was only a cat,' but he was human enough to be a great comfort in hours of loneliness and pain."

Well, many thanks if you took part in my straw poll earlier. The results are in, and A Fish Called Wanda won the day. So, I started some very rough studies. Do we like grumpy Michael Palin, or happy Michael Palin . . ? #caricature #art

#OnThisDay in 1834 Arthur Orton was born in Wapping to Mary Kent (c.1775-1849) and her butcher husband George Orton (c.1759-1844). He followed his father's trade in Australia before claiming to be Sir Roger Tichborne in two UK court cases in the early 1870s. #BornOnThisDay #OTD #CM150

Today, tech billionaires who are ignorant, evil, or both are trying to change how we understand what it means to be human: what we are able to do with our minds, what we want to do, why we bother living at all. Don't let them monstrify you. From HUMANS: A Monstrous History: 7/7

William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament transformed the English language, but the text itself was almost erased. 🔒 James G. Clark’s new feature is now in the archive www.historytoday.com/archive/feat...

A CHAMPION KILLED BY A RAT. In April 1892 The Sportsman reported on the February death of a New Zealand amateur boxer, Dick Sandal, who was chasing a rat when it turned and leapt at him, biting him on the cheek. In a comparatively short space of time, Dick breathed his last. 🐀🥊

STRAW POLL . . . I'm working on a series of comedian/comedy actor caricatures for a solo gallery exhibition. For one piece, I'm vacillating between painting the four main characters from Fawlty Towers, and the four main characters from A Fish Called Wanda. Which should I do . . ? Thank you!

Isn’t the world bad enough? 🤢

Make no mistake, they are coming for contraception. They can't restrict it through the courts (yet), so they'll do it through administrative fuckery. Millions set to lose access to STI screenings and contraception as Title X funding falls through: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Shout out to everyone else who’s utterly knackered and grumpy today.

New video, about my progress in turning Stephen Fry into a decorative household item: www.youtube.com/shorts/cSAUU... #caricature #art