Historical Nonfiction Author
Historical Nonfiction Author
Behind the scenes of historical research, archival finds, and commentary from Andy McPhee on air pollution, anatomy, medical history, and the writing life.
Latest
July 1, 2025
We know a lot about the effects of industrial smoke on health, but not much on wildfire smoke. Here's why wildfires can be so fatal, even years later.
October 4, 2022
A 40-year-old man was taken to Saint Steevens's Hospital today after being thrown by a horse and, upon landing, hitting his head on a wall 18 days ago. Dr. Samuel
August 6, 2022
The early years of the nation’s first medical school did not go smoothly. Not at all. The medical school, now the Perelman School of Medicine, was founded under the auspices
June 19, 2022
He was either a traitorous villain or a martyr for the cause, depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon line your ancestors lived. It was 1860, and a man named
May 2, 2022
Hanging in a prominent position in the Winterthur Museum in Pennsbury Township, Delaware, is a painting one might think shouldn’t be there at all. It might, to the casual visitor,
April 9, 2022
DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE WEAK OF HEART! Otherwise, have at it. It's a story about body snatching. Cooool.
April 6, 2022
St. George’s Hospital stood stately and regal in a corner of London’s Hyde Park, its raised colonnaded entrance beckoning visitors inside its healing walls. Now a posh hotel called The
March 11, 2022
You can kind of — kind of — blame the craft of body snatching on King James IV of Scotland. King James IV James was the son of King James
January 31, 2022
Ah, the contemptible Mr. Hicks. Little is known about John Hicks, the perpetrator of the act that led to the Doctor’s Riot of 1788. Hicks is said to have looked
January 27, 2022
Donora’s heroic physicians during the smog of 1948 learned their trade long after medical education had recovered from the destructive effects of the so-called “Doctor’s Riot of 1788.” The event
January 10, 2022
If you’ve read anything about the Donora smog of 1948, you’ve probably read about how the town’s doctor’s traveled on foot or by car around Donora and Webster during the
