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It was a routine annual physical, and everything checked out fine. Blood pressure normal, electrocardiogram normal, weight good, no particular complaints--except one. The patient, 65-year-old Sylvia Zeidner of Potomac, Md., [...]

Kathleen Bedford had her 15 minutes of fame in a hospital lecture room full of medical students when she was 65. Because there are only about two cases of tetanus [...]

Though men don't escape urinary tract infections - especially as they age and their prostates cause problems - women get the lion's share of UTIs, about 25 times more often [...]

Though flu is expected to make its usual rounds this winter, many Americans won't have to suffer its high fever, characteristic cough, and possibly serious complications. A safe, effective vaccine [...]

At the time, the president's personal physicians believed it was necessary to keep from the public the truth about his health. With the second World War and yet won, they [...]

Before the introduction of iodized salt in 1922, in certain areas of Switzerland almost every school child had a greatly enlarged thyroid gland, or goiter. Up to 30 percent of [...]

Just before Christmas in 1964, officials of the Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas stood at the entrance awaiting the arrival of famous visitors: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. But [...]

In the late 1980s, a number of people appeared on TV shows to talk about a condition that had nearly wrecked their lives: obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). They wanted to tell [...]

Walter is approaching 80, but his smooth, unlined face looks years younger. When he sits quietly in his chair, no one can tell he has Parkinson's disease. He has never [...]

Though Emily (not her real name) was nearly 10 when she contracted polio, she has almost no memory of her illness, nor does she want to recall it. Her mother [...]

A general practitioner, now retired, recalls his early experiences as an intern in a Washington, D.C., hospital after World War II: 'At that time, all the interns had to do [...]

Each year between March 1951 and March 1962, the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in New South Wales, Australia, admitted one or two children in such a critical state that [...]

As a child, author John Updike, like many other children, had the snuffles in the winter and hay fever in warm weather. It wasn't until years later as an adult, [...]

Contact Dermatitis: Solutions to Rash Mysteries When it comes to solving mysteries, a super sleuth like Sherlock Holmes has nothing on a good dermatologist. Consider the case of the woman [...]

During his years in Africa, the renowned British physician Denis Burkitt wondered why he encountered so few cases of varicose veins among his native patients. Being a curious fellow, he [...]

The woman knew she was going to be fired from her job. Since her 20s, this insurance firm middle manager has suffered from interstitial cystitis (IC), an inflammatory disease of [...]

In Italy, shingles also is called St. Anthony's fire, a fitting name for a disease that has bedeviled saints and sinners throughout the ages. Caused by the same varicella-zoster virus [...]

Sophia Loren once confessed to an interviewer that she had always loved pasta and ate it 'by the ton.' Most women would eat tons, too, if they could end up [...]

Many overweight people lose and gain hundreds of pounds throughout their lifetimes and never get down anywhere near their ideal weight. Doctors say this continual roller coaster ride of gaining [...]

Hypoglycemia may sound like a difficult word, but its meaning should be apparent to persons with a knowledge of medical terminology. The word parts, all derived from ancient Greek, are [...]

Taming Tourette's Tics & Twitches Poor Danny. In the doghouse again. Teacher sent him out of the room because he's disrupted his second-grade class just once too often this morning. [...]

Balloons to Bypass Bypass Surgery Percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty. Quite a mouthful to say and practically impossible to remember. A more common name for the procedure, balloon angioplasty, is not [...]

TRAVELERS' ADVISORY: Malaria Still Threatens Much of Globe Malaria doesn't make the kind ofheadlines that AIDS does, but the disease is a far greater problem throughout the world today. It [...]

Stomach 'Bubble': Diet Device Not Without Risks Inspiration for inventions come from the oddest souces. The family cat, for instance. Who would believe that a medical device for weight loss [...]

Beyond Yogurt: Milking the Public's Taste For Exotic Health Foods It's time to tell the truth about yogurt. Forget those old TV commercials showing yogurt-eating centenarians capering about like young [...]

A Primer on High Blood Pressure Back in 1969 a group of volunteers permitted themselves to be fitted with a device that recorded their blood pressure at five-minute intervals as [...]

Stroke Fighting Back Against America's No. 3 Killer Try discussing the subject of stroke with someone who's middle-aged, and the reaction is usually immediate. 'If I have to have a [...]

Bodily Harm: The Health Effects of Excessive Drinking Dylan Thomas didn't make his own exit in quite that way. Mind numbed by drugs given to relieve his DTs, the poet [...]

Syphilis and Gonorrhea: Old-Fashioned VD Still Flourishing After penicillin was discovered in 1943, it was soon found to be effective against the age-old veneral diseases, syphilis and gonorrhea. Doctors were [...]

IN CAMPS & ON CAMPUSES, 'MONO' IS STILL PART OF THE SCENE 'I remember coming down with something really strange. I don't usually like to give in to illness, but [...]

In TV sitcoms, when a pregnant woman has a sudden yen for pickles and sends her husband out for some in the middle of the night, it's a cue for [...]

Proudly displayed in the curio cabinet in days gone by, in the place of honor beside the bronzed baby shoes, sat a keepsake of another kind--a small amber glass jar [...]

Credit the Japanese with incredible foresight. Almost 900 years ago they developed a preserved fish product destined to be the basis for a 1980s' food sensation. Little did those 12th [...]

For sheer discomfort, it's hard to beat a full-blown urinary infection. This unwelcome visitor often comes after a day in which a woman--it's usually a woman--has not felt quite well. [...]

A few years ago, Tuskegee Institute--the peanut's alma mater--celebrated its centennial. On that occasion, William F. Buckley Jr. composed a paean to peanut butter. Describing his lifelong addiction to the [...]

A legend about corn is that it makes a faint, crackling noise as it grows. To test this belief, firmly held by some old-time corn farmers, a group of plant [...]

An 86-year-old man sails through gallbladder surgery like a champ, only to die a week later of a blood clot in the lung. After completing long airplane flights in cramped [...]

Drugs and Pregnancy: Often the Two Don't Mix One of the speakers at the conference was a young Canadian scientist who had first-hand knowledge of the effects of the drug. [...]

BACK TALK: Advice for Suffering Spines 'Some days,' says Linda, 'my back hurts so much that I can't stand to have clothes touching me.' If misery loves company, Linda's got [...]

You can say that again, Dr. S. Women are burdened by their sex in ways that men can never completely comprehend. The battle lines in the war between the sexes [...]