If you’ve ever had a doctor order a blood test for you, chances are that they ran a complete blood count[1], or CBC. One of the most common blood tests[2] in the world, CBC tests are run billions of times each year to diagnose conditions and monitor patients’ health.
But despite the test’s ubiquity, the way clinicians interpret and use it in the clinic is often less precise than ideal. Currently, blood test...
Modern medicine has enabled citizens of wealthy, industrialized nations to forget that children once routinely died in shocking numbers. Teaching 19th-century English literature[1], I regularly encounter gutting depictions of losing a child, and I am reminded that not knowing the emotional cost of widespread child mortality is a luxury.
In the first half of the 19th century, between 40% and 50% of children[2] in the U.S. didn’t...