The torso discovered on the bank of a pond just outside of Philadelphia was headless and limbless. The head had been severed at the fourth vertebra, one arm had been chopped off at the joint, the other cut crudely through the shoulder; the midsection had been sawed midway so that...

In the past newspapers, pamphlets and broadsides have been underused sources for research in medical history. Digital access has made these materials much easier to find and use. This piece examines three significant documents and explains their value to the history of anesthesia: an 1800 newspaper article found in Early...

There is little about the life of Jackie Robinson that historians do not know. Each part of his saga has been analyzed time and again. Among the periods sometimes given short shrift, however, is the time between the seminal event of his signing with the Montreal Royals, AAA farm team...

The Johannesburg-based Rand Daily Mail’s September 15, 1977, edition contains a striking amalgamation of headlines on page 2: “Kruger Lays Down His Own Condition,” outlining South African Minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger’s attempt to convince anti-apartheid activists that white South Africans deserved most credit for the country’s economic and political...

Ralph Keeler is the most extraordinary American that you’ve never heard of—a performer, traveler and writer who blazed a trail through the heart of literary scene on both sides of the continent in the decade after the Civil War. His astonishing adventures—and, particularly, his equally enigmatic end—can be traced through...