How our diet changed our evolution

Dealing with paediatric cholesteatoma: how we changed our management

We reviewed our series of surgeries for paediatric cholesteatoma to assess outcomes and functional results considering the extension of disease and surgical techniques. Between January 2003 and December 2009, 36 patients (range 6-14 years) were operated on for cholesteatoma. We considered the sites involved by the cholesteatoma (mastoid, antrum, attic, middle ear, Eustachian tube), surgical tec...

Twelve Diseases That Changed Our World

Twelve Diseases That Changed Our World offers engaging observations on a dozen diseases to serve 2 goals. The opening chapters meet the title’s promise by tracing the impact of hereditary blood disorders porphyria and hemophilia on the succession of European monarchs in the 16th through 18th centuries. Also presented is a riveting account of the consequences of a potato blight in 1840s Ireland,...

A Patient That Changed Our Practice

Color Vision: How Our Eyes Reflect Primate Evolution

To our eyes, the world is arrayed in a seemingly infinite splendor of hues, from the sunny orange of a marigold flower to the gunmetal gray of an automobile chassis, from the buoyant blue of a midwinter sky to the sparkling green of an emerald. It is remarkable, then, that for most human beings any color can be reproduced by mixing together just three fixed wavelengths of light at certain inten...

How Bacteria in Our Bodies Protect Our Health

Biologists once thought that human beings were physiological islands, entirely capable of regulating their own internal workings. Our bodies made all the enzymes needed for breaking down food and using its nutrients to power and repair our tissues and organs. Signals from our own tissues dictated body states such as hunger or satiety. The specialized cells of our immune system taught themselves...