“The gun debate would change in an instant if Americans witnessed the horrors that trauma surgeons confront everyday.”

What the sensation of uncontrollable itch and the phantom limbs of amputees can tell us about how the brain works.

On the shared life of Tatiana and Krista Hogan:

The girls’ doctors believe it is entirely possible that the sensory input that one girl receives could somehow cross that bridge into the brain of the other. One girl drinks, another girl feels it.

On medical acting and real pain.

Why doctors hate their computers.

Daniel Kish is entirely sightless. So how can he ride a bike on busy streets? Go hiking for days alone? By using a technique borrowed from bats.

How Viagra went from a medical mistake to a $3 billion industry.

At 18, Katie Stubblefield lost her face. At 21, she became the youngest person in the U.S. to undergo the still experimental procedure to get a new one.

Each year, about 50,000 women are severely injured giving birth. Half of these injuries could be reduced or eliminated with better care.

An essay about the weeks after the author’s brother nearly died.

A healthcare nightmare.

First came seizures. Then he began forgetting words. By age four he could barely walk. The story of the race to save a child from a genetic death sentence.

On the centuries-long search for the perfect hangover remedy.

Inside the empire of Botox.

Not long ago the idea of repairing the brain’s wiring to fight addiction would have seemed far-fetched. But advances in neuroscience have upended conventional notions about addiction—what it is, what can trigger it, and why quitting is so tough.

On the fallibility of memory.

In 1937, Harvard researchers began following the lives of 268 students. Year after year, the men were interviewed and given medical and psychological exams. The goal? Find a formula for happiness.

The life and work of a Manhattan psychoanalyst.

For insect detectives, the trickiest cases involve the bugs that aren’t really there.

“It is a beautiful hand: strong, with long, slender fingers and smooth skin, its nails ridgeless and pink. If you didn’t know Jonathan Koch—if you first met him, say, on the courts at the Calabasas Tennis & Swim Club—you might not suspect that his hand previously belonged to someone else.”

On the underground doctors unleashing the healing powers of hallucinogens.

Around 60 people in the world share a condition called “highly superior autobiographical memory.” They remember absolutely everything.

We devote vast resources to intensive, one-off procedures, while starving the kind of steady, intimate care that often helps people more.

Henry Heimlich saved untold choking victimes when he invented his maneuver in 1974. Since then, he’s searched in vain for another miracle treatment—pushing ethical boundaries along the way. Now at the end of his career, Heimlich has hired an investigator to find an anonymous critic working full-time to destroy his legacy.