Ménière's disease was first identified in 1861

Ménière's disease is a long-term, inner ear disorder that causes vertigo

This severe vertigo-causing disorder may involve long and recurrent episodes of vertigo. Symptoms of this disease include balance issues and hearing loss, tinnitus, and a feeling of fullness in the ear. It typically affects only one ear and is linked to a buildup of excess fluid in the inner ear.

There's no cure for Ménière's disease, only medications to reduce frequency of attacks

Ménière's disease is an inner ear problem that can cause vertigo and hearing loss. Most of the time, Ménière's disease affects only one ear.

Historians theorize Vincent Van Gogh suffered from Ménière's disease or epilepsy

A century after researchers suggested he suffered from epilepsy, some researchers in the 1990s began to support an alternate diagnosis: Ménière's disease, since he had suffered from severe, repeated attacks of disabling vertigo. Still, some researchers remain skeptical of the Ménière's diagnosis. One posits that Van Gogh had temporal epilepsy complicated by his absinthe consumption.

Read Charles Darwin's description of his tinnitus suffering

When he was 57 years old, Darwin wrote to a new doctor about his suffering from a variety of maladies, including "singing of ears", vomiting, recurring flatulence, vomiting, and more. He noted how he believed his stress contributed to these symptoms.

Exactly who coined the term 'swimmer's ear' remains unknown

There is no record of anyone being the first person to call otitis externa by its most commonly known name, swimmer's ear. The earliest known use of the term was in a 1917 news article, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The article in Connecticut's The Day stated that the illness was appearing among swimmers and bathers that summer.

Age-related hearing loss, known as presbycusis, is a top cause of hearing loss

This video walks through the biology of why presbycusis (prez-buh-kyoo-sis) occurs and its etiology. This type of hearing loss is gradual and typically starts with reductions in the ability to hear high-pitched sounds.

A French Army surgeon discovered that malaria is a parasitic disease in 1880—but scientists were initially skeptical

Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran won the Nobel Prize for his work "on the role played by protozoa" in causing diseases. His work included discovering and reporting the malaria-causing parasite in the blood of a patient suffering from malaria.

Misophonia is a neurological disorder where sounds trigger strong emotions

The phenomenon is characterized by decreased tolerance to specific sounds, such as heavy breathing, pen clicking, and water dripping, which trigger a fight-or-flight response. The resulting emotions, which can range from irritation and disgust to anxiety and fear, can be overwhelming and uncontrollable.

MS disproportionately sickens women, but men tend to have worse outcomes

Though the disease is more common in women, men's symptoms progress more quickly, with men more often diagnosed with progressive MS and men's cases typically resulting in more severe symptoms—perhaps due at least partly to more delayed diagnosis—and more severe disability over time.

Neanderthals commonly had surfer's ear, a potential sign of extensive seafood collection

Analysis from 2019 found that about half of the 23 Neanderthal skulls scientists examined seemed to have the bony growths in the inner ear, signifying they had surfer's ear. Those growths suggest our ancient relatives, dating back to between perhaps 100,000 and 40,000 years ago, were potentially hunting fish, mollusks, or other marine resources in chilly waters.

The first identification of Alzheimer's was made in 1906

The first case of Alzheimer's disease dates to the early 20th century when Dr. Alois Alzheimer had 51-year-old Auguste Deter as a patient. Deter struggled with sudden memory issues and aggressive, irrational behavior. After Deter's death, Alzheimer examined her brain and found strange collections of molecular pileups.

Synesthesia: when sensation in one sense triggers an unrelated sense in the brain

The first reported clinical case of synesthesia dates back to the early 1800s, though the perceptual phenomenon may be much older than surviving records imply. This article by researcher Richard Cytowic details the scientific history of synesthesia, a neurological trait that causes some senses to overlap, giving color to numbers and flavors to names.

As deposits build up under the eye, the retina bends with macular degeneration

The retina bends due to the accumulation of proteins and other materials beneath it. That's considered the milder "dry" form of macular degeneration. Another form, called "wet" macular degeneration, is caused by abnormal blood vessels leaking fluid into the eye, which can rapidly affect central vision.

What to know about early and premature menopause

Although it's rare, some women may experience menopause early. Early menopause describes women that are menopausal between the ages of 40 and 45. Women that go through menopause before age 40 experience premature menopause. Early experiences of menopause impact under 6% of women, and doctors can’t point to a specific reason why it happens. Learn about what we do know about the conditions here.

Repeated head injuries can lead to CTE and early dementia

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated trauma to the head. The condition has become a particular concern in sports like football and soccer, from youth to professional leagues, where repeated low-level concussive events are likely.

Migrane 101: data, symptoms, and treatments

Living with migraine, however often the neurological condition attacks, is a journey fraught with pain and isolation. This migraine guide offers insight into the condition, common triggers, possible treatments, personal stories, and tips for managing life with migraine.

Lupus, an autoimmune disease with varied symptoms, was named for wolf bite-like lesions

The 13th-century physician behind the name (lupus is Latin for wolf) named it after a patient he saw who had facial lesions that looked to him like a wolf's bite. Other common symptoms of the disease include extreme fatigue, painful and swollen joints, fevers, and light sensitivity.

What is space sickness?

Mix motion sickness minus gravity with a host of other variables, and you’ve got a recipe for space adaptation syndrome. It can hit anyone, even astronauts who escaped the issue previously. This article details the history and science behind space sickness.

Rodent evidence is mounting that dysfunctional mitochondria may be a cause of Parkinson's

Though researchers have long observed mitochondrial malfunction in Parkinson's patients, it has remained unclear whether faulty mitochondria cause the disease or are casualties of it. Rodent research published in 2025 adds further weight to the idea that it's causative.

HFMD was first reported in 1957 in New Zealand

The first clinical report involved eight kids with the characteristic sores in New Zealand, and then in the years that followed there were dozens more cases there and also reports of outbreaks in England and Scotland, among other settings, including the US.

Chronobiologists study the effect of time on biological cycles

Circadian rhythms were first observed in the 1700s, when French astronomer Jean-Jacques D'Ortous de Mairan put a plant in a dark room and watched it still respond to day and night cycles, setting off further studies about specific light-dark biological cycles, an area of inquiry that continues today with the human "clock proteins" at the molecular level.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

In 2011, a mysterious illness spread around LeRoy, New York

A handful of girls were stricken with bizarre twitches, tics, and spasms — all apparently involuntary. Some believed the incident to be conversion disorder, an illness where emotional troubles have physical symptoms.

Measles evolved from an ancient cattle disease as early as 3,000 years ago

Genetic analysis suggests that the closest modern relative of measles is a livestock virus known as rinderpest, with the viral strains diverging between 2,000 and 3,000 years ago. The timing coincided with the rise of major cities above 250,000 people, offering a novel transmission route for the newly mutated measles virus.

'Mental hygiene' was the 1843 term for mental health

It was coined by American psychiatrist William Sweetzer to reference the same idea as personal hygiene. Mental hygiene, in Sweetzer's view, needed to be maintained in the same way people attend to their personal cleanliness, an idea that was supplanted by better understanding of the complexities of mental health disorder causes in the decades that followed.

Electromagnetic induction creates electricity from a changing magnetic field

The phenomenon was discovered in 1831 by Michael Faraday when an electric current was induced in a wire wrapped around an iron ring after a second wrapped wire not connected to the first was connected or disconnected from a battery.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

Fear or disgust related to clusters of holes and cracks, called trypophobia, may stem from evolutionary processes to help us avoid pathogens.

Larger animals like giraffes, elephants, and blue whales have developed a unique defense against cancer, a phenomenon known as Peto's Paradox

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.