No matter how fast medicine moves us towards treatments, preventive medicine will always be the most effective and cheapest way to keep healthy. In this post, we’ll run down some common women’s health screening tests, when you should get them, and what you’re in for when you walk in.

On May 8 and 9, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital operated on Thomas Manning, a 64-year-old bank courier, for 15 hours. The result was the first penis transplant ever performed in the United States.

While sculpture and the study of anatomy have always worked in tandem, models of the human—specifically female—form took a specific turn during the 1800s, when anatomical wax sculptures of women’s bodies became a source of public curiosity and entertainment. A model of this kind was called an “anatomical Venus.”

Oprah Winfrey, queen of Earth, is starring in an HBO movie about Henrietta Lacks, a black woman whose cells were controversially used to make major discoveries in medical research. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks—adapted from Rebecca Skloot’s 2010 New York Times bestseller—will play out from the perspective of…

According to statistics drawn from Oregon—where home birth is popular and birth and death certificates include information about the location of birth and who attended—the infant mortality rate for home births attended by a midwife was seven times that of hospital births, making home birth in America much more…

If your gynecologist has turned down your request for an IUD in the past, it might be time for another try—or another doctor. Older rules said that women who had never given birth shouldn’t get IUDs. That changed years ago, and docs are slowly getting the memo.

If the dogged pace of the modern age has left you weary, anxious, and afflicted by aches and malaise, you may require a more historical diagnosis. We tend to refer to these symptoms collectively as burnout, but the Victorians called it “neurasthenia.”

A nurse who snapped a photo of an unconscious man’s penis has voluntarily surrendered her license. Kristen Johnson, 27, was convicted in November of disseminating “unlawful surveillance photos,” and gave up her license as part of a deal to avoid felony charges.

“It feels like someone came in and confiscated my brain,” Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Yolanda Foster wrote in 2015. For four years, Foster says that she’s suffered from severely debilitating pain and an intense brain fog that’s forced her to “just watch and see life go by without me participating in it.” The…

Earlier this week, the Cleveland Clinic announced that the first uterus transplant performed in the United States was a success. Lindsey, the 26-year-old who had undergone the procedure, said in a news conference that she was looking forward to starting IVF with hopes that she might bring a pregnancy to full term.

Organ transplants between HIV-positive patients will begin as soon as the candidates are available, surgeons at Johns Hopkins Medical Center said.

Malachi Love-Robinson—the 18-year-old Florida man who’s currently facing charges of grand theft larceny, check forgery, and practicing medicine without a license after allegedly misleading patients into thinking he was a qualified medical doctor—is out on bail following his Tuesday arrest and already giving press…

From 2001 to 2013, 1,367 American soldiers suffered some kind of genital injury while deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some time in the next year, one of these men will receive the first penis transplant ever performed in the United States.

If you grew up in the 1990s, you practically absorbed a degree in AIDS studies just by existing—or at least that’s what it felt like. The years since then have brought better tests and treatments, and we now know more about the virus, but that information isn’t common knowledge. HIV and AIDS have fallen off our radar.

“Are you having an ultrasound?” the midwife asked, at my first appointment. I thought there had been a miscommunication: nobody had told me whether I would have one. “Well, it’s up to you,” she said. She could explain the pros and cons, but the decision was mine. Welcome to the midwifery model of care.

What The Fuck Is This? is a column examining terrifying medical instruments throughout history.

Addyi is a new libido-boosting pill for women. According to the manufacturer’s studies, it can restore a healthy sex drive to some (but not all) of the women who take it daily. But the drug is expensive and has scary side effects. So is Addyi worth it?

What The Fuck Is This? is a new column examining terrifying medical instruments throughout history.

What The Fuck Is This? is a new column examining terrifying medical instruments throughout history.