About Medical Archaeology

We dig up dead medicine so it stops burying you.

Every generation is sure the last one was mad. And every generation is right.

For centuries, the smartest people in the room have been prescribing things that would horrify a modern coroner — bleeding kings to death for fevers, feeding infants morphine syrup, selling radioactive tonics as pep drinks, endorsing cigarettes as a throat remedy. Not out of malice. Out of confidence.

Medical Archaeology exists because most of what we still repeat about our health was written by people like that. Some of it survived because it works. Most of it survived because it rhymed.

What we do

We take the "wisdom" you were raised on — the folk remedies, the diet rules, the doctor-approved fads of every decade you've lived through — and drag each one into the light of modern evidence.

Some of it holds up. A surprising amount doesn't.

We also do the reverse. When something ancient turns out to be quietly correct — when a peasant instinct or a monastic habit lines up with a modern clinical trial — we say so, plainly, and we tell you how to actually use it.

No supplements to buy. No affiliate deals. No thirty-second miracle cures. Just the receipts.

Who this is for

You.

You've been handed a lot of contradictory health advice in your life. Butter was killer, then hero. Fat was the enemy, until sugar was. Your doctor sold you cigarettes on television, then told you to jog until your knees gave out. You were told to take a baby aspirin every morning, and now your cardiologist is walking it back.

If you're tired of the whiplash — and tired of the wellness industry now flooding your feed with "ancient cures" that would have embarrassed a medieval barber — this is your newsletter.

Who we are

Three friends who met in high school and never quite stopped arguing about things.

Amanda is a narrative journalist. She's the voice you'll hear in each letter — the one who takes the archives and the lab reports and stitches them into a story worth reading.

Matthew is a historian. He explains why the physicians of 1665 and the ad men of 1955 weren't stupid — they were working with the information they had. Context isn't an excuse for the past. It's what helps us catch the next mistake before it becomes ours.

Logan is a medical doctor. He reads the clinical trials so you don't have to. If a claim can't survive a peer-reviewed paper, it doesn't survive Logan.

A few years ago, one of our high school teachers — a woman who taught the three of us and shaped us more than she'll ever admit — ended up in a hospital bed. She'd been following an "ancient remedy" she found online. She'd trusted the wrong voice. By the time she called anyone, she was in critical condition.

She survived. Barely.

That was our breaking point. The people most exposed to dangerous health advice online today are the same people who lived through a century of loud, confident, sometimes lethal expert opinion. You were trained your whole life to trust the confident voice. And the confident voice, right now, has almost no accountability at all.

We started Medical Archaeology for her. And for you.

What to expect

Every letter is a historical investigation. We open with a scene — a real person, a real date, a real ruined life or lucky escape. We trace how the mistake began, how it spread, and what the best evidence says about it now. We close with one grounded, science-backed habit you can actually use.

That's the whole deal.

Welcome to Medical Archaeology. Bring your skepticism.

We brought ours.

— Amanda, Logan, Matthew