In the summer of 1950 fear gripped the residents of Wytheville, Virginia. Movie theaters shut down, baseball games were cancelled and panicky parents kept their children indoors — anything to keep them safe from an invisible invader. Outsiders sped through town with their windows rolled up and bandanas covering their faces. The ones who couldn't escape the perpetrator were left paralyzed, and some died in the wake of the devastating and contagious virus. Polio had struck in Wytheville. The town was in the midst of a full-blown epidemic. That year alone, more than 33,000 Americans fell victim — half of them under the age of ten.
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Delve into the digestive system with this lighthearted and informative documentary that demystifies the role gut health plays in our overall well-being.
2024 • Health
We’re still only at the dawn of learning how to use drugs properly – knowing what drugs we need and when we should take them. We look forward to a brighter future for drug use.
The School of Life • 2016 • Health
Through the lens of a boxer, a first responder, a cell tower climber and a man with a bionic limb, go deep into the universe of the most powerful machine on earth: the human brain and the vast nervous system it controls.
S1E6 • Human: The World Within • 2021 • Health
Two procedures so formidable, they would not have been attempted even a few years ago. Surgical teams at the Queen Elizabeth are constantly pushing the limits of what is possible. But despite state-of-the-art diagnostic scanning, sometimes cancer surgeons don't know exactly what they are up against until they open the patient up on the operating table. Even with the most meticulous planning, sometimes they must resort to taking critical decisions live in the theatre. 74-year-old Jasmine Harkness has been referred to the specialist sarcoma unit with a vast tumour in her abdomen, weighing more than three stone - a third of her total body weight. It is consuming her, displacing organs including her stomach and liver. Unless it can be removed, she has just four weeks to live. Sarcoma specialists Sam Ford and Professor David Gourevitch can't be sure whether they will be able to save Jasmine until they open her up and inspect her anatomy. Such is the risk of this surgery - five years ago they would not have embarked on this intervention. Sue Sinclair, lead anaesthetist and matriarch of theatre, keeps the others in check - working alongside them as they battle to detach the tumour from Jasmine's organs and blood vessels, and remove it intact. Whenever it presses heavily on vital blood vessels, Jasmine's blood pressure plummets, placing her life in grave danger. It will take unwavering focus to keep her alive. The tumour has grown so invasively that it has crushed and displaced Jasmine's internal organs. Sam and David have a puzzle on their hands to identify what and where everything is. At times, dark humour is the only way to release the tension as they grapple with blood, guts and mind-boggling complexity.
S1E2 • Surgeons: At the Edge of Life • 2018 • Health
November 22, 1963. The entire world is in shock. President Kennedy has just been assassinated during a trip to Dallas. Even Khrushchev himself seems touched by the tragic news. In a surprising coincidence, South Vietnamese president Diem was assassinated twenty days earlier, in a coup organized by his generals... The players are changing, but the Vietnam war drags on. America's new President Johnson sinks his country further into the quagmire of war. Close to three million young Americans discover Hell - the jungle, the unbearable heat, and the Viet Cong, with its tunnels and traps. For the first time, television plays a special role in the war. In 1968, the images of the terrible "Tet Offensive" revealed to the population the fiasco which took place in Vietnam: the massacres, the abuses of American soldiers and the obvious rout of their army. Soon the United States has no choice but to recall its troops; a victory for the communist world... But the USSR emerges from it ruined. Weakened by its various campaigns around the world, it will not experience the same success in Afghanistan. Soon, the "satellite" republics will resume their rights, overthrowing in turn the regimes imposed by Moscow. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Empire collapses... The red flag with the gold star dismounted from the roofs of the Kremlin. This is the end of the cold war. The war of the worlds ends.
S1E6 • Apocalypse: War of Worlds 1945-1991 • 2019 • Health