HeyJaredMagic Silver Bullet
Everyone wants the perfect cure. Stories from medicine, art, culture and history about our obsession. Posts about every other week.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 5
- Latest publication
- Sep 22, 2026
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- Jul 7, 2026
Latest issues
Whose Pain Is Acceptable? (opens the original)
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We all want to numb pain. But we can’t erase centuries of debate about who is entitled to pain relief and who makes that decision.We’re getting better at treating pain, but I don’t think we’re getting better at treating it equitably. I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been reading up on 10th century headache treatments. Surprise, surprise! One of my favorite kinds of topics for this ‘stack.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Y1iN!,f_
Organotherapy: The 1880s Answer to "Low T" (opens the original)
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More than 100 years before Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ever contemplated testosterone screening for soldiers—about which the Washington Post pointed out that:“…current medical guidelines generally recommend against blanket testing of testosterone levels…”—French physiologist Charles Brown-Sequard was contemplating a testosterone experiment of his own. <
Kratom worked, then betrayed him (opens the original)
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A dear friend, whom I’ll call R., was addicted to a drug called kratom. He’s now in recovery. I think he’d agree it’s day by day, as is most early recovery. He’s also in recovery from alcohol use disorder. He’s done a lot of work to get emotionally and physically healthy. But it’s been a bumpy road. R. agreed to let me help him tell his story in order to show why this particular drug is so alluring, how it seemed like a good answer to his problems in the beginning, and when he knew it wasn’t wor
On relentlessness (opens the original)
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My mother took me to see the musical Suffs. I’ve been studying women’s suffrage for a little while now for a project I’m working on. But so much of it was new to my mother. “Why didn’t I learn any of this in school?” she asked. <div c
What's Your Talisman? (opens the original)
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I spent some time in Türkiye, where a friend explained the evil eye. You carry it in your wallet, for example, he said. If it breaks, that means it protected you. Mothers hide an evil eye in their babies’ cribs. Taxi drivers dangle them from rear view mirrors. Evil eyes see the danger before you do.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1652536162009-d23c63281daa?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwxMHx8ZXZpbCUyMGV
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