This is so absolutely cool

The Edwin Smith papyrus is the oldest surviving surgical text. It is part of an online exhibit from the National Library of Medicine called Turning the Pages, which allows the user to turn the pages of the book (or in this case, unroll the scroll), and zoom to read, or click to translate various sections. It requires Adobe Flash Player to work (anything version 6 or better).

Other works available:

Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Liber de Arte Distillandi
Robert Hooke’s Micrographia
Conrad Gesner’s Historiae Animalium
Ambroise Paré’s Oeuvres
Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Johannes de Ketham's Fasiculo de Medicina

Check it out!

One more reason to go vegetarian

or at least lay off red meat...

A 10 year study of more than a half million U.S. men and women associates the frequency adults eat red and processed meats with significant increases in overall death, death from cancer, and cardiovascular disease. The study, which features a cohort of about 322,000 men and 223,000 women (who answered questionnaires about food intake and health for a decade), suggests the consumption of red meat is independently associated with mortality...

For more, listen to the comments by the Director of the National Library of Medicine here.

Now if we could only close the gaps in life-expectancy by race

Gender seems to be doing so.

From the newsfeed for what's new on PubMed:

Life expectancy for Americans surpassed 78 years for the first time in 2006, and life span increases occurred for both men and women, the National Center for Health Statistics recently reported. American women continue to outlive men. The record life expectancy for both white and African-American women was almost 77 and 71 years, respectively. But male life expectancy jumped too (at 76 and 70 years respectively for white and African-Americans)...

You can also listen to the NLM (National Library of Medicine) Director's Comments on the Increase in U.S. Life Expectancy. The transcript is also available.