https://thebrokenface.com/Medicine's darkest chapters. Then vs Now.en https://thebrokenface.com/episodes/anna-coleman-ladd-copper-faces-ww1/https://thebrokenface.com/episodes/anna-coleman-ladd-copper-faces-ww1/ Sun, 08 Nov 2026 17:15:00 -0500In 1918 in Paris, American sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd made copper masks for soldiers whose faces had been destroyed in the First World War: a plaster cast, a clay face, then a copper shell grown in an electric bath and painted by hand while the soldier wore it. https://thebrokenface.com/episodes/guilty-by-a-bite-teeth-that-testified/https://thebrokenface.com/episodes/guilty-by-a-bite-teeth-that-testified/ Wed, 04 Nov 2026 12:00:00 -0500In 1776, a silversmith named Paul Revere identified a fallen friend by the false tooth he had wired into his mouth. Teeth went on to name a murder victim in 1849 Boston and the dead of a Paris fire in 1897 — then courts asked them to do something much harder: name the person who left a bite. From a bitten block of cheese in 1954 Texas to the trial of Ted Bundy, men convicted with bite-mark testimony and later cleared by DNA, and what the science says today. https://thebrokenface.com/episodes/your-jaw-is-broken/https://thebrokenface.com/episodes/your-jaw-is-broken/ Wed, 28 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400On the night Lincoln was shot, his Secretary of State lay in bed with a broken jaw — and a brace may have saved his life. From an Egyptian papyrus that called a broken jaw "an ailment not to be treated", to Hippocrates, the dentists who wired jaws shut, and the titanium plates and 3D-planned eye-socket meshes surgeons use today. https://thebrokenface.com/episodes/gillies-broken-faces-of-wwi/https://thebrokenface.com/episodes/gillies-broken-faces-of-wwi/ Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400In the First World War, trench warfare left thousands of soldiers without faces. An ear, nose and throat surgeon from New Zealand, Harold Gillies, built a hospital just for faces — and laid the foundations of modern plastic and reconstructive surgery. Plus: what surgeons can do today. https://thebrokenface.com/episodes/a-toothache-could-kill-you/https://thebrokenface.com/episodes/a-toothache-could-kill-you/ Wed, 14 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0400Five hundred years ago, a toothache sent you to the man who cut your hair — and the tooth could kill you. How barber-surgeons, fairground tooth-pullers, a soldier-surgeon who ran out of boiling oil, and one book from 1728 turned tooth-pulling into dentistry. Plus: is the barber pole a lie?