The Old Medicine CabinetHow The Old Medicine Cabinet is made
Our standards
Real sources, always
Every fact in an episode comes from a source we can show you: catalogs, newspapers, government records, medical journals and books from the period, plus trusted historians and archives. If something can’t be sourced, it stays out, or it is clearly framed as what newspapers of the time claimed or what historians believe.
Nothing invented
No made-up quotes, people, numbers or cases. Quotations are taken word for word from the original documents.
History, not medical advice
We tell the history of how people treated sickness, including remedies that were useless or dangerous. We never recommend treatments, never give doses and never promise cures.
Real archive images
We use public-domain and openly licensed photographs, engravings and advertisements, and credit each one on screen. A digitally created illustration is never presented as a real historical photograph, and it is labeled on YouTube as altered or synthetic content.
Open about how we work
Scripts are researched and written in-house. Narration is produced with ElevenLabs AI voice technology. Music and sound effects are used under verifiable licenses, credited in each description.
Respect for the people of the past
The families in these stories did their best with what they had. We tell their stories with care, never mocking and never romanticizing.