This year marks the 150th anniversary to the start of the American Civil War. From that conflict, there came many modern methods of battlefield medicine including the use of anesthetics for surgery. However, the Civil War also featured a plethora of primitive medical practices that caused many soldiers to die from disease, poor treatment and ineffective medical practices. Since the Civil War, there have been countless advancements in technological and medical practices for the treatment of battlefield wounds and as a result, have saved many lives. Here are a few Civil War medical practices with their modern equivalents that show how far battlefield medicine has come in the past 150 years.

Gene therapy experts at the University of Pennsylvania have just engineered a breakthrough in cancer treatment that even some of the more reserved members of the science community are calling an “amazing, amazing kind of achievement.” They’ve created a type of cell that hunts out and indiscriminately kills any cancer cells currently in your body as well as any that might sprout up in the future. The test group so far has been extremely small (only three people so far) but the study is no doubt one of the most promising advancements in medical science in recent times.

It seems everyday mobile applications are becoming a bigger part of our daily lives. Millions have downloaded ones like Angry Birds and the music finder Shazam. One type of app growing in popularity is the health and exercise app. Here is a list of some great health and exercise apps to check out.

Doctors have come across some baffling day-to-day ailments, but few conditions are as strange as these 20 disorders, which range from biological to psychological to cultural in nature.

Foreign Accent Syndrome
Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a speech disorder that causes sudden changes in speech pattern, intonation and pronunciation so that the victim is perceived to speak with a "foreign" accent. FAS usually results from severe trauma to the brain, such as a stroke or head injury, and typically develops within one or two years of the injury. Of the 50 to 60 cases that have been verified since 1941, only a few FAS sufferers regained their normal speech pattern, although some experienced success through speech therapy.

History is full of catastrophes, and a plague is without doubt one of the deadliest. Modern medicine provides relief from some of them these days, but in past centuries humans have been at the mercy of all kinds of bacteria, viruses and other icky stuff.

Hindsight is always 20/20. Here is a list of famous human pandemics, and how the diseases responsible would be handled today.