With flu season making its annual return, we’re heading back into the Squiz Kids vault to revisit one of our most fascinating and slightly gross Shortcuts. In Vanquished Viruses and Banished Bacteria, we explore the diseases that once terrified people around the world, from scurvy on the high seas to the Black Death, polio and smallpox.

Along the way, uncover some of the strange and surprising ways people tried to treat illness before modern medicine, and explain how science has helped control, and in some cases, eliminate some of history’s most dangerous diseases.