Medicine & Disease

There is an enduring obsession with understanding the body and mind of Henry VIII, but how sound are diagnoses past and present – and do we need them?

Repulsive revelations of bodily infestations were viewed by some in medieval Europe as proof of sanctity. But for most, parasites were just plain disgusting.

Eminent doctors and notorious charlatans vied for sick patients to treat in the cut-throat medical marketplace of Georgian England.

In Republican China, amid the chaos of dynastic collapse and war, opium became a rare stable currency, yielding huge riches for those who knew how to work the system.

Though often constrained by limited medical knowledge, 18th-century communities offered practical and emotional support to those experiencing mental distress.

How the societies that the Black Death affected were set on a path to global expansion.

Anatomical pop-up books, introduced in the 16th century, took anatomy out of the lecture hall and into the home. 

The physician James Parkinson, who lent his name to the medical condition he defined, was born on 11 April 1755.

Sherlock Holmes is the 19th century’s most famous cocaine user, but why did he take it?