Medicine & Disease

Recent research by medical scientists and historians suggests that George III had manic depression rather than porphyria. Scholars will need to take a fresh look at his reign, writes Timothy Peters.

Wendy Moore catches a rare glimpse of a medical collection that includes tonsil guillotines and implements for trepanning.

Janet Copeland introduces one of the most important feminist figures in twentieth-century history.

Richard Willis charts how order was brought to the medical profession by the foundation of the General Medical Council 150 years ago.

Paddy Hartley describes how an interest in the treatment of facial injuries in the First World War led him to develop a new form of sculpture.

Anthea Gerrie explores a remarkable excavation, a Roman surgeon’s house in Rimini.

In the late 18th century, a French invasion force marched into Portugal. Napoleon was insisting that Portugal must close its ports to British shipping. When it failed to comply, the invading army was given orders to march on Lisbon and seize the royal family. The Queen and her family fled to Brazil, and by this time, Maria I of Portugal had been insane for more than fifteen years. 

How was rabies – a disease that still kills thousands worldwide every year – largely eradicated from Victorian Britain?

As Britain gets used to the ban on smoking in public spaces, Virginia Berridge looks at the way attitudes to public health have changed in the last fifty years, particularly among the medical profession.

The Asian influenza epidemic of 1957 killed more than 16,000 people in Britain and more than a million globally. It exposed the fragility of the antibiotic age.