New innovations in radiology have sparked public criticism as to its safety and cost-effectiveness. Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen's discovery of the X-ray in 1895 and its subsequent use in medicine sparked similar safety and health hazard concerns throughout its development.
Sarah Pepper investigates a medical pioneer whose name survives today on a bread wrapper, but whose sweeping system of wholefoods and natural prescriptions offended the medical establishment of late Victorian England.
Penelope Johnston describes China's revered North American hero
The British Medical Journal is 150 years old this autumn and has witnessed in its time a kaleidoscope of changing attitudes towards medicines, their ethics and efficiency. Peter Bartrip looks at its campaign against patent medicines at the turn of the century and the ambiguities of attitudes in the medical profession it reveals.
Peter Bowron looks into excavations found at a Middle Ages hospital in Scotland.
J.S. Cummins considers the impact of syphilis on the 16th-century world – a tale of rapid spread, guilt, scapegoats and wonder-cures, with an uncomfortable modern resonance.
Roy Porter looks into medicine in Georgian England where sufferers from the 'Glimmering of the Gizzard' the 'Quavering of the Kidneys' and the 'Wambling Trot' could choose their cures from a cornucopia of remedies.
Tony Aldous on a Worcestershire town whose natural resources brought the Romans there.
Taking the waters became a Victorian passion and spa towns flourished. In this article the first prize winner in History Today's Essay Competition Pamela Steen, a student at the Open University, describes the pleasure and the pains of this fashion.
