Medicine & Disease

Debating Death and Disease

John Henderson challenges received ideas on how medieval and early modern societies dealt with perils such as plague.

Gout Gets Even

The notorious malady of the 18th century is on the increase in the UK.

Bart’s Hospital

St Bartholomew’s was refounded in the reign of Henry VIII. Courtney Dainton describes how, for nearly two centuries, it was one of only two major hospitals in England for the care of the general sick.

Medieval Hospitals of England

In England, medieval hospitals flourished until the beginning of the 15th century, funded by taxes, tolls, and wealthy doners. 

London Life in the 1790s

Frances Austin reads the lively late eighteenth century letters of a great surgeon’s apprentice to his family in Cornwall.

Roger Bacon: Doctor Mirabilis

J.J.N. McGurk profiles Roger Bacon; a 13-century Franciscan, with a reputation as a necromancer, who showed a remarkable combination at Oxford and in Paris of philosophic and scientific gifts.

Age in Old England

The problems of later life are always with us, writes Steven R. Smith. Among those who have studied them are both a famous philosopher and a renowned physician.