Pandemics

The reconcilliation between Thomas Becket and Henry II. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

From the handshake to the high-five: a brief history of gestures

Immigrant children are examined by a city health officer upon arrival at the battery from Ellis Island during a Typhus scare, c1911. (Image by Bettmann/Getty Images)

A short history of quarantine

c1955: A child pulls toilet paper from a roll. But what did humans do before toilet paper was invented? (Photo by Mac Gramlich/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

General ancient history

When was toilet paper invented and what did people use before?

Wartime evacuees wash their hands

“The very sight of her hands did almost turn my stomach”: a brief history of hand-washing

Did medieval people take baths? This 15th-century illustration would suggest so – and shows a man climbing out of a tub. Medieval doctors prescribed bathing as a cure for conditions ranging from bladder stones to melancholy. (Photo by Bridgeman)

The (not so) stinky Middle Ages: why medieval people were cleaner than we think

Illustration by Owen Davey

A brief history of human filth: how did people try to keep clean in the past?

Doctor treating a patient, from a 14th-century manuscript. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Medieval medicine

A medieval monk praying in front of a table of apothacary's herbs

Beating the Black Death: did medieval medicine help people to survive?

Virus H1N1

Could flu really kill thousands again?

Peasants in the Middle Ages at a cattle market. Cows appear to have been difficult to manage in the medieval period, and caused several deaths. (Photo by INTERFOTO /Alamy)

5 strange causes of death in the medieval period

Paul Morland. (Photo by Frank Monks)

Books interview with Paul Morland: “Even the Spanish flu pandemic wasn’t enough to stop population growth”

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An introduction to the Black Death

A 14th-century Flemish illustration depicting the burying of plague victims in coffins in Tournai in 1349. (Photo by Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

Black Death: “Oh father, why have you abandoned me?”

A contemporary pictorial depiction of the Great Plague.

The Black Death: the historians’ view

Podcast Website large Katherine Arnold

The Spanish Flu pandemic