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    Historical TV and film
    1. Home
    2. Pandemics

    Pandemics

    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)
    General Modern

    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
    Medieval

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

    Advertisement
    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)
    Medieval

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

    Illustration by Owen Davey
    Georgian

    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

    Medieval medicine

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

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

    Virus H1N1
    General Modern

    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)
    Medieval

    5 strange causes of death in the medieval period

    Advertisement
    Paul Morland. (Photo by Frank Monks)
    General Modern

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

    Screen Shot 2018-07-27 at 13.35.28
    Medieval

    Video: 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)
    Medieval

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

    A contemporary pictorial depiction of the Great Plague.
    Medieval

    The Black Death: the historians’ view

    Podcast Website large Katherine Arnold
    20th Century

    The Spanish Flu pandemic

    A fresco depicting St Nicholas receiving the sick. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)
    Medieval

    Post-Black Death: a ‘golden age’ for medieval women?

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