Medicine and health

Gulielma Lister became the world's leading expert on slime moulds (Illustration by Rachel Dickins)

Gulielma Lister: the female botanist who became the queen of slime moulds

A young woman sat in front of a mirror applies lipstick, 1967

The price of beauty: the dangerous cosmetics used until the 20th century

An allegorical depiction of the plague in ancient Rome, an angel batters down a door while people lie sick on the ground

The reign of Roman disease: why did disease hit a flourishing empire?

Pod Kyle Harper WL

Plagues of our past

German doctor Otto Warburg at work in his laboratory

Second World War

Otto Warburg: the Jewish doctor and the Nazi war on cancer

An image of Hippocrates from the 14th century, sitting and holding a book open in front of him

Hippocrates and humours: medicine in ancient Greece

From transfusions of lambs’ blood to tooth replacements, Paul Craddock chronicles the strange history of transplant surgery

Transplant surgery: an eye-opening history

Dancers in a nightclub

Aids: the epidemic that changed Britain

A 'teacher' in Milgram's study is instructed to administer an electric shock to a 'learner'.

Experiments in evil: the shocking efforts to understand the atrocities of the Holocaust

Illustration showing the traders who made a fortune during the wake of the Black Death

Merchants of doom: the traders who profited from the Black Death

Ilustration showing thorned brambles growing up the nervous system of a pink torso, the brambles at the bottom of the piece are growing in the shape of a uterus, and there are blackberries where the ovaries should be. A blue, gloved hand is coming in from the left to pluck at the ovary blackberry, and another gloved hand coming in from the right is using gardening secateurs to cut one of the branches. A metaphor for endometriosis, and in a broader sense, women's medical neglect and oppression

The gender pain gap: perceptions of women’s health through history

A medieval illustration showing a doctor bleeding a patient

Kill or cure: can you spot the real historical remedies?

Joep de Beer of Holland throws a javelin at the Stoke Mandeville Games

Q&A When and where were the first Paralympics held?

Mary Wortley Montagu pioneered inoculation in 18th-century Britain. (Illustration by Rosemary Smith)

Mary Wortley Montagu: the scourge of smallpox

A group of men observe a body lying on a table.

Early-modern cannibal doctors: why mummified corpse was considered medicine