Medicine and health

Dr Michael Mosley holds up a tapeworm

Tapeworms, arsenic and magic soap: fact-checking history’s weirdest fad diets and weight-loss gimmicks

Midwives and babies in the sun

General Early Modern

Midwifery and childbirth: a historical A–Z guide

Listening in: a doctor uses a stethoscope to examine a patient in 1948. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)

The birth pains of the NHS

On 20 July 1969, Lunar Module 'Eagle' touched down gently on the Sea of Tranquility on the moon. (Photo by NASA/Newsmakers via Getty Images)

From ‘moon-germs’ to motion sickness: health and safety on NASA’s 1969 lunar landing mission

Clothes infected by the Black Death being burnt, c 1340. An illustration from the 'Romance of Alexander' in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

10 facts about the Black Death

Now a protected species in many countries, the hedgehog was once also a health food. A German cookbook dating from the mid-15th century recommends the meat of a hedgehog as useful for leprosy and urinary retention. (Photo by Yuri SmityukTASS via Getty Images)

General ancient history

Hedgehogs, cannabis bread and horse placenta: 13 weird and wonderful health foods in history

US soldiers in Vietnam

From the Napoleonic Wars to Vietnam and Iraq: a history of war trauma

Medieval trepanning

General prehistory

Q&A What is trepanning?

The ancient Greek physician Dioscorides

General ancient history

Happy plants and laughing weeds: how people of the ancient world used – and abused – drugs

Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet

Jane Austen’s tips for “health and happiness”

Pro-choice and pro-life advocates outside the Supreme Court in the 1970s, following the Roe v Wade decision. (Photo by Diana Walker//The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images)

A brief history of US abortion law, before and after Roe v Wade

Edward Carey talks about Madame Tussaud on the History Extra podcast. (Wax Figure of Marie Tussaud (Photo by Getty Images)

The story of Madame Tussaud

After her recovery from smallpox, Queen Elizabeth I started using a ceruse foundation on her face, neck and chest. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

5 weird habits of royals through history

An illustration from 1883 shows the phrenology chart of the skull

The Victorian phrenology craze

Lady Sybil Grey, an indomitable Englishwoman who, as a nurse in Russia, led a field hospital and had a grandstand view of the February 1917 revolution that toppled the tsar. (Illustration by Sue Gent for BBC History Magazine)

First World War

The Library Lady Sybil Grey: a lady in the line of fire