Medicine and health

Photographs documenting the facial reconstruction of a soldier whose cheek was extensively wounded during the Battle of the Somme

First World War

What happened to the 8 million people who were disabled during WW1?

Dr Michael Mosley holds up a tapeworm

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

(Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

Why was there a backlash against face masks during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918?

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

The birth pains of the NHS: how Britain’s National Health Service was created

The bikini was showcased to the world for the first time in July 1946. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

8 historical events that happened in July

Japanese school girls wear protective masks to guard against the influenza outbreak, February 1920. (Photo by Getty Images)

A history of pandemics: from Spanish Flu to Covid-19

Doctors tending to a patient, 14th century. (Photo by Getty Images)

Saturday lecture: Medieval disease and medicine

An engraving depicting a scene of chaos at Bethlem Royal Hospital

Bethlem Royal Hospital: why did the infamous Bedlam asylum have such a fearsome reputation?

The Great Plague, from a pictorial broadsheet of 1665-1666 (Photo by Getty Images)

Surviving the Great Plague

A couple get amorous in this 14th-century illustration

Call the medieval sex doctor: how 7 problems might have been treated in the Middle Ages

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

Elma Brenner on medieval wellbeing: “People in the Middle Ages were absolutely focused on staying healthy”

Robert Burton, a 17th-century scholar

Can the work of a 17th-century scholar help us understand mental illness?

Dissection of human cadaver by physicians

Ask the medieval doctor: 6 ailments and their treatments

Clothes infected by the Black Death are burned in medieval Europe

Black Death facts: your guide to “the worst catastrophe in recorded history”

British nurse Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), aka the 'Lady with the lamp', makes her rounds during the Crimean War. (Photo by Illustrated London News/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Why Florence Nightingale was so much more than the ‘Lady with the Lamp’