Medicine and health

A portrait of Florence Nightingale

Nursing by numbers: how Florence Nightingale campaigned for better conditions

c1656: A plague doctor in protective clothing. The beak mask held spices thought to purify air, while the wand was used to avoid touching patients. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Q&A Why did 17th-century plague doctors wear peculiar beaked masks?

The effects of the disease known as the Black Death

Black Death quarantine: how did we try to contain the most deadly disease in history?

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

A Red Cross worker in the United States, 1918

Spanish flu: the virus that changed the world

Outbreak of dance mania

The medieval dance of death

Henry VIII

Q&A What was the Sweating Sickness? And how did Henry VIII ‘self-isolate’?

Clothes infected by the Black Death are burned in medieval Europe

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

Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet

Jane Austen’s tips for “health and happiness”

Photo of flu patients during the First World War

First World War

Q&A Why was the 1918-19 pandemic known as Spanish Flu?

Portrait of Madam CJ Walker, America's first female millionaire. (Photo courtesy of Madam Walker Family Archives/A'Lelia Bundles)

Self Made: the real story of Madam CJ Walker, America’s first black female millionaire

Illustration of Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19). (Photo by Alamy)

Coronavirus: a historical perspective

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

Wartime evacuees wash their hands

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

Women 'take the air' in an attempt to ward off the Spanish Flu

First World War

“Far too little, too late”: what happened when Spanish Flu hit Britain a century ago?