Medicine and health

Map of the universe, miniature from The Tales of Luqman, Arabic manuscript, 1583. (Photo by Getty Images)

Ingenious medieval science

Dr Edward Jenner, a British physician, performing his first vaccination on James Phipps, a boy of eight, in 1796. (Photo by Getty Images)

The history of vaccination: from Edward Jenner to anti-vaxxers

Mary Fissell on the history of medicine. (Image by Getty Images)

The history of medicine: everything you wanted to know

The Regency era: everything you wanted to know

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”