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Health and medicine | Alice Loxton on the world of the Georgians
In episode four of the World of the Georgians, Alice Loxton investigates Georgian healthcare, where cutting-edge science sat uneasily alongside quack cures and medical scams
Medicine in Georgian Britain was as ripe for ridicule as it was for reform. In this episode, Alice Loxton explores how satirical artists such as James Gillray mocked the confusion of 18th-century healthcare, where miracle cures, medical quacks and genuine scientific breakthroughs existed side by side. From dubious treatments to the controversy surrounding early vaccination, this episode reveals how caricature captured public anxieties about illness, science and the body. View Green Video on the source website Want more from Alice? Find more episodes of the World of the Georgians. Alice Loxton is a historian, presenter and Sunday Times bestselling author with over three million followers on social media.
Dr Lucy Shipley shares a life lesson that we can take from the approach to life of the ancient Etruscans
Be yourself and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. That’s one of the lessons that archaeologist Dr Lucy Shipley says we can take from the approach to life of the ancient Etruscans. These historical inhabitants of the Italian peninsula seem to have had a very self-confident attitude – one which we could learn from today.
If you find yourself in a state of worry, Selena Wisnom argues that you could take a leaf out of the book of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians
Do you wake up in the middle of the night worrying? If so, you’re definitely not alone. But if you want to manage the anxieties of modern life, Selena Wisnom argues that you could take a leaf out of the book of the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians.
Get personal with your poo, like a samurai
Chris Harding’s Life Lesson from History is that we should think more carefully about how we deal with our waste products
Are we too quick to flush? In Edo Japan, people were much more mindful of how they dealt with sewage and rubbish than we are today. Chris Harding’s Life Lesson from History is that we should think more carefully about how we deal with our waste products, in the spirit of the samurai.
Forty years ago, the UK found itself in the grip of a virus that killed thousands of people and sparked fear, confusion and prejudice – HIV. Janet Weston explores the Aids crisis as it unfolded throughout the 1980s, and how it transformed attitudes about everything from sexuality to healthcare
In the early 1980s, reports of a strange new disease began emerging from the United States. It was picked up in the British gay press – Gay News ran a story in November 1981 under the headline “Gay cancer or mass media scare?” – but relatively few people noticed. Even among those who did, confusion and doubt reigned: weren’t these tales of a “gay cancer” just fear-mongering, a backlash against the gains of the fight for gay liberation in the 1970s? How could a disease target gay men, anyway? Such suspicions were not without good reason. The medical profession had a difficult history with people who didn’t conform to heterosexual norms: less than 10 years earlier, homosexuality had still been categorised by the internationally influential American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder. And when it came to Aids, the lack of knowledge about its cause or mode of transmission led to wild speculation. One theory linked Aids to the use of “poppers”, a recreational drug popular on the gay scene; another proposed that Aids was the end point of too many sexually transmitted infections. The picture grew still more complex as the symptoms associated with this new illness were also identified both among injecting drug users and people with the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia, including women and children. By July 1983, there had been 14 reported cases of Aids in Britain, all among men. Most were gay, including one man who also injected drugs, but the group included another who had been receiving treatment for haemophilia in the form of blood products. Just two months later, the number had risen to 24, and included a woman and a second man with haemophilia. As numbers of diagnoses in the United Kingdom started to rise sharply, the deaths began. Many people died very soon after diagnosis, as an array of opportunistic infections took advantage of their weakened immune systems. Terrence Higgins died in July 1982, one of the first deaths in the UK attributed to Aids. His partner, Rupert Whitaker, recalled asking the doctors whether Higgins’ death could have been caused by the strange “American disease”, but was dismissed out of hand: he was not family, so they couldn’t tell him anything. It wasn’t until a few years later that he found out they expected him to die soon, too. In the aftermath of Higgins’ death, his friends joined with Whitaker to set up a trust in his name to provide information and education in this information vacuum – and to provide support and services for people affected by Aids. In those frightening early years, charities such as the Terrence Higgins Trust led the charge. Men and women who had begun to see the impact of this disease first-hand devoted themselves to taking action. As well as fundraising, they gathered and shared the latest information, often looking abroad for insights from countries with more advanced epidemics. Volunteers and activists also campaigned for accurate media coverage and government attention, and ran phone lines and community centres to provide counselling and advice. Dread of infection Given the uncertain and rapidly changing state of knowledge about Aids, it was often difficult to know what advice to offer. If this really was a sexually transmitted disease, then perhaps abstinence was the answer – but with a newly self-confident gay community and a flourishing scene in many of Britain’s cities, this hardly seemed realistic. There was an idea that condoms might reduce the risks, but it was far from certain, and there were fears that condoms might give a false sense of security. Campaigners and volunteers struggled to decide on the best line to take. Even so, given the paucity of medical knowledge, many of these volunteers were better informed than the average doctor or nurse. In fact, many people with Aids in the 1980s knew more about their condition than their own clinicians, and some clinicians were willing to listen and learn. The idea of patients as participants in or even consumers of healthcare, whose experiences and views should be valued by biomedicine, had been building since the 1950s and was given a huge boost by patient expertise and advocacy during the first decades of HIV and Aids. With no known cause, no certainty over the mode of transmission, and all early signs indicating that Aids was invariably quickly fatal, the dread of infection was overwhelming. Nurses recalled being scared of their patients, caring for them in isolation while wearing two sets of gloves and gowns, using disposable cutlery and plates and burning bedsheets after use. “Nurses didn’t even touch a patient’s notes (which had ‘Infectious’ written at the top) without gloves,” one recalled. “It was just horrendous.” Life and death on the margins The virus causing Aids, now known as HIV, was identified in 1984. Soon thereafter a test for HIV antibodies – indicating exposure to the virus – was approved for use in the UK. The ability to test individuals, including those showing no symptoms, was transformative in terms of gathering data about the epidemic, but the results were alarming. Initial testing revealed that perhaps as many as three-quarters of people with haemophilia already had HIV, as did some of their sexual partners. Haemophilia was commonly treated with products generated from blood donations from large numbers of people, and around 1,200 people in the UK with haemophilia were infected with HIV in the 1980s. For the press, they were the “innocent victims” of the virus. That label naturally also served as a reminder that there were supposedly “guilty” ones, too, and fear quickly turned into hostility and discrimination. Those affected by Aids were mostly gay men, with drug users the second-largest group. These were already marginalised communities who could easily be blamed for their own misfortune, and Aids soon became deeply stigmatised: a marker of deviant living. Some of those with Aids were glad to be informed that their condition had finally led to a form of cancer, because at least cancer was something that you could tell people about without shame. In Edinburgh, heroin use had become particularly prevalent in the early 1980s; testing carried out by one doctor, Roy Robertson, revealed that more than half of his patients were HIV positive. The scarcity of needles and syringes, which were often seized by police, meant that drug users shared and repeatedly reused their injecting equipment, and infection had been spreading rapidly. Public health policy regarding drugs in Scotland underwent a dramatic shift in response, with attention turning to ways of minimising the harms of drug use instead of insisting on abstinence. It became a priority to reduce injecting drug use as much as possible, for example by prescribing methadone to those addicted to heroin, and for those who continued to inject, to provide sterile equipment. The anxiety surrounding HIV/Aids and its high profile made such radical policy changes possible. The availability of a test for HIV brought its own problems, though. Many people were tested without their knowledge and permission, misinformed of the meaning of their test result, or not told at all. Eighteen-year-old John Campbell, who would later set up the Coalition of People Living with HIV and Aids and advise the government on HIV in prisons, had been arrested in 1986 for “male importuning” and was tested on arrival into prison. But the charges were dropped, he was released, and he had no idea that he had tested positive for another 10 months. Fear and loathing The profile of HIV/Aids increased in the second half of the 1980s. Many people in the UK had remained entirely or mostly oblivious to the unfolding disaster, but this soon changed. Although emerging research indicated that HIV could not be transmitted by casual contact, such as a handshake or a shared cup, a lot of the media coverage became increasingly hyperbolic. “I’d shoot my son if he had Aids, says vicar” ran one lurid headline in The Sun in October 1985. Such coverage often quoted the extreme views of people from all walks of life, from publicans seeking to ban people with Aids from their establishments, to the chief constable of Greater Manchester who said that people with Aids were “swirling around in a human cesspit of their own making”. The fact that people with HIV or Aids might hold down jobs seemed particularly horrifying. Newspapers anxiously reported that people with HIV or Aids might work as airline cabin crews, bus drivers, teachers – or most worryingly of all, as doctors and dentists. Many people with, or suspected of having, HIV or Aids were fired: the Terrence Higgins Trust dealt with about 100 cases of employment discrimination each year. This period has been characterised as one of “wartime emergency”, with mounting panic finally leading to government action. The Conservative government appointed a cabinet committee to tackle Aids in autumn 1986, and on 21 November there was an emergency debate in the House of Commons. Opinions diverged dramatically, between those favouring regulatory measures such as quarantines and compulsory testing, to those who preferred a more liberal approach, including the promotion or provision of condoms and guarantees of confidentiality for those testing positive. Perhaps most memorable, in terms of government response to the crisis, was the nationwide health education campaign launched in January 1987. In the face of a significant lack of enthusiasm from then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, this included television spots, billboards and a leaflet for every household. Actor John Hurt lent his voice to the now-notorious television advert. Over footage of the word “Aids” being chiselled into a tombstone, he intoned: “If you ignore Aids, it could be the death of you. Don’t die of ignorance.” This campaign has often been remembered as a success. It was a clear sign of action, and expensive too, costing around £20m. Polls afterwards suggested that viewers felt more confident of their understanding of Aids, and ultimately, the worst predictions for the epidemic in the UK did not materialise. However, the campaign also relied heavily upon generalised impressions of death, disaster and doom, doing little to dispel rumours or to educate and help those already affected or most at risk. Artist and activist Leigh Neal received her diagnosis just as these adverts aired; she remembered their clear message that Aids meant death, and the environment of fear and hostility that this created towards her – including bricks thrown through her window. For those who were not white gay men, this lack of information and support could be particularly acute. The later 1980s saw the creation of more specialist advocacy and support groups to fill these gaps. One of the founders of Positively Women, a group set up in 1987 by and for women with HIV, remembered feeling “doubly isolated” in most HIV/Aids support groups, as a woman and a former drug user. Mainliners, a support group run by and for HIV-positive drug users, was founded in the same year. So, too, was the Broderip Ward at Middlesex Hospital in London: a specialist ward for those with HIV and Aids. It was opened by Princess Diana, who took pains to shake hands multiple times with patients at the ward before the cameras, without wearing gloves. Garnering huge press coverage, many recalled this as a vital moment, helping to dispel some of the myths swirling around Aids at the time. This ward and others like it represented greater resources and medical expertise dedicated to HIV and Aids, but also many more people suffering and dying. Specialist wards could provide a sense of community and even fun, in dark times. HIV nurse Barbara von Barsewich described one patient, “a tall, Italian, glamorous man who came out of a side room [in the ward] at night-time in a blue ball gown and six-inch heels... he swung around and just looked so gorgeous. And then he started coughing up bits of his lung... It was just so hard. It was so painful. You knew exactly what was happening.” Love and loss For the most severely affected communities, the extent of the loss in the late 1980s and early 1990s was overwhelming. Julian Hows recalled the deaths of four lovers over these years. One was passionate about cars and was eventually driven to hospital by Hows and friends in a Mercedes-Benz, borrowed for the occasion. As they arrived at the hospital and opened the car door, Hows remembered: “A really nice nurse said, ‘You realise your friend has gone.’” He had died on the journey. Gay men and their friends experienced years of countless funerals, with social circles of young people all but obliterated. At many of these funerals, it remained taboo to mention Aids. Many families felt, as writer and activist Simon Watney put it, “condemned to silence, to euphemism”. In the mass media and popular discourse, Aids stubbornly remained something that happened to “other people”. Generalised fears became more deeply racialised, as news emerged of the epidemic’s disastrous spread and possible origins in Africa. Continuing the tradition of self-help and community organising among those affected by HIV and Aids, volunteers set up the Black HIV/Aids Network in 1989 and began to deliver literature, films and services specifically addressing black and Asian people in the UK. Towards the end of the 1980s, activism surrounding Aids reached a high point. Members of the newly formed London branch of ACT-UP – the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power – organised a series of eye-catching protests designed to attract headlines. Targets included Australia House, in response to new laws requiring immigrants to take an HIV test, and Pentonville Prison, where helium-filled condoms were released to carry leaflets about Aids over prison walls. Read more: From Sappho to It’s a Sin: 9 LGBT+ histories, chosen by experts The London branch of ACT-UP soon disbanded, though, and in the 1990s Aids gradually disappeared from the headlines. The arrival of much more effective drug treatments from the mid-1990s onwards transformed HIV into a chronic but manageable condition. And, although there had previously been a great deal of interest in deploying insights from history to understand and contextualise responses to Aids, historical attention to the epidemic also waned. HIV/Aids had transformed attitudes, practices and policies around sex and sexuality, drug addiction, activism and community-building, as well as hospital hygiene, clinical research and doctor-patient relationships. As the sense of urgency and, later, the memory of the epidemic began to fade, not all of these changes were sustained. Roy Robertson, still working in addiction studies in Scotland, reported that HIV had reappeared in a vulnerable population of injecting drug users in Glasgow in 2015, in a political and policy context that bore striking similarities to that of the early 1980s. Four decades on from the first diagnoses and deaths, there is now a resurgence of interest. Oral history projects are springing up, and new research is beginning to investigate less well-known experiences. There is a campaign for a public memorial to the lives lost to Aids, and a clear desire to ensure that all the losses and gains of those years are not forgotten. After all, a generation of people diagnosed in the 1980s are now the first people with HIV to reach retirement age. The history of HIV/Aids in the 1980s is still unfolding. A global concern: 7 key moments in the world’s battle with HIV/Aids in the 1980s United States 1981 Clinical reports began to describe clusters of a rare type of pneumonia and other unusual infections among gay men and then injecting drug users, in California and New York. News of this novel disease was picked up by the gay press. Different names and possible explanations were floated and the term “Aids” was coined in 1982, but the original idea of a “gay plague” proved difficult to dislodge. Cuba 1983 The government set up a National Aids Commission and ordered the destruction of all blood products imported from overseas. Law 41 was passed, giving the Ministry of Public Health power to enforce the quarantining and mandatory treatment of anyone affected by diseases deemed to pose significant community risk. The first case of HIV was diagnosed three years later, and the quarantining in sanatoria of anyone diagnosed with HIV or Aids began. This remained in place until 1993. Zaire 1984 Research in Kinshasa provided strong evidence of the transmission of HIV between heterosexual couples. Here, there were just as many women with HIV or Aids as men. These findings were not easily accepted by the scientific community but were finally published in The Lancet. The prospect of a global epidemic affecting not only gay men, drug users and haemophiliacs, but also heterosexual couples, began to stir more governments to action. Netherlands 1984 A drug users’ “union”, known as a junkibonden and active since 1980, began to provide sterile needles and syringes to injecting drug users in Amsterdam. Initially introduced to tackle the spread of hepatitis B through shared needles, the scale of needle provision was stepped up considerably in light of HIV and Aids and eventually received government funding. The union published literature by and for drug users, and offered peer support and advice on safer injecting. Senegal 1986 The first cases of Aids were reported. This was a different and less virulent strand of the virus, first identified in West Africa by Senegalese researchers the year before. It brought international recognition and encouraged national political attention to HIV and Aids. Rates of infection remained consistently low, thanks not only to the different viral strand, but also factors including the legalisation and regulation of sex work and high safety standards concerning blood products, both of which pre-dated the epidemic. USSR 1987 The first Aids-related death was recorded, a few years after Russia’s health minister declared that it was a “western disease” that would have no impact on a country without drug addicts or prostitution. There were more than 500 known cases by 1990, but the Soviet authorities emphasised that most of these were foreign nationals. A few years after the collapse of the USSR, reports of rapid HIV spread emerged: by the mid-1990s Russia was said to be on the brink of a vast epidemic. Japan 1989 Haemophiliacs infected with HIV filed lawsuits in Tokyo and Osaka, demanding compensation from the government and pharmaceutical companies. Contaminated blood products imported from the US meant that around 40 per cent of Japanese people with haemophilia were infected with HIV. This “tainted blood” scandal dominated headlines and perceptions of HIV and Aids in Japan: plaintiffs and their families finally received a formal apology and compensation in 1996. Janet Weston is assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. An episode of the BBC Two series Saved by a Stranger covered the HIV/Aids crisis. You can catch up with that on the BBC iPlayer This article was first published in the June 2021 edition of BBC History Magazine
One family was an ever-present force in European affairs from the Middle Ages to the modern era, but, as Jonny Wilkes explores, the Habsburgs’ desperate bid to keep power within the family gave them a distinctive physical callsign, as well as dynastic longevity…
For centuries, the Habsburgs were one of the most prominent royal dynasties in Europe. They ruled as kings of Germany, from the 13th century, and as archdukes of Austria from the mid-14th century. They sat on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire from the 15th to 19th centuries. Their house dominated swathes of the continent with Habsburg rulers in a host of countries, most notably Spain. But there was something else that became prominent about the Habsburgs: their jawline. What was the Habsburg jaw? Many members of the dynasty had the same physical trait of a protruding bottom jaw – a mandibular prognathism, medically speaking. The jutting chin could be so pronounced that the flattering portrait artists of the day could not manage to hide them. The condition even prevented some members of the dynasty from eating or speaking properly. Read more | The Habsburgs: the dynasty that wouldn’t die The ‘Habsburg jaw’ was a biological result from generations of inbreeding. In a bid to keep their power, the Habsburgs kept everything within the family. They relied on ‘consanguine’ marriages that partnered close relatives, such as first cousins, or uncles with their nieces. View Green Video on the source website Why did the Habsburgs intermarry so much? It’s true that close-family marriages weren’t exactly unusual among the royal houses of Europe, but the Habsburgs were the champions of consanguinity. Of the 11 marriages during the reign of the Spanish Habsburgs, from 1516 to 1700, only two were not incestuous. “The arrangement made good political sense, guaranteeing that the two lines would support each other militarily,” writes historian Martyn Rady, “which paid dividends in the Thirty Years’ War (the bloody religious conflict fought across central Europe from 1618–48). “Biologically, however, it was a disaster. As first and second-cousin and uncle-niece marriages became the norm, madness and deformity followed.” In 1517, Italian diplomat Antonio di Beatis described the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V as having “a long, cadaverous face and a lopsided mouth (which drops open when he is not on his guard) with a dropping lower lip”. In 2019, a scientific study confirmed the link between inbreeding and the Habsburg jaw. By analysing dozens of portraits for signs of mandibular prognathism and maxillary deficiency (where the bones of the upper jaw do not develop properly, causing the upper lip to appear sunken), the results showed that the more evidence of inbreeding, the worse the jaw. Who had the worst Habsburg jaw? The five family members with the ‘worst’ Habsburg jaws, as far as that study was concerned, were the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1493–1508), his daughter Margaret of Austria, Charles I of Spain, his nephew’s great-grandson, and the King Charles II of Spain (1665–1700). Charles II suffered from a host of conditions and disorders, among them epilepsy, as a result of 16 generations of inbreeding. His grandmother and aunt were the same person, while his mother was also his father’s niece. Such was his physical deterioration, as well as his mental decline, that his autopsy recorded that his body: “did not contain a single drop of blood; his heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.” As for Charles’s Habsburg jaw, it was so pronounced that his upper and lower rows of teeth did not meet all. He could not chew his food, which served to exacerbate his health issues as he had multiple stomach concerns, and he had an oversized tongue that meant he could not speak clearly. One British envoy in the 17th century later documented the king’s eating habits, reporting that Charles II “swallows all he eats whole”. How 'inbred' were the Habsburgs? The 2019 study calculated an ‘inbreeding coefficient’ in order to analyse the Habsburgs. The typical ‘F value’ of this coefficient is 0.0625, which is indicative of a child with parents who were first cousins. Philip I, the founder of the Habsburg dynasty in Spain, had an F value of 0.025; Charles II, his great-great-great-grandson, had an F value more than 10 times that, at 0.254. “The Habsburg dynasty was one of the most influential in Europe,” said the lead researcher, Professor Román Vilas from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, “but became renowned for inbreeding, which was its eventual downfall.” Did Marie Antoinette have a Habsburg Jaw? Marie Antoinette was a descendent of the Habsburg line. She was the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. Maria was in the Habsburg line of succession, ruling between 1740–80. She did not have the same prominent Habsburg jaw of some those in her family tree – though she did have a protruding lower lip, thought by some to be a version of the genetic pattern. Does the Habsburg chin still exist? Many of the descendants of the royal German-Austrian Habsburg family are still alive today – though the chin is no longer a feature of the family. Charles II would be the last Spanish Habsburg king. He became known as ‘El Hechizado’ (‘the bewitched’) and was doomed to end the line with his death, with no heir, at the age of 38. Martyn Rady writes how it “was followed by a war of succession across Europe.” Read more | What if Charles II of Spain had produced an heir? “Although the central European branch of the Habsburgs hoped to capture the dead king’s inheritance,” writes Rady, “its rulers failed to keep hold of Spain, which passed to the French Bourbons.” More from us HistoryExtra members can explore more weird and wonderful history with exclusive content from our archives Weird and wonderful history quiz Medieval magic at work: 7 spells and charms our ancestors used “Ninety years of horror: nine films that reflect society’s changing anxieties Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers
When was the first toilet invented? What did people use before the modern flush? What are the origins of the term 'crapper'? To mark World Toilet Day, Julian Humphrys explores the history of Britain's loos
A... is for Ajax Although Elizabethan writer and courtier John Harrington wasn’t the first person to design a flushing toilet – Londoner Thomas Brightfield had done so in 1449 – he was the first to provide a written specification for one. In 1596, he penned his Metamorphosis of Ajax (a pun on ‘jakes’, a slang word for a privy) in which he described a remarkably modern-sounding device that he’d installed in his house. This incorporated a pan with a seat and a cistern filled with water. When a handle was turned, the water washed the contents of the pan into a cesspool. Although Harrington installed one for Queen Elizabeth I in Richmond Palace, cost, problems of water supply, and lack of sewers meant that the idea wouldn’t catch on for centuries. B... is for Bazalgette By the 1850s, London’s growing population was producing unmanageable amounts of sewage. Cesspools leaked and overflowed, contaminating water supplies, and matters weren’t helped by the outpourings of the increasingly popular water closet. London’s Commission of Sewers had ordered that cesspools and house drains should be connected to sewers, but these fed directly into an increasingly noisome River Thames. Following the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858, when the smell from the river was so bad that MPs even considered abandoning Westminster, the Metropolitan Board of Works was tasked with overhauling London’s sewerage system. Civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette (1819–91) was put in charge of operations. His 16-year project included embanking parts of the Thames, constructing 1,100 miles of street sewers, 82 miles of main interceptor sewers and building four monumental pumping stations, all designed to take the sewage eastwards to be discharged into the river away from heavily-populated areas. Watch | 10 minutes of toilets through time View Green Video on the source website C... is for Crapper In 1866, Yorkshire-born industrialist and plumber Thomas Crapper opened the world’s first bathroom showroom in Chelsea. For the first time, people could actually see sanitary products in place. Some were even plumbed in so that potential customers could try before they bought. In the late 1880s, Crapper was asked by the Prince of Wales to install lavatories at Sandringham, and he went on to supply sanitary ware for both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. The idea that one of our more robust terms for a bowel movement is derived from his name is a myth – that word was in use well before Crapper became famous. However, it is possible that the American word ‘crapper’, meaning a lavatory, became popular after US soldiers in Britain in 1917 saw his name stamped on the cisterns in some public toilets. Read more | How did knights in armour go to the toilet? D... is for Dung The infamous 1618 Defenestration of Prague, which saw three Catholic officials thrown from a third-floor window in Prague Castle, helped trigger the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. Remarkably, all three survived the 50-foot fall. Catholic sources claimed they were saved by divine intervention, while Protestants ascribed their survival to the fact that they landed on a huge pile of dung beneath the window. E... is for Espionage It’s hard to believe that the unremarkable public toilets in the small Hampshire town of New Alresford played a part in the Cold War. But they did. Harry Houghton used them as a dead letter box in his dealings with Soviet spy ‘Gordon Lonsdale’. A plaque on the toilet wall recalls how in 1961, Houghton was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for his part in the Portland Spy Ring, which sold secret information from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment to the Soviet Union. F... is for Fleet Street Inspired by the success of Jennings’ toilets at the Great Exhibition (see ‘J’), the Royal Society of Arts tried to cash in on the act. On 2 February 1852, it opened London’s first modern public toilet (for men) at 95 Fleet Street. Women had to hang on a little longer; the first female public toilet opened at Bedford Street nine days later. Delicately dubbed ‘public waiting rooms’, they featured water closets in wooden surrounds and cost two pence to use. But, despite being extensively promoted by handbills and even an advert in The Times, only 58 men and 24 women used the rooms in the first month. Within six months, they were closed. G... is for Garderobe Originally a term for a storeroom for clothes and valuables, a garderobe is now usually used to describe a medieval privy, particularly in a castle. Actually, the two uses were by no means mutually exclusive, as the ammonia from urine helped deter moths and other parasites. Many garderobes were built into the thickness of an outer wall, and consisted of a stone or wooden seat over a vertical shaft. Others were sited in a projecting turret over an open drop. Depending on the design, the excrement would either hit the ground or land in a pit (which had to be periodically cleared out by an individual known as a ‘gong farmer’), or drop into a moat or river. The garderobes of some coastal castles, like St Andrews, simply projected over the sea and let the tide do the work. Garderobes could be a weak spot in a castle’s defences. During the siege of the mighty Château Gaillard in 1204, the French captured its middle bailey after sneaking up one of its garderobe chutes. When Henry III commissioned a new privy for Guildford Castle, the Clerk of Works was specifically told to fit bars to its outlet to deter intruders. H... is for Hampton Court To cope with the sanitary needs of the vast numbers of Tudor courtiers who assembled there, Hampton Court Palace boasted a huge communal garderobe. Known as the ‘Great House of Easement’, it was two storeys high and could accommodate 28 people simultaneously. Occupants sat side by side on oak planks and their waste was carried into the Thames via brick-lined drains. The building still stands today, although now it has a different function: it’s the office of the Chief Executive. I... is for Ironside It’s always a good idea to check that a vacant toilet really is vacant. The 12th-century writer Henry of Huntingdon gives this account of the death in 1016 of English King, Edmund Ironside: “When Edmund, fearful and most formidable to his enemies, was prospering in his kingdom, he went one night to the lavatory to answer a call of nature. There the son of Ealdorman Eadric, who by his father’s plan was concealed in the pit of the privy, struck the King twice with a sharp knife in the private parts, and leaving the weapon in his bowels, fled away.” Edmund Ironside: Anglo-Saxon warrior king J... is for Jennings When the Great Exhibition opened in 1851 in Hyde Park, one of its landmark attractions was Britain’s first paid-for flushing public toilets, which were designed and installed by Hampshire-born plumber George Jennings. For the price of a penny, visitors were provided with a clean toilet seat, a towel, a comb and a shoe shine. Records show that during the exhibition, over 675,000 pennies were spent. K... is for King Elvis Presley wasn’t the only King to die on the toilet. On 25 October 1760, George II’s valet was waiting outside the water closet for his master to finish his morning ablutions when he heard what he described as “a noise louder than the royal wind” followed by a crash “like the falling of a billet of wood from the fire”. He rushed in to find the king dying on the floor. A subsequent post-mortem revealed that he had died from an aortic aneurysm, which had probably been caused by straining. Read more | Showering, teeth brushing and donning underwear: the strange history of our daily routine L... is for Luther Was the Protestant Reformation thought up on the toilet? It’s quite possible. Martin Luther, the German Augustinian friar who was a seminal figure in the Reformation, suffered from constipation. He spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet, and later wrote that he was “in cloaca” – or in the sewer – when the belief that salvation was gained through faith not deeds came to him. M... is for Monasteries Many of Britain’s medieval monasteries still retain the remains of their communal toilets. Dubbed necessaria (for obvious reasons) or reredorters (because they stood behind the dorter or dormitory), they could be quite extensive in size. One of the most impressive can be found at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset. Unique in having a thatched roof, it’s a two-storey affair that the monks entered at first-floor level from their dormitory. N... is for Nightmen In the days before sewers, people in towns had to find a way of disposing of their excrement. This is where the nightmen came in. So-called because by law they could only work at night, it was their job to empty the excreta from people’s cesspits and cart it away. They usually operated in teams of four. One man, the ‘holeman’, went into the cesspit and filled a tub lowered by a colleague called the ‘ropeman’. Once full, it was pulled back up and two ‘tubmen’ carried it to a waiting cart. The night soil was then taken away and mixed with other rubbish before being sold to farmers as manure. O... is for Orford For those with an interest in medieval toilet arrangements, Orford Castle in Suffolk is a must-see. Its 12th-century keep is equipped with garderobes served by a system of chutes, which directed their discharge to a single area at the back of the tower. Like most castles, the majority of Orford’s toilets are of the sit-down variety, but it also boasts a rarity – a stand-up, triangular ‘poke and pee’ urinal in the corridor outside the constable’s chamber. Handily placed to save a night-time walk to one of the main garderobes, it now offers modern visitors an almost irresistible photo opportunity. P... is for Pepys An entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary offers an insight into the rather ramshackle state of 17th-century London’s sanitary arrangements, even for the well-to-do: “20 October 1660: This morning one came to me to advise with me where to make me a window into my cellar… and going down my cellar to look, I put my foot into a heap of turds, by which I find that Mr Turner’s house of office is full and comes into my cellar, which doth trouble me…” Things weren’t any better at court. The antiquary Anthony Wood acidly commented that when Charles II and his court descended on Oxford in 1665, “though they were neat and gay in their apparel, yet they were very nasty and beastly, leaving at their departure their excrements in every corner, in chimneys, studies, coalhouses, cellars”. Q... is for Queen If the 17th-century antiquarian John Aubrey is to be believed, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, may well have regretted not paying a precautionary visit to the privy before being presented to Queen Elizabeth I. In his Brief Lives, a splendidly scandalous collection of anecdotes about the great figures of Tudor and Stuart England, Aubrey writes: “This Earl of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to fart, at which he was so abashed that he went to travel for seven years. On his return, the Queen welcomed him home and said ‘My lord, I had forgotten the fart’.” R... is for Rome Toilet walls have always been a temptation for idle scribblers, and things were no different in the days of ancient Rome. One such wall in a house in the Roman town of Herculaneum (which, like Pompeii, was destroyed in AD 79 by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius) bears the words “Apollinaris medici Titi Imperatoris hic cacavit bene” – roughly translated, that’s “Apollinaris, physician of the Emperor Titus, had a good crap here”. S... is for Stool One of the most sought-after jobs in the Tudor court was the position of Groom of the Stool. The Stool in question was a ‘close stool’, a fixed or portable commode, and the Groom’s job was to help the king undress before using it and to supply him with water, towels and a washbowl when he had finished. Whether the Groom was actually required to wipe the Royal Bottom is a matter of debate. Read more about the men who changed Henry VIII’s underpants The reason why this apparently lowly job was so desirable was the fact that it gave the holder an intimate access to the king that no other office holder enjoyed. Because a word in the king’s ear could make or break a courtier, it was important to keep on the right side of the Groom, and people would often petition him to pass on their concerns or requests to the monarch. As time went on, the Groom’s duties expanded until they came to act more as personal secretaries. Sir Anthony Denny, Henry VIII’s last Groom of the Stool, was also given the great responsibility of caring for the ‘dry stamp’, which was used to sign the king’s name on documents. In addition to the influence they enjoyed, Grooms of the Stool enjoyed high pay and a range of perks, including being given the king’s old clothes and furnishings. T... is for Torrens In 1868, William McCullagh Torrens, Liberal MP for Finsbury, introduced the Artizans and Labourers Dwellings Act, enabling local authorities to clear away houses without proper sanitation and erect decent dwellings for the working classes. Despite powerful opposition, the bill was passed. U... is for U-Boat In April 1945, just weeks before the end of World War II, German submarine U-1206 was cruising in the North Sea off Peterhead at a depth of about 60 metres when problems with the pressurised flushing system of its on-board toilet caused a leak, which flooded the hull with seawater. When this came into contact with the ship’s batteries, poisonous chlorine gas was created, leaving the captain with no option but to surface. U-1206 was quickly spotted and attacked by Allied aircraft, forcing the captain to order his crew to scuttle the U-boat and abandon ship. V... is for Vespasiennes Vespasiennes were metal open-air public urinals that were first erected in Paris in 1834, in a bid to put an end to indiscriminate public peeing (by men). They took their name from the Ancient Roman emperor Vespasian who, according to legend, imposed a tax on the collection of urine (which was used in tanning and laundries) from Roman public toilets. Vespasiennes were once a common sight on the streets of Paris; in the 1930s, there were over 1,200, but now, only one remains – on the Boulevard Arago in the 14th Arondissement. W... is for Westonzoyland After the Duke of Monmouth’s defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor in July 1685, the nearby church of St Mary’s, Westonzoyland was pressed into service as a temporary prison for hundreds of Monmouth’s defeated rebel followers. Two comfortable toilets have recently been installed in the church, but no such facilities existed in Monmouth’s time… the church accounts record the expenditure of 5s 8d on frankincense, pitch and resin to fumigate the soiled building after the prisoners had been removed. X... is for Xylospongium How did Romans wipe their bottoms? They used a sponge on a stick called a xylospongium. In communal toilets, they were kept in tubs of water in front of where you sat. You took one, rinsed it, used it, and then put it back. The well-preserved Roman latrine at Housesteads on Hadrian’s Wall still has the channel which contained the running water used to wash the sponges. Writing in the middle of the first century, the philosopher Seneca described how a Germanic gladiator used a xylospongium to commit suicide: “He withdrew in order to relieve himself – the only thing he was allowed to do in secret and without the presence of a guard. While so engaged, he seized the stick of wood tipped with a sponge, devoted to the vilest uses, and stuffed it down his throat.” Y... is for York Although pay toilets didn’t appear until the 19th century, the towns and cities of medieval Britain appear to have been well-equipped with public privies. The first recorded public convenience in York was sited in an arch of the old Ouse Bridge. In 1380, one William Graa left 40d a year in his will to provide "a light in the common jakes at the end of Use Bridge”. One section of Conwy’s town walls houses a group of 12 projecting stone latrines, while London boasted Whittington’s Longhouse, a huge public toilet over the Walbrook river. Opened in 1421, it had seats for 64 men and 64 women. Z... is for Zagreb If you visit the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, check out Croatia’s most historic toilet. A magnificent blue-and-white porcelain creation, it was installed for the visit of Emperor Franz Joseph I when he opened the neo-baroque theatre in 1895. Use it and you’ll be sitting where a range of historical figures have sat over the years, including Franz Joseph, Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić and Marshal Josip Broz Tito. This article was first published in the June 2018 issue of BBC History Revealed magazine
Marvellous medieval medicine: why their curious cures were better than you think
What did medieval physicians prescribe for stomach ache? And could weasels’ testicles really help you conceive? James Freeman delves into the sources to find eight curious cures from the Middle Ages
My urine has turned black! What does your wee say about your health? Well, plenty – but perhaps not in quite the way medieval physicians understood it. Before the in-depth study of anatomy and physiology, establishing the causes of symptoms relied on theories that today seem primitive or foolish. However, they were often based on long-established ideas about the body and its function. Medieval treatises on uroscopy – the study of urine – identified up to 20 colours, each indicating certain diseases. Many texts on this subject were accompanied by drawings of glass flasks filled with liquid coloured with an appropriate pigment. These might be arranged in a circular shape with descriptive labels, helping readers to memorise the key diagnostic details. Perhaps unsurprisingly, black was the worst possible colour, and was generally agreed to indicate imminent death. Why was urine so significant? Because of prohibitions against opening the body (which extended to postmortem dissections), medieval doctors were reliant on external indicators. This included variations in a patient’s pulse but also the colour, texture, layers, smell and even taste of their urine. The doctor’s role was to understand a patient’s nature: specifically, the four fluids or ‘humours’ inside the human body. In the treatise De Natura Hominis (‘On the Nature of Man’), by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (c460–c375 BC) or his pupil Polybus, it was determined that there were four such humours: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. Disease was caused by imbalances in these humours, or when they became ‘corrupted’ or concentrated in a part of the body. Read more | It felt like the end of the world, but this medieval ‘apocalypse’ left a legacy no one saw coming This theory was developed further by Galen of Pergamon (c129–c216), who likened digestion to the cooking process: food was converted into life-giving liquid, the humours were generated by the vital organs, and waste products – including urine – were expelled. Examining urine could therefore inform the physician about the state of a patient’s digestion and of any possible humoural imbalance and the disease that might result from it. I’ve got an excruciating pain in my bottom Medieval knights and noblemen could spend significant amounts of time on horseback. And who can blame them? This was, after all, the quickest way to get around. But it could also be extraordinarily painful. Occupy the saddle for too long and you could start to suffer from an anal fistula – a condition that causes an abscess or an abnormal opening between the anal canal and the surrounding skin. This is as unpleasant as it sounds – which is why some sufferers called on the services of a medic called John Arderne. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-587494702-CMYKWeb-Ready-a626f03.jpg" width="5178" height="3452" alt="A painting showing two men dressed in red and pink riding horses. They are following several brown dogs through the woods and on the ground, three more men walk through the grass, holding spears" title="Nobles hunt a fox in a 14th-century miniature. Spending long periods in the saddle could lead to a painful condition for which surgeon John Arderne devised a novel treatment (Image by Getty Images)" /> Arderne was one of the most famous English surgeons of the 14th century. Among the novel developments he described in his writings, he came up with a procedure for treating anal fistulas that involved a surgical dilator called a tendiculum and a kind of flattened needle called an acus rostrata. Arderne also illustrated the stages involved in the operation, and described medicines that could be injected into the rectum in a bid to promote healing. One of these – made up of rose oil and the single yolk of a raw egg – should be administered with the aid of a hollow wooden instrument called a nastare ligneum. This needed to be lubricated with rose oil and “gently inserted into the anus”. “This,” Arderne promised, “effectively mitigates and mollifies any burning, stinging, itching and pain.” His patients would, no doubt, have prayed that he was good to his word. I’m about to go into labour Childbirth was perhaps the most perilous event in any medieval woman’s life. This was a primary focus of Gynaecia, a treatise perhaps written in the fifth or sixth century and ascribed to an author known as ‘Muscio’ (who was possibly from north Africa). Gynaecia explained how normal and abnormal births should be managed, prioritised the role of midwives, and described different malpresentations of the foetus – and what should be done to ease the birth in such cases. In one manuscript from the Middle Ages, passages from the Gynaecia are accompanied by illustrations showing these various positions of foetuses in wombs. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-566452471-CMYKWeb-Ready-47f4bbc.jpg" width="3763" height="2509" alt="An illustration showing a woman in a long red dress sitting on a chair. Around her, there are four other women, touching various parts of her body" title="A manuscript illumination shows a woman in childbirth. The fifth or sixth-century treatise Gynaecia provided detailed advice for deliveries (Image by Getty Images)" /> Some women who “travaileth of child” might turn to magic for help. Recipe books and medical guides both contained instructions for preparing protective amulets that should be lain on a woman’s belly or thighs. Designed to be viewed, worn and read, these objects were believed to protect their wearers from harm by association with holy bodies and the pains they suffered. One typical text from the late 14th or early 15th century invokes the names of holy mothers and their children: “Saint Mary bore Christ, Saint Anna bore Mary, Saint Elizabeth bore Saint John the Baptist.” Another example contains images of the instruments of Christ’s Passion and of his wounds and blood; a measurement of the length of the Virgin Mary’s body; and prayers to early fourth-century mother-and-son martyrs Saint Julitta and Saint Quiricus. I can't stop farting What did our medieval ancestors do when they were afflicted by stomach pains? And what remedies could they deploy if, worse still, that pain was accompanied by an attack of flatulence? One option was to take an electuary, a type of orally administered remedy sweetened, usually with honey, to make it more palatable. A recipe for one such remedy contained a dizzying number of ingredients – some more familiar to the modern eye than others. These included sugar, chebulic myrobalan (fruits from an Asian tree), nuts, anise, caraway, fennel, cloves, the wood of aloes, mastic, French muscat and syrup. “You will,” so the recipe instructed, “give this in the form of a hazelnut [ie as a hazelnut-sized pill], at morning and night with warm water and wine or with wine alone.” This recipe comes from a compilation of over a thousand remedies known as the Antidotarium Magnum, which was compiled in the 11th century by a monk of north African heritage known as Constantinus Africanus, who lived at the abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy. Innovatively, the text advised how much of each ingredient was required, using a system of symbols to denote measurements such as drams, scruples, pounds, sixths and halves. The Antidotarium Magnum’s ingredients suggest that it was inspired by Islamic, Byzantine and classical sources. Yet that didn’t stop a copy reaching Durham Cathedral Priory, where – judging by the presence of a key to explain the meaning of these symbols – the monks tried to make some of the medicines that it describes. Read more | Victorian medicine: why the 19th century was a time of seismic medical change I’m feeling feverish In the modern world, fevers are understood to be symptoms of the body’s immune response to infection. In the medieval period, however, a fever was thought to be a disease in its own right – an overheating of the body caused by malfunctioning digestive processes. And, in an attempt to turn down the heat, medieval medics often went on a charm offensive. Today, science and magic tend to occupy separate spheres. In the Middle Ages, though, it was widely believed – even among learned medics – that words and rituals possessed healing potential, and many medieval manuscripts from the Middle Ages contain instructions for the recitation of magical charms. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/G2NJEX-CMYKWeb-Ready-aaedadc.jpg" width="3088" height="2058" alt="Doctors treat an ailing king, as depicted in an illumination in a 14th-century French manuscript. Charms were often used to treat conditions such as fevers (Image by Alamy)" title="Doctors treat an ailing king, as depicted in an illumination in a 14th-century French manuscript. Charms were often used to treat conditions such as fevers (Image by Alamy)" /> One example instructed the reader to make three signs of the cross “on the right ear of the feverish, and with each cross, say in succession: ‘Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands.’” The reader was then advised to write a series of charms involving the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – not to mention a lamb, a sheep and a lion (all of which appear in a prophetic passage in Isaiah 11) – on the patient’s palms. But perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this charm was that its healing power was only realised when the patient drank the ink with which it was written. This may not have been particularly pleasing to the palate but the patient could at least console themselves in the promise that, “without doubt, he will be cured”. I’m suffering from menstrual cramps Not everyone could afford to pay for the services of elite medics such as John Arderne. For the vast majority of people in the Middle Ages, finding a cure for illness meant relying on healers, their family or neighbours. These do-it-yourself doctors used everyday ingredients and common wild plants, which were crushed, chopped, boiled and strained with simple equipment found in the home. And, by the 14th and 15th centuries, this local medical knowledge bank was increasingly being collated and disseminated in hundreds of simple medicinal recipes written in vernacular languages. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/GettyImages-148796224-CMYKWeb-Ready-8093d13.jpg" width="3003" height="2002" alt="A medieval handbook shows a woman gathering medicinal plants. They were commonly used by ‘do-it-yourself doctors’ at this time (Image by Getty Images)" title="A medieval handbook shows a woman gathering medicinal plants. They were commonly used by ‘do-it-yourself doctors’ at this time (Image by Getty Images)" /> The medicines contained within these recipes were often administered in draughts – liquid concoctions for patients to drink. Or they could be applied via sticky salves applied to the skin on pieces of fabric or leather. Some cures – such as one for “grinding and aching in the womb”, found in a 15th-century English recipe – employed both. “Take five-leaf and stamp it and temper it with stale ale,” it counselled, “and giveth the sick to drink thereof, five spoonfuls at once, and seethe and bind it to her navel as hot as she may suffer.” I’ve lost my hearing If you opened a medical manuscript in the Middle Ages, then you may have been confronted by the sight of ‘Vein Man’. No, ‘Vein Man’ wasn’t a medieval superhero but a visual aid, designed to help readers locate veins in the human body. He makes for an interesting figure – chiefly for what he tells us about medieval people’s attitudes to their health. In order to cure many diseases, physicians might attempt to restore the correct humoural balance, often through purging the body of an excess or corrupted humour. A common method for this was phlebotomy, or bloodletting: the controlled release of blood from a patient’s veins. That’s where ‘Vein Man’ came into his own. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/USE-THIS-Vein-ManMS-ADD-03303-00003-000-00001Web-Ready-dc0ba1f.jpg" width="2630" height="1754" alt="An illustration of a man laying on a red surface with squares on it. Several organs in his body are labelled and there are notes all around the diagram" title="A c15th-century illustration of ‘Zodiac Man’, showing the influence of constellations on different parts of the body (Image by Cambridge University Library)" /> Accompanying labels described the ways in which bloodletting could alleviate a variety of ailments. For example: “Opening the vein next to the nostrils purges the head and aids and strengthens the hearing.” However, timing such interventions carefully was crucial. It was believed that each part of the body was governed by a sign of the Zodiac: Aries was linked to the head, whereas Pisces was connected to the feet. If the moon was in conjunction with a particular constellation, it was considered perilous to operate on the area governed by that sign of the Zodiac. This principle was summarised in a second kind of diagram, ‘Zodiac Man’. This comprised a human figure appended with the names (and sometimes miniature drawings) of the Zodiac signs. Again, accompanying labels provided advice – for example, when the moon was in Aries, you should “avoid incisions in the head or face and do not open the capital vein”. Read more | This dynasty of medieval kings had a secret weapon – and you probably have it too I can’t conceive Have you ever procured a weasel testicle from your local pharmacy? Or burned half a handful of young mouse-ear in an earthenware pot? No, thought not. But if you’d lived 800 years ago – and been struggling to conceive – the answer may have been different. Weasel testicle and mouse-ear (which, for those who don’t know, is a plant found all over Britain and Ireland) were two of the main ingredients in a medieval treatment for infertility. One remedy instructed users to grind and combine them into a “soft pill” which should be placed “so deeply in the private parts that they touch the uterus”. This was to be left for three days, during which the woman was advised to abstain entirely from sex. After this, the recipe continued, “she should have intercourse with a man and she should conceive without delay”. Medieval people believed that their world was divinely created and organised, with plants, animals and even stones placed there for the benefit of humans. It was thus logical that parts of an animal’s body, or plants shaped like vital organs, might have curative properties for corresponding parts of a human body. Treatments for infertility often employed bits of animals known to be prolific breeders. The remedy above was one of dozens compiled in the notebook of a Carmelite friar, Richard Tenet, in the early 15th century. Unlike monks, who were cloistered within their abbeys and priories, mendicant friars travelled between towns and cities; they relied on charitable alms, which they earned by preaching and hearing confessions. This brought them into contact with ordinary people, including women, from whom they appear to have learned common treatments. James Freeman is a medieval manuscripts specialist at the University of Cambridge. He is curator of Curious Cures: Medicine in the Medieval World, which is running at Cambridge University Library until 6 December This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
In the wake of the nuclear attacks on Japan, the official Allied line was that radiation sickness was not a danger. Yet, as Steve O’Hagan reveals, the first western journalist to witness the effects on the people of Hiroshima told a very different story
At 6am on 2 September 1945, Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett boarded a crowded train heading south-west from the wreckage of war-ravaged Tokyo. He was disobeying strict orders that no westerners should venture outside the Japanese capital – and, though he did not yet realise it, he was undertaking the most momentous journey of his life. The Second World War had ended. However, Japan had not formally surrendered, and American occupation was still to come. Japan’s cities lay in ruins, and Burchett couldn’t even be sure that the train line to his destination, over 400 miles away, was intact. He was also alone and in great danger – hence the Colt .45 pistol in his suitcase. Resentment towards the Allies ran high. Crammed around Burchett in his carriage were Japanese Army officers bearing samurai swords. Although he spoke almost no Japanese, Burchett could feel the animosity in the soldiers’ venomous stares. Also among the passengers was an American priest, who nervously warned Burchett that one wrong move could cost them their lives. Should they smile or shake hands, it could be taken by the Japanese officers as a sign of gloating over the Japanese surrender to the Allies that was being formalised later that day. Burchett later recalled glancing nervously at the soldiers: their hands seemed to toy with the hilts of their swords. As the train plunged in and out of long, dark tunnels, he was convinced that he could hear the sound of steel being unsheathed from scabbards. Thankfully, the assault he feared never came. But even as the train reached its destination some 20 hours after setting out, his tension did not abate. He was arriving in Hiroshima – the city that, four weeks earlier, had been nigh obliterated by the world’s first ever nuclear bomb attack. In one of the 20th century’s most remarkable feats of investigative reporting, Burchett was about to become the first western journalist to bear witness to the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. A scramble to control the narrative about the reality of the deadly nature of nuclear fallout had begun. Reputational risk Dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima presented the US with a public relations dilemma. What story should the country tell the world about unleashing this terrifyingly powerful experimental weapon on a densely populated city? The ‘leaders of the free world’ did not want to be seen as having become monsters while defeating the evils of fascism. As Henry Stimson, US secretary of war between 1940 and 1945, put it, the authorities didn’t want to “get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities”. Read more | How Nazi secrets triggered the ultimate moral dilemma – and led to Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb No one is sure exactly how many were killed in the attack. The city of Hiroshima initially estimated that 42,000 people died, from a population of around 350,000. A year later this number was revised up to 100,000. More recent estimates suggest that, by the end of 1945, up to 140,000 may have died from the immediate and long-term effects of the bomb. The vast majority were civilians. So when President Harry S Truman made radio addresses announcing the dropping of the bomb, he sought to establish the official narrative. First, he referred to Hiroshima not as a city full of civilians but as a “military base”. Second, the weapon was portrayed solely in terms of its explosive potential, with “more power than 20,000 tons of TNT”. Crucially, there was no mention of the potential dangers of radiation, which the Americans expected – or, perhaps more accurately, hoped – would not be an issue. Three days later, a New York Times article quoted Manhattan Project scientist Robert Oppenheimer saying: “There is every reason to believe that there was no appreciable radioactivity on the ground at Hiroshima and what little there was decayed very rapidly.” In the weeks that followed the bombing, this was the accepted narrative – until, that is, the previously little-known journalist Wilfred Burchett intervened. Born in 1911, Burchett grew up in the Australian Outback in Victoria, and left school at the age of 15 after his father’s business failed. He spent much of the late 1920s and early 1930s as an itinerant labourer. A self-taught linguist with a burning interest in the outside world, he travelled to London in 1937, where he married a Jewish refugee from Germany and worked for a travel agency arranging for German Jews to emigrate to destinations such as Palestine. Front-line reporting Returning to Australia, Burchett forged a career as a journalist. After Japan entered the Second World War in 1941, he filed stories from the Burmese and Chinese fronts. He then joined the US Marines on their island-hopping campaign across the Pacific in 1944, reporting for the UK’s Daily Express. When Japan accepted defeat following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Burchett was due to be part of the official press corps covering the final act of the Second World War: the signing of ceremonial surrender documents aboard the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. However, as some 600 correspondents gathered for the event, Burchett was not among them. Feigning illness to slip away from his US military chaperone, he set out on his illicit and perilous journey to Hiroshima. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/British-Newspaper-Archives-AtomicPlagueDailyExpresswebready-ba8b67e.jpg" width="1500" height="1189" alt="A picture of a newspaper article from the Daily Express newspaper, with the headline THE ATOMIC PLAGUE" title="Burchett’s report on the impacts of radiation sickness in Hiroshima appeared in the Daily Express in 1945. It contradicted the official US narrative about the bomb (Image by British Newspaper Archives)" /> Upon arrival, Burchett was astonished by the sheer physical destruction wreaked upon the city: almost 70 per cent of its buildings had been wrecked. “There was nothing but awful devastation and desolation,” he wrote later, likening what he saw to “some death-stricken other planet”. He was guided by a local journalist to a hospital. “If the evidence of the material destruction of the city had been horrifying,” Burchett wrote, “the effects on humans as I saw them inside the hospital wards was a thousand times more so.” Patients – often whole families – were laid out on filthy tatami mats among the rubble of the damaged facility. Burchett saw how, four weeks after the attack, people were being treated not only for the horrendous effects of the blast but also for something else more mysterious, more sinister. Victims suffered a raft of perplexing symptoms: fever, diarrhoea, hair loss, hideous marks on the skin, bleeding from the mouth and other orifices. We now recognise these as markers of the advanced stages of radiation sickness, but the local doctors at the time had no idea what they were seeing. Many believed that the bomb had released poisonous gases from the ground. Burchett immediately understood that what he was witnessing was not just a visual manifestation of the end of the Second World War but the fate of inhabitants of hundreds of cities worldwide should there be another global conflict. “If that does not make a journalist want to shape history in the right direction, what does?” he wrote. In a state of near shock, Burchett sat on a concrete block among the ruins outside the hospital and tapped out his story on his battered typewriter. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-92425109webready-9744727.jpg" width="3888" height="2592" alt="A black and white photograph of lots of people laying on the floor. One man is standing up, watching over the sick people laying down" title="Tens of thousands who survived the blast over Hiroshima suffered symptoms that mystified doctors who’d never seen the effects of radiation (Image by Getty Images)" /> Three days later, on Wednesday 5 September, Britain awoke to an apocalyptic front cover on the Daily Express. “The Atomic Plague” was the main splash, then: “Doctors fall as they work.” (In the haste to get the story published, authorship was wrongly attributed to “Peter” Burchett.) Read more | Kavita Puri on VJ Day: "We don't talk about the war in Asia – which was a messy, complicated conflict" Burchett’s searing reportage painted a terrifyingly vivid picture: “Hiroshima… looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence… It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made devastation.” The focus of his piece was, though, on the “uncanny after-effects” from which “people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly” weeks after the attack. The words he chose to describe this sinister malaise – “Atomic Plague” – suggested that the bomb dropped by the US was on a par with a chemical or biological weapon, both outlawed under the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Initiating global opposition Also striking was the polemical strap-line to Burchett’s article: “I write this as a warning to the world.” With these words, he arguably initiated the global opposition to nuclear weapons that persists to this day. His article travelled rapidly around the globe after the Express released the text free to the international press – but this was not the story that the US military wanted the world to read. US authorities immediately moved to shut down Burchett’s narrative. Press conferences were held at which his claims of “atomic plague” were refuted, and military officials accused Burchett of having “fallen victim to Japanese propaganda”. Hiroshima was declared out of bounds to the media, and any reports of radiation sickness were censored. Burchett’s press accreditation was rescinded and he was encouraged to leave Japan. In the American press, stories sympathetic to the official line quoted Manhattan Project officials minimising the reports of radiation sickness. “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin,” ran one piece in the New York Times on 13 September. General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, testified to the Senate in November 1945 that scientists believed radiation sickness “is a very pleasant way to die”. In this way, Burchett’s warning to the world was to a large extent successfully suppressed in the months following its publication. But nobody could stop the truth radiating out from Ground Zero forever. In the years that followed, more information about the effects of radiation exposure emerged. In August 1946, the New Yorker ran its now famous John Hersey-penned Hiroshima issue (published as a book later that year), which opened millions of eyes to the horrors of what had happened. In 1954, the crew of a Japanese fishing trawler were poisoned by radioactivity from a US thermonuclear bomb test, with one man dying. And victims in Hiroshima continued to die young as the years ticked by. Nonetheless, it would take decades for the US to accept the full reality of radiation sickness – even after it afflicted American citizens: it wasn’t until the 1980s that US veterans of atomic tests received any compensation. No such compensation has ever come the way of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Wilfred Burchett died in 1983, at the age of 72. By then, his scoop from the ruins of Hiroshima was largely forgotten in the west. But not in the city itself. Over the course of his life, Burchett returned several times to Hiroshima, where he was welcomed and feted by the Hibakusha – the survivors of the world’s first nuclear attacks. For them, there could be no forgetting. Steve O’Hagan is a documentary film and radio producer. His Archive on 4: Exposing Hiroshima programme about Wilfred Burchett’s reporting is available now on BBC Sounds This article was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
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