History Extra logo
The official website for BBC History Magazine
  1. Home
  2. Medicine and health

Medicine and health

Premium
Podcast Website large Simon Physician
Membership

500 years of medicine . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A badge promoting the Tufty Club, an organisation launched by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents to educate children on road safety, 1941. (Photo by Evening Standard/Getty Images)
20th Century

Safety first: 20th-century health and safety messages

Premium
Sarah Dunant. (Alamy)
Membership

The history of today . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Advertisement MPU index
Premium
Podcast Website large Katherine Arnold
Membership

The Spanish Flu pandemic . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Diversity in nursing
20th Century

In pictures: Diversity in nursing

Premium
Podcast-Website-large-Lindsey-Fitzharris-b27d194
Membership

Victorian medicine . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
Main-image-42ab20d
Membership

‘Quacks’: the terrors and theatrics of Victorian medicine . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Premium
Portrait depicting Mary, Queen of Scots.
Membership

History quiz – surgeons and Mary, Queen of Scots . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The operation
Membership

John Hunter and the horrors of 18th-century surgery

Advertisement MPU index
Premium
GettyImages-463920319 2
Membership

History quiz – Anglo-Saxons, Bright’s disease and the Byzantine army . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An engraving from Harvey's seminal work showing blood flowing through the veins of the lower arm. (SSPL/Getty Images)
Stuart

A giant leap for mankind: William Harvey reveals the circulation of the blood

The Franciscans treating victims of the plague, miniature from La Franceschina, c1474, codex by Jacopo Oddi. Perugia, Biblioteca Capitolare (Library). (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)
Medieval

The hospital experience in medieval England

16th century engraving depicting a man with leprosy
Medieval

Q&A How did doctors treat leprosy?

A group of girls taking a bath as part of a contest to see who can wash the fastest.
General prehistory

Q&A How old is bathing?

Chinese plague
Victorian

Q&A What was the Third Plague pandemic?