Doctor bleeding a patient

Medicine and health

Circulation of the blood, 1628. English physician William Harvey (1578-1657) was the first to correctly describe the mechanism whereby blood is circulated in the body. Diagram showing the existence of valves in veins. From Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus, by William Harvey. (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)

A medical renaissance?.

A medieval illustration showing a doctor bleeding a patient

General History

A history of medicine14 surprising facts

Hidden livesVictorian fasting girls

Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert and Edward Jenner

My history heroDame Sarah Gilbert chooses Edward Jenner.

Ilustration showing thorned brambles growing up the nervous system of a pink torso, the brambles at the bottom of the piece are growing in the shape of a uterus, and there are blackberries where the ovaries should be. A blue, gloved hand is coming in from the left to pluck at the ovary blackberry, and another gloved hand coming in from the right is using gardening secateurs to cut one of the branches. A metaphor for endometriosis, and in a broader sense, women's medical neglect and oppression

The gender pain gap: perceptions of women's health through history.

Illustration showing woman receiving a caesarean section

General History

Q&AWhat are the origins of the caesarean section?

Q&AWhich king thought he was made of glass

Reverend Spencer Parsons, head of the Chicago branch of the Clergy Consultation Service (CCS), an interfaith group dedicated to helping women obtain abortions before 'Roe v Wade'

The American clergy who helped women get abortions before Roe v Wade.

A British poster dated 1917 designed by Bert Thomas. (Photo by Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo)

A brief history of smoking

Jesus is shown cleansing ten lepers in a scene from the Gospel According to Luke, illustrated in an 11th-century manuscript

General History

LeprosyHow has the disease been perceived and treated through history?

Portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, showing his pronounced Habsburg jaw

Q&AWhat was the Habsburg jaw?

A brief history of US abortion law, before and after Roe v Wade

A woodcut of the brain from Andreas Vesalius’s groundbreaking 1543 treatise On the Fabric of the Human Body

The Elizabethans' complex relationship with mental wellbeing.

Plastic surgery: transformed by WW1.

The birth of insulin: a scientific drama.

Dr DA Henderson examines children’s smallpox vaccination scars in Ethiopia

Why we should remember…Target Zero Day.

Episode 6How the pandemic transformed societies.

Catherine the Great: inoculation pioneer.

Episode 5Death, sin & spirituality.

Domenico Fetti painting illustrating a melancholic woman in the early 17th century

The Anatomy of Melancholy: how Robert Burton helped shape our understanding of the mind.

Episode 4Medieval medical thinking.

Episode 3Living through the plague.

Episode 2Origins & spread.

A young woman sat in front of a mirror applies lipstick, 1967

The price of beauty: the dangerous cosmetics used until the 20th century

The history of beauty: everything you wanted to know.

Episode 1Introduction.

A stone statue of a woman's torso with a drop of blood over the abdomen, representing women's bodies and menstruation

General History

A history of menstruation

Gardens and the scientific revolution.

Periods, fertility & childbirth: a pre-modern history.

Outbreak of dance mania

The medieval dancing plague: what caused people to dance themselves to death?