Medicine & Disease

Surgeons trying to eliminate pain eventually arrived at anaesthesia – but not before a contest with older, more unusual therapies. Why was mesmerism so magnetic?

For much of the 20th century, young working-class women in England found out about procreation the ‘hard way’ or the ‘dirty way’.

The First World War revealed the bad state of Britain’s teeth. Intervention was required to keep the nation biting fit.

Sarah Wise’s The Undesirables: The Law that Locked Away a Generation lays bare the cruelty and injustice of the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913.

When it was first named in 17th-century Switzerland, nostalgia was a very real – and very dangerous – disease.

To support ex-servicemen injured during the First World War, charities like St Dunstan’s found creative ways of fundraising. 

For centuries, scientists and philosophers used phantom limbs to unravel the secrets of the human mind. While we know phantom pain exists, we still don’t know why.

There is an enduring obsession with understanding the body and mind of Henry VIII, but how sound are diagnoses past and present – and do we need them?

Repulsive revelations of bodily infestations were viewed by some in medieval Europe as proof of sanctity. But for most, parasites were just plain disgusting.