Medicine & Disease

Richard Willis charts how order was brought to the medical profession by the foundation of the General Medical Council 150 years ago.

Paddy Hartley describes how an interest in the treatment of facial injuries in the First World War led him to develop a new form of sculpture.

Anthea Gerrie explores a remarkable excavation, a Roman surgeon’s house in Rimini.

In the late 18th century, a French invasion force marched into Portugal. Napoleon was insisting that Portugal must close its ports to British shipping. When it failed to comply, the invading army was given orders to march on Lisbon and seize the royal family. The Queen and her family fled to Brazil, and by this time, Maria I of Portugal had been insane for more than fifteen years. 

Neil Pemberton and Michael Worboys tell the fascinating story of how rabies – a disease that still kills thousands worldwide every year – was eradicated from Britain.

As Britain gets used to the ban on smoking in public spaces, Virginia Berridge looks at the way attitudes to public health have changed in the last fifty years, particularly among the medical profession.

The Asian influenza epidemic of 1957 killed more than 16,000 people in Britain and more than a million globally. It exposed the fragility of the antibiotic age.

Jane Bowden-Dan explores medical links between the Caribbean and London that throw important light on the position of blacks in eighteenth-century British society.

Krista Kesselring describes how coroners in the Early Modern period tried to establish the cause of death in disputed cases.

Richard Cavendish remembers the events of December 12th, 1905.