Medicine & Disease

50 Years of the NHS

Charles Webster reflects on the achievements and shortcomings of fifty years of the National Health Service.

Alchemy: New Light on a Dark Art

Fools' gold, Dr Faustus - traditional images of a Renaissance black art. But was there more to it than that? Zbigniew Szydlo and Richard Brzezinski offer an intriguing rehabilitation.

The Rise and Fall of the Age of Miracles

Roy Porter charts the whirlwind of medical triumphs that promised limitless progress in human health and our more sober reflections on the eve of the third millennium.

Mad Cows and Englishmen

Peter Atkins and Paul Brassley uncover alarming 19th-century precedents for the ‘mad cow’ fiasco.

The X Factor in X-rays

New innovations in radiology have sparked public criticism as to its safety and cost-effectiveness. Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen's discovery of the X-ray in 1895 and its subsequent use in medicine sparked similar safety and health hazard concerns throughout its development.

Quacks and Cash

The British Medical Journal is 150 years old this autumn and has witnessed in its time a kaleidoscope of changing attitudes towards medicines, their ethics and efficiency. Peter Bartrip looks at its campaign against patent medicines at the turn of the century and the ambiguities of attitudes in the medical profession it reveals.