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  • V. Ramakrishna. Photograph by L.J. Bruce-Chwatt.
  • Barnabé Oriani. Line engraving by [A. L.] after V. Demarchi.
  • Antonio Cocchi. Line engraving by V. Rossi, 1758, after L. Frati.
  • Thomas Alva Edison. Wood engraving by M. K. L. Wright after V. Daireaux.
  • Broussais instructs a nurse to carry on bleeding a blood-besmeared patient. Coloured lithograph after V.L.
  • Broussais instructs a nurse to carry on bleeding a blood-besmeared patient. Coloured lithograph after V.L.
  • Saint Mary Magdalen. Engraving by V. Vanni after L. Lorenzi after G.F. Barbieri, il Guercino.
  • À la gloire du gr. Arch. de l'Univ : tableau des membres de la R. L. : L'essence de la paix ̀à l'Or. de Bordeaux, pour l'Aan de la V.. L. 5853.
  • Egyptian fortune-tellers outside a palace on the Nile. Etching by V. Pillement, J.L.C. Pauquet and F. Dequevauviller after L.F. Cassas, 1798.
  • A Mrua medicine man or shaman with his assistants, Central Africa. Coloured wood engraving after V.L. Cameron.
  • Cana of Galilee, Israel: an ancient water fountain in use. Engraving by V. Pillement, J.L.C. Pauquet and F.N.B. Dequevauviller after L.F. Cassas.
  • The tomb of Tongamana in Tonga, with people standing in the foreground. Lithograph by L.A. Asselineau and V. Adam after L.A. de Sainson, ca. 1833.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Line engraving by L. J. D. Delaistre after H. Lalaisse after F. V. E. Delacroix [?].
  • Jacko, a boy carrying a bow and arrows, acting as servant to Verney Lovett Cameron. Wood engraving after V.L. Cameron.
  • An alchemist peacefully writing in a room strewn with papers. Engraving by V.A.L. Texier after F. Giani after T. Wyck.
  • A torture chamber where one victim is tied up and suspended from a pulley while being interrogated by two scribes, while another victim is suspended from the ceiling and lowered onto a spike with his rectum. Etching by L.M. after V.V.
  • Hector C. Cameron is consulted by a mother with a crying baby at his Guy's Hospital Out Patient clinic. Drawing by L. V. Watson (?), 1920.
  • The painters Willem van de Velde the younger and Adriaen van de Velde studying a painting on an easel. Engraving by T.V. Desclaux after J.L. Meissonier.
  • The painters Willem van de Velde the younger and Adriaen van de Velde studying a painting on an easel. Engraving by T.V. Desclaux after J.L. Meissonier.
  • Charles Michel, Abbé de l'Epée. Line engraving by A.V. Sixdéniers.
  • The poet P.J. Béranger at the age of twenty sits on the bed in his garret while his girfriend Lisette covers the window with a shawl in the lack of a curtain. Engraving by C.L.V. Mauduit, 1847, after H. Pauquet.
  • Saint Mary (the Blessed Virgin) with the Christ Child. Engraving by V.M. Picot, 1784, after A. Turchi, l'Orbetto.
  • A playing card bearing the Jack of hearts with a penis in his mouth and a 'V' next to the heart representing an advertisement for safe sex by AIDE, the support group for those with HIV/AIDS, with the help of l'AFLS [l'Agence Française de Lutte conte le SIDA]. Colour lithograph by Joël Mohr, 1994.
  • Histoire naturelle de la santé et de la maladie : chez les végétaux et chez les animaux en général, et en particulier chez l'homme; suivi du formulaire pour la nouvelle méthode de traitement hygiénique et curatif / par F.-V. Raspail.
  • Veratrum nigrum L. Melanthiaceae Distribution: Europe. Cows do not eat Veratrum species in the meadows, and human poisoning with it caused vomiting and fainting. In the 1850s it was found to reduce the heart's action and slow the pulse (Bentley, 1861, called it an 'arterial sedative'), and in 1859 it was used orally in a woman who was having convulsions due to eclampsia. Dr Paul DeLacy Baker in Alabama treated her with drops of a tincture of V. viride. She recovered. It was used thereafter, as the first choice of treatment, and, when blood pressure monitoring became possible, it was discovered that it worked by reducing the high blood pressure that occurs in eclampsia. By 1947 death rates were reduced from 30% to 5% by its use at the Boston Lying-in Hospital. It works by dilating the arteries in muscles and in the gastrointestinal circulation. A further use of Veratrum species came to light when it was noted that V. californicum - and other species - if eaten by sheep resulted in foetal malformations, in particular only having one eye. The chemical in the plant that was responsible, cyclopamine, was found to act on certain genetic pathways responsible for stem cell division in the regulation of the development of bilateral symmetry in the embryo/foetus. Synthetic analogues have been developed which act on what have come to be called the 'hedgehog signalling pathways' in stem cell division, and these 'Hedgehog inhibitors' are being introduced into medicine for the treatment of various cancers like chondrosarcoma, myelofibrosis, and advanced basal cell carcinoma. The drugs are saridegib, erismodegib and vismodegib. All the early herbals report on its ability to cause vomiting. As a herbal medicine it is Prescription Only, via a registered dentist or physician (UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)). Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Veratrum album L. Melanthiaceae Distribution: Europe. Cows do not eat Veratrum species in the meadows, and human poisoning with it caused vomiting and fainting. In the 1850s it was found to reduce the heart's action and slow the pulse (Bentley, 1861, called it an 'arterial sedative'), and in 1859 it was used orally in a woman who was having convulsions due to eclampsia. Dr Paul DeLacy Baker in Alabama treated her with drops of a tincture of V. viride. She recovered. It was used thereafter, as the first choice of treatment, and when blood pressure monitoring became possible, it was discovered that it worked by reducing the high blood pressure that occurs in eclampsia. By 1947 death rates were reduced from 30% to 5% by its use at the Boston Lying in Hospital. It works by dilating the arteries in muscles and in the gastrointestinal circulation. A further use of Veratrum species came to light when it was noted that V. californicum -and other species - if eaten by sheep resulted in foetal malformations, in particular only having one eye. The chemical in the plant that was responsible, cyclopamine, was found to act on certain genetic pathways responsible for stem cell division in the regulation of the development of bilateral symmetry in the embryo/foetus. Synthetic analogues have been developed which act on what have come to be called the 'hedgehog signalling pathways' in stem cell division, and these 'Hedgehog inhibitors' are being introduced into medicine for the treatment of various cancers like chondrosarcoma, myelofibrosis, and advanced basal cell carcinoma. The drugs are saridegib, erismodegib and vismodegib. All the early herbals report on its ability to cause vomiting. As a herbal medicine it is Prescription Only, via a registered dentist or physician (UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)). Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Alpacas grazing in Peru. Lithograph by P S Duval & Co after Lieut L Gibbon, U.S.N.
  • Diseases spread by the house fly. Colour lithograph by L.H. Wilder for the U.S. Public Health Service, 1912/1922.
  • Paeonia officinalis L. Paeoniaceae, European Peony, Distribution: Europe. The peony commemorates Paeon, physician to the Gods of ancient Greece (Homer’s Iliad v. 401 and 899, circa 800 BC). Paeon, came to be associated as being Apollo, Greek god of healing, poetry, the sun and much else, and father of Aesculapius/Asclepias. Theophrastus (circa 300 BC), repeated by Pliny, wrote that if a woodpecker saw one collecting peony seed during the day, it would peck out one’s eyes, and (like mandrake) the roots had to be pulled up at night by tying them to the tail of a dog, and one’s ‘fundament might fall out’ [anal prolapse] if one cut the roots with a knife. Theophrastus commented ‘all this, however, I take to be so much fiction, most frivolously invented to puff up their supposed marvellous properties’. Dioscorides (70 AD, tr. Beck, 2003) wrote that 15 of its black seeds, drunk with wine, were good for nightmares, uterine suffocation and uterine pains. Officinalis indicates it was used in the offices, ie the clinics, of the monks in the medieval era. The roots, hung round the neck, were regarded as a cure for epilepsy for nearly two thousand years, and while Galen would have used P. officinalis, Parkinson (1640) recommends the male peony (P. mascula) for this. He also recommends drinking a decoction of the roots. Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal (1737), published by the College of Physicians, explains that it was used to cure febrile fits in children, associated with teething. Although she does not mention it, these stop whatever one does. Parkinson also reports that the seeds are used for snake bite, uterine bleeding, people who have lost the power of speech, nightmares and melancholy. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Paeonia officinalis L. Paeoniaceae, European Peony, Distribution: Europe. The peony commemorates Paeon, physician to the Gods of ancient Greece (Homer’s Iliad v. 401 and 899, circa 800 BC). Paeon, came to be associated as being Apollo, Greek god of healing, poetry, the sun and much else, and father of Aesculapius/Asclepias. Theophrastus (circa 300 BC), repeated by Pliny, wrote that if a woodpecker saw one collecting peony seed during the day, it would peck out one’s eyes, and (like mandrake) the roots had to be pulled up at night by tying them to the tail of a dog, and one’s ‘fundament might fall out’ [anal prolapse] if one cut the roots with a knife. Theophrastus commented ‘all this, however, I take to be so much fiction, most frivolously invented to puff up their supposed marvellous properties’. Dioscorides (70 AD, tr. Beck, 2003) wrote that 15 of its black seeds, drunk with wine, were good for nightmares, uterine suffocation and uterine pains. Officinalis indicates it was used in the offices, ie the clinics, of the monks in the medieval era. The roots, hung round the neck, were regarded as a cure for epilepsy for nearly two thousand years, and while Galen would have used P. officinalis, Parkinson (1640) recommends the male peony (P. mascula) for this. He also recommends drinking a decoction of the roots. Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal (1737), published by the College of Physicians, explains that it was used to cure febrile fits in children, associated with teething. Although she does not mention it, these stop whatever one does. Parkinson also reports that the seeds are used for snake bite, uterine bleeding, people who have lost the power of speech, nightmares and melancholy. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.