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64 results
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Charged bodies

| Ruth Garde

Electrified humans brought education and performance together with a spark in the 18th century.

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The chymist’s trade card

| Julia Nurse

An 18th-century trade card reveals far more than its owner may have intended.

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Interpreting the Ayurvedic Man

| Lalita Kaplish

A British Sign Language video is the latest interpretation of an unique 18th-century Nepali painting about Ayurvedic medicine.

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Doctors and the English seaside

| Jane Darcy

Fashionable seaside towns in England owe much of their popularity to 18th-century doctors, who advised them to take the 'sea cure'.

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The Ladies of Llangollen

| Sarah Bentley

As we celebrate LGBT History Month, Sarah Bentley explores the relationship between the two 18th-century women known as the Ladies of Llangollen.

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Printing the body

| Julia Nurse

The 18th century saw multiple technical developments in both printing and medicine. Colourful collaborations ensued – to the benefit of growing ranks of medical students.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Imagining the foetus

| Tania Staras

From the miniature adult in the womb imagined by 15th-century artists to the increasing detail of today’s ultrasound scans, Tania Staras traces our changing view of the human foetus.

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The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria

| Natasha Ruiz-GómezKathleen Arundell

A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.

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What is air, and how do we know?

| Hasok ChangTracy Satchwill

Watching bubbles in fermenting beer led 18th-century scientist Joseph Priestley to invent sparkling water – and to discover that different gases make up the air we breathe.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Hookah smoking in colonial Calcutta

| Baijayanti Chatterjee

Hookah smoking began in the royal courts of Mughal India, and like many other local customs, it was readily adopted by British colonials in the 18th century as a symbol of wealth and status.

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Foraging for a taste of the past

| Wross LawrenceMarco Kesseler

Follow tips from a professional forager to recreate delicious 18th-century recipes from plants growing wild in parks and on urban wasteland.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

The evolution of war-zone medicine

| Sonia Zhuravlyova

The need to deal with battlefield injuries has led to inventive designs for extreme situations. Find out how camel-drawn ambulances and flat-pack hospitals have helped casualties survive.

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The girl with no name

| Paul Craddock

When a now anonymous teenager sold her tooth for transplant, she couldn’t have predicted that she’d end up at the heart of a troubling story about 18th-century beauty ideals.

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Duelling doctors

| Russell Moul

An enduring enthusiasm for 18th-century gentlemen to defend their ‘honour’ by duelling placed doctors in a delicate position. Specially when they faced being shot themselves.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

The lost art of convalescence

| Lizzie Enfield

The efficacy of antibiotics and the demands of work mean we rarely convalesce after an illness. But in the past it was an important part of the return to health.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

In search of the real Sultan Tipu

| David Jesudason

Who was Tipu? David Jesudason explores the life of an 18th-century Indian leader, while confronting racist imagery and the destructive impact of colonialism.

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There’s more to gingerbread than ginger

| Mary-Anne Boermans

‘Bake-Off’ finalist Mary-Anne Boermans treats us to the warm and enticing pleasures of gingerbread over centuries.

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The current that kills

| Ruth Garde

In the 19th century, electricity held life in the balance, with the power to execute – or reanimate.

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Drugs in Victorian Britain

| Louise Crane

Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?

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Witches

| Helen FosterEast Midlands Oral History ArchiveAsma Istwani

Many of the women persecuted as witches in the 16th-century “witch craze” were over 50 and exhibited signs of menopause. Helen Foster suggests that the stigma of the wicked witch still affects older women and how they deal with menopause.

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Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

| Cassidy Phillips

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

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When monarchs healed the sick

| Rita YatesSteven Pocock

Our current Queen fortunately doesn’t have to spend hours laying hands on the sick to cure them. But it was a different story for monarchs of the early modern era, whose touch was a sought-after treatment for scrofula.

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Remote diagnosis from wee to the Web

| Christine RoSteven Pocock

Medical practice might have moved on from when patients posted flasks of their urine for doctors to taste, but telehealth today keeps up the tradition of remote diagnosis – to our possible detriment.

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Mapping the body

These intricate anatomical drawings show how Ayurveda practitioners have explored the human body and how it works.

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Thunderbolts and lightning

| Ruth Garde

Fire in the sky has always exerted a hold on our imagination, even as early scientists unlocked the secrets of atmospheric electricity.