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  • Article

The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians

Dr Annabel Sowemimo explores the web of connections between early Black British doctors, the role of empire in West Africa and the pernicious reach of scientific racism.

  • Article

The father of handwashing

Doctors performing autopsies and then delivering babies – with not a hint of soap in between – was the grim recipe producing a lot of motherless offspring in the 1800s. But one man’s gargantuan efforts to upend accepted medical thinking turned the tide.

  • Article

The mystery of the malignant brain

In 1884 a neurologist successfully used a patient’s symptoms, plus a new kind of map, to locate a brain tumour. Discover how his best-laid plans for treatment worked out.

  • Article

The case of the cancerous stomach

Steak and schnitzel were on the menu again after Theodor Billroth successfully excised a woman’s stomach cancer in 1881. Remarkably, today’s surgeons still perform the same procedure, with slight modifications.

All stories (12)

Images

  • A physician and two assistants attending a plague patient. Lithographic reproduction of a woodcut.
  • A physician lecturing to students about uroscopy, he points to a flask held by an assistant. Heliotype.
  • Three 17th-century physicians with an assistant who carries a large clyster. Watercolour by E. Durandeau, 1876.
  • A physician reading a recipe instructs his assistant who is mixing with a pestle and mortar. Engraving after a twelfth century manuscript.
  • A surgeon about to bleed a male patient's leg, he is observed by an older physician and aided by an assistant. Engraving, 1586.
  • A surgeon about to bleed a male patient's leg, he is observed by an older physician and aided by an assistant. Engraving, 1586.
  • An old physician is taking a young woman's pulse and pointing to her heart, implying that she is suffering from lovesickness, the physicians' assistant is grinning and mixing a concoction. Engraving by I.S. Helman, 1775, after J.B. Leprince, 1773.
  • A physician by his patient's death-bed; represented with a skeletal death figure at the window and an undertaker's assistant arriving with a coffin. Coloured etching by T. Rowlandson, 1813?, after R. Newton.
  • A physician by his patient's death-bed; represented with a skeletal death figure at the window and an undertaker's assistant arriving with a coffin. Coloured etching by T. Rowlandson, 1813?, after R. Newton.
  • An excited physician examining a urine specimen and referring to a book, while the patient waits for the diagnosis, two assistants are mixing concoctions in the background. Mezzotint by J.B. Enzensberger after D. Teniers, the younger.
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