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  • Article

History of condoms from animal to rubber

Come on a journey from the first recorded condoms in the 16th century to the modern female condoms in the 1990s – and everything in between.

  • Article

Dirt, disease and the Inspector of Nuisances

In the days when ‘bad air’ was thought to spread disease, dozens of Inspectors of Nuisances ceaselessly struggled against the perils of dirt – both visible and invisible.

  • Article

Jim, the horse of death

Horses’ blood was used to produce an antitoxin that saved thousands of children from dying from diphtheria, but contamination was a deadly problem. Find out how a horse called Jim was the catalyst for the beginnings of medical regulation.

  • Book extract

The science of why things spread

From deadly pandemics to viral tweets, Adam Kucharski explores what makes something contagious.

All stories (37)

Images

  • The tiger mosquito and the grey 'night-biting' mosquito as carriers of disease (dengue, yellow fever and filaria); advising citizens to clean up water-holding rubbish. Colour lithograph, ca. 1928.
  • The tiger mosquito and the grey 'night-biting' mosquito as carriers of disease (dengue, yellow fever and filaria); advising citizens to clean up water-holding rubbish. Colour lithograph, ca. 1928.
  • The tiger mosquito and the grey 'night-biting' mosquito as carriers of disease (dengue, yellow fever and filaria); advising citizens to clean up water-holding rubbish. Colour lithograph, ca. 1928.
  • Australian public health information poster on the tiger mosquito and the grey 'night-biting' mosquito as carriers of disease (dengue, yellow fever and filaria), advising citizens to clean up water-holding rubbish, produced by Brisbane City Council Department of Health after the 1926/1927 dengue epidemic. Colour lithograph, ca. 1928.
  • Paris quadrifolia L. Trilliaceae Herb Paris Distribution: Europe and temperate Asia. This dramatic plant was known as Herb Paris or one-berry. Because of the shape of the four leaves, resembling a Burgundian cross or a true love-knot, it was also known as Herb True Love. Prosaically, the name ‘Paris’ stems from the Latin ‘pars’ meaning ‘parts’ referring to the four equal leaves, and not to the French capital or the lover of Helen of Troy. Sixteenth century herbalists such as Fuchs, who calls it Aconitum pardalianches which means leopard’s bane, and Lobel who calls it Solanum tetraphyllum, attributed the poisonous properties of Aconitum to it. The latter, called monkshood and wolfsbane, are well known as poisonous garden plants. Gerard (1633), however, reports that Lobel fed it to animals and it did them no harm, and caused the recovery of a dog poisoned deliberately with arsenic and mercury, while another dog, which did not receive Herb Paris, died. It was recommended thereafter as an antidote to poisons. Coles (1657) wrote 'Herb Paris is exceedingly cold, wherupon it is proved to represse the rage and force of any Poyson, Humour , or Inflammation.' Because of its 'cold' property it was good for swellings of 'the Privy parts' (where presumably hot passions were thought to lie), to heal ulcers, cure poisoning, plague, procure sleep (the berries) and cure colic. Through the concept of the Doctrine of Signatures, the black berry represented an eye, so oil distilled from it was known as Anima oculorum, the soul of the eye, and 'effectual for all the disease of the eye'. Linnaeus (1782) listed it as treating 'Convulsions, Mania, Bubones, Pleurisy, Opththalmia', but modern authors report the berry to be toxic. That one poison acted as an antidote to another was a common, if incorrect, belief in the days of herbal medicine. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Rabies : rabies is a killer disease! : there is an increasing risk of it entering Britain as a result of animal smuggling : your job could bring you close to the source of such smuggling. Please help to keep rabies out of Britain : bringing it in is madness / MAFF.
  • Rabies : rabies is a killer disease! : there is an increasing risk of it entering Britain as a result of animal smuggling : your job could bring you close to the source of such smuggling. Please help to keep rabies out of Britain : bringing it in is madness / MAFF.
  • Treatment of worms in animals in Kenya. Colour lithograph, ca. 2000.
  • The path of infection of plague from rats via fleas to man. Drawing by A.L. Tarter, 194-.
  • A parasitic nematode (Filaria immitis) and its vector, the mosquito (Myzomyia superpicta). Coloured drawing by A.J.E. Terzi.
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