Stories
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Drawing the human animal
We might try to deny our animal instincts, but this series of extraordinary 17th-century drawings suggests they are only too apparent.
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When monarchs healed the sick
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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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.
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Revelations of blindness in the Middle Ages
Medieval texts, from Islamic medical treatises to Christian books of miracles, reveal surprisingly varied and complex experiences of blindness. But when medieval scholar Jude Seal experienced visual impairment themselves, they gained an even deeper understanding of the lives they were studying.
Catalogue
- Archives and manuscripts
- Online
English Recipe Book, later 17th - early 18th century
Date: Late 17th century - 18th centuryReference: MS.7822- Pictures
- Online
The menhir of Saint-Uzec, in Pleumeur-Bodou, Brittany. Colour lithograph after A. de Mortillet.
Mortillet, Adrien de, 1853-1931.Date: 1897Reference: 31411i- Archives and manuscripts
Secreta Secretorum, France, 17th century
Date: 17th centuryReference: MS.7298- Pictures
A woman giving birth in an elaborate room aided by a midwife and a nun and surrounded by her husband and family. Engraving by A. Bosse.
Bosse, Abraham, 1602-1676.Date: [between 1600 and 1699]Reference: 16882iPart of: Le mariage à la ville- Books
- Online
Aphrodisiacs and anti-aphrodisiacs : three essays on the powers of reproduction : with some account of the judicial "congress" as practised in France during the seventeenth century / by John Davenport.
Davenport, John, 1789-1877.Date: 1869