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  • Article

How tuberculosis became a test case for eugenic theory

A 19th-century collaboration that failed to prove how facial features could indicate the diseases people were most likely to suffer from became a significant stepping stone in the new ‘science’ of eugenics.

  • Article

Illness and the influence of the stars

Could alien germs from space have caused major pandemics across the world? Taras Young investigates the ideas of a few unconventional scientists who believe this to be the case.

  • Article

Female masturbation and the perils of pleasure

Dr Kate Lister exposes the brutal 19th-century ‘cures’ for women who indulged in masturbation.

  • Article

Tragic artists and their all-consuming passions

Does having a debilitating disease help or hinder creative genius?

All stories (25)

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  • Cylindrical wooden soum covered with medicine and with four small bags containing power-giving substances. Used for the causation of disease by human agency. Ghana, West Africa.
  • The ladies dispensatory: or every woman her own physician. Treating of the nature, causes, and various symptoms, of all diseases, infirmities, and disorders ... that most peculiarly afflict the fair sex.
  • Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench Asteraceae. Coneflower. Distribution: North America. Austin (2004) records that the roots were chewed, or used as a tincture for coughs by the Choctaw. It was combined with Rhus typhina to treat venereal disease by the Delaware. Very little record of this being used by Native Americans, who used E. angustifolia very widely - Regarded as a panacea and magical herb. This and E. pallida were used to treat snakebite, spider bite, cancer, toothache, burns, sores, wounds, flu and colds. E. purpurea in modern times has been used as an ‘immunostimulant’, but is known to cause a fall in white cell count, and to be purely a placebo. Licensed for use as a Traditional Herbal Medicine, which does not require proof of efficacy, in the UK. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench Asteraceae. Coneflower. Distribution: North America. Austin (2004) records that the roots were chewed, or used as a tincture for coughs by the Choctaw. Combined with Rhus typhina to treat venereal disease by the Delaware. Very little record of this being used by Native Americans, who used E. angustifolia very widely - Regarded as a panacea and magical herb. This and E. pallida were used to treat snakebite, spider bite, cancer, toothache, burns, sores, wounds, flu and colds. E. purpurea in modern times has been used as an ‘immunostimulant’, but is known to cause a fall in white cell count, and to be purely a placebo. Licensed for use as a Traditional Herbal Medicine, which does not require proof of efficacy, in the UK. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench Asteraceae. Coneflower. Distribution: North America. Austin (2004) records that the roots were chewed, or used as a tincture for coughs by the Choctaw. It was combined with Rhus typhina to treat venereal disease by the Delaware. Very little record of this being used by Native Americans, who used E. angustifolia very widely - Regarded as a panacea and magical herb. This and E. pallida were used to treat snakebite, spider bite, cancer, toothache, burns, sores, wounds, flu and colds. E. purpurea in modern times has been used as an ‘immunostimulant’, but is known to cause a fall in white cell count, and to be purely a placebo. Licensed for use as a Traditional Herbal Medicine, which does not require proof of efficacy, in the UK. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Researches into the causes, nature, and treatment of the more prevalent diseases of India, and of warm climates generally. Illustrated with cases, post mortem examinations, and numerous coloured engravings of morbid structures / by James Annesley.
  • A treatise on medical police, and on diet, regimen, etc. In which the permanent and regularly recurring causes of disease ... are described; with a general plan of medical police to obviate them / [John Roberton].
  • A treatise on the scurvy. Containing an inquiry into the nature, causes, and cure, of that disease. Together with a critical and chronological view of what has been published on the subject ... / [James Lind].
  • An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae : a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the cow pox / By Edward Jenner.
  • An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae : a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the cow pox / By Edward Jenner.
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