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Stories

  • Article

Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

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

  • Article

How injury changed my brain

Meg Fozzard, who experienced a brain injury in her 20s, writes about the huge impact it's had on her life, and talks to others with similar injuries.

  • Article

Bleeding healthy

For thousands of years, and in many different cultures, people have practised bloodletting for health and medical reasons. Julia Nurse explains where and when bleeding was used, how it was done, and why.

  • Article

When parenting brings a paradigm shift

There were no indications during her pregnancy that Carol Nahra’s son would have severe, life-threatening disabilities. Here she describes the stages on her journey from shock to love and beyond.

All stories (13)

Images

  • Multiple pregnancy, abnormalities of the foetal head, and contracted pelvis in childbirth. Lithograph after W. F. Victor Bonney.
  • Two figures with abnormalities, one with wings as arms and feathered legs and the other one with a horned head
  • Three figures with abnormalities, One figure has a human body with a ducks head, the second figure has a Lions body with a human head and the third has a human body with webbed feet and hands
  • Foetuses of animals born with abnormalities (e.g. two heads). Engraving by P. Simonneau after himself, 1734.
  • Two human figures with abnormalities, one with two sets of arms and legs and the other with two heads
  • Two human heads with abnormality, one frontal view with no nose and one profile with large nose
  • Abnormal heads and skulls, fractured and bandaged clavicle and a broken (?) leg bandaged in a splint. Engraving by W. Lowry, 1811, after J. Farey, the younger.
  • Abnormal heads and skulls, fractured and bandaged clavicle and a broken (?) leg bandaged in a splint. Engraving by W. Lowry, 1811, after J. Farey, the younger.
  • Janus head or two-faced man
  • A three-headed eagle in a crowned alchemical flask, representing mercury sublimated three times. Watercolour painting by E.A. Ibbs.
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Catalogue

All works (230)