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  • Article

Parasites and pests from the medieval to the modern

Humans have been reluctant hosts to a plethora of unpleasant parasites for centuries. And medieval evidence shows our modern distaste for these little irritations is just as ancient.

  • Article

Our endless quest for eternal youth

From poisonous 16th-century cosmetics to the latest “vampire facelift”, discover the fashions in unsavoury methods for improving our appearance.

  • Article

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.

  • Book extract

Renaissance women and their killer cosmetics

In this extract from ‘How to be a Renaissance Woman’, Jill Burke delves into a complex world of beauty products, poison and patriarchy – and reveals the impossible contradictions of femininity faced by 16th-century women.

All stories (4)

Images

  • The plague of lice. Coloured etching.
  • German soldiers with heads shaved to avoid lice.
  • A Spanish family picking lice or fleas from each other's heads. Coloured etching, 1812.
  • A Spanish family picking lice or fleas from each other's heads. Coloured etching, 1812.
  • One ape removing lice from the fur of another ape. Reproduction of an etching by F. Lüdecke.
  • Typhus prevention equipment: the Lelean sack disinfestor, used to disinfest clothing and kill lice carrying typhus. Photograph, 1900/1920 (?).
  • Fumigating a building (to destroy typhus-carrying lice ?) with the Clayton Type B machine, England (?). Photograph, 1910/1930.
  • Crabs representing a nickname for pubic lice or 'VD' with chinese lettering; a safe-sex advertisement by AIDS Concern, Hong Kong. Colour lithograph, ca. 1997.
  • An old woman wearing spectacles picking fleas or lice from a man's hair; behind her stands a man who holds up a jug. Engraving by J. Aliamet after A. van Ostade.
  • Vincente Licea. Photograph, Mexico.
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  • Seminar

Parasites in Medieval Europe

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