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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

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

The father of handwashing

Doctors performing autopsies and then delivering babies – with not a hint of soap in between – was the grim recipe producing a lot of motherless offspring in the 1800s. But one man’s gargantuan efforts to upend accepted medical thinking turned the tide.

All stories (3)

Images

  • Textiles: four vignettes of stages in preparation of linen from flax. Wood engravings.
  • Amitāyus surrounded by forms of himself. Distemper on linen by a Tibetan painter.
  • Amitāyus surrounded by forms of himself. Distemper on linen by a Tibetan painter.
  • University Children's Hospital, Vienna: a storage space for bed linen, pillows and mattresses. Photograph, 1921.
  • Claybury Asylum, Woodford, Essex: a linen room. Photograph by the London & County Photographic Co., [1893?].
  • Military Hospital V.R. 76, Ris-Orangis, France: store for linen supplied by Red Cross. Photograph, 1916.
  • White as snow : if you wish your linen to be white as snow, Sunlight Soap will make it so.
  • White as snow : if you wish your linen to be white as snow, Sunlight Soap will make it so.
  • Christ heals the haemorrhaging woman; women wash their linen in a pond. Etching by G. Bodenehr after C.J. Vernet and J.C. Tardieu.
  • A male corpse is wrapped in linen and entombed while a funeral cortège proceeds into a church in the background. Etching with engraving by G. Spilberg after C. de Passe.
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Catalogue

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