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  • Article

Rediscovering Margaret Louden, a forgotten NHS hero

Bored during lockdown, David Jesudason started bin diving at night. Then a chance discovery set him on a new path: to tell the story of a forgotten female surgeon.

  • Article

Cowpox, Covid-19 and Jenner’s vaccination legacy

The well-known story of vaccination pioneer Edward Jenner has at its heart his drive to make vaccines free of charge and available to all. Now his principles extend to the global campaign for a people’s patent-free vaccine for Covid-19.

  • Article

The law of periodicity for menstruation

Dr Edward Clarke's Law of Periodicity claimed that females who were educated alongside their male peers were developing their minds at the expense of their reproductive organs.

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  • Studies in the psychology of sex. Vol. I, The evolution of modesty : The phenomena of sexual periodicity / by Havelock Ellis.
  • Matthiola incana (L.)W.T.Aiton Brassicaceae Distribution: The genus name commemorates Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1500/1–77), physician and botanist, whose name is Latinised to Matthiolus.. Incana means hoary or grey, referring to the colour of the leaves. Mattioli's commentaries on the Materia Medica of Dioscorides were hugely popular. Matthiola incana was first described by Linnaeus as Cheiranthus incanus, being changed to Matthiola by William Aiton, at Kew, in 1812. It is in the cabbage family. Commercial seed packets contain a mixture of single and double forms. The latter are sterile, but selective breeding has increased the proportion of double forms from the seed of single forms to as much as 80%. ‘Ten week stocks’ are popular garden annuals, flowering in the year of sowing, whereas ‘Brompton stocks’ (another variety of M. incana) are biennials, flowering the following year. Gerard (1633), called them Stocke Gillofloure or Leucoium, and notes the white and purple forms, singles and doubles. About their medicinal value he writes ‘not used in Physicke except among certain Empiricks and Quacksalvers, about love and lust matters, which for modestie I omit’. The thought of a member of the cabbage family being an aphrodisiac might encourage the gullible to take more seriously the government’s plea to eat five portions of vegetable/fruit per day. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • A young woman, taken by surprise, covers her breasts. Stipple engraving with etching by W. Roffe after C.-M. Dubufe.
  • A woman giving birth aided by a surgeon who fumbles beneath a sheet to save the lady from embarassment. Wood engraving after a woodcut, 1711.
  • The Annunciation to the Virgin. Engraving by N. de Bruyn, 1622.
  • The Annunciation to the Virgin. Engraving by N. de Bruyn, 1622.
  • Saint Gregory the Great: thinking himself unworthy to be Pope, he retires to a cave and studies the scriptures, but churchmen come to persuade him to return to Rome. Engraving by P.P. Moles, 1769, after C. van Loo.
  • Four women in a room being blown by the north wind: another is leading a man with a cane out of the door. Coloured etching by J. Gillray.
  • J. Remmelin, A survey of the microcosme...
  • A "man-midwife" (male obstetrician) represented by a figure divided in half, one half representing a man and the other a woman. Coloured etching by I. Cruikshank, 1793.
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