Stories
- 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.
- Article
Epidemic threats and racist legacies
Epidemiology is the systematic, data-driven study of health and disease in populations. But as historian Jacob Steere-Williams suggests, this most scientific of fields emerged in the 19th century imbued with a doctrine of Western imperialism – a legacy that continues to influence how we talk about disease.
- Article
The prostitute whose pox inspired feminists
Fitzrovia, 1875. A woman recorded only as A.G. enters hospital and is diagnosed with syphilis.
- Book extract
“Above resistant pavements, I floated”
In this extract from ‘Living with Buildings and Walking with Ghosts’, walk with Iain Sinclair through the streets of London.
Catalogue
- Books
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Hong Kong : bubonic plague : memorandum on the treatment of patients in their own homes and in local hospitals / presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty.
Date: 1903
- Pictures
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A woman with plague being carried on a stretcher made from a slim branch into the Hindu Plague Hospital. Photograph, 1896/1897.
Date: 1896Reference: 37024i
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A plague patient who has just been discharged from hospital being examined outdoors in Bombay. Photograph, 1896/1897.
Date: 1896Reference: 37035i
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Seamen's Hospital for infectious diseases in Jurujuba, Rio de Janeiro; a young male plague patient lying on a bed, viewed from the side. Photograph, 1904/1911.
Date: 1904Reference: 34929i
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Seamen's Hospital for infectious diseases in Jurujuba, Rio de Janeiro; the interior of one of the wards, with plague patients by their beds. Photograph, 1904/1911.
Date: 1904Reference: 34904i