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  • In pictures

How Mills & Boon made medicine romantic

‘Doctor-nurse’ romances are a hugely popular trope. Agnes Arnold-Forster explores their history and surprisingly nuanced depictions of womanhood, hospitals and the welfare state.

  • In pictures

Herbal medicines and the early modern menopause

Held responsible for their own “rebellious distempers” – or menopausal symptoms – women had no choice but to keep quiet and resort to unpalatable concoctions in the hope of relief, as Julia Nurse explains.

  • Article

What Black women do when the NHS fails them

Sabrina-Maria Anderson explores misogynoir – hatred of Black women – within the NHS, and how women like her are consequently turning to other sources of medical support.

  • Article

Revelations of blindness in the Middle Ages

Medieval texts, from Islamic medical treatises to Christian books of miracles, reveal surprisingly varied and complex experiences of blindness. But when medieval scholar Jude Seal experienced visual impairment themselves, they gained an even deeper understanding of the lives they were studying.

All stories (62)

Images

  • A Zulu medicine man dancing in order to detect which one of the women seated around them has bewitched their ruler. Gouache by W.R.S. Stott, 1928.
  • Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D., a pathfinder in medicine : with selections from her writings and a complete bibliography / edited by the Women's Medical Association of New York City.
  • Three Indian women dressed in saris sit together with the message that men deserve to go abroad to make money but to avoid foreign women to prevent the spread of AIDS in his own home; an AIDS prevention advertisement by NGO-AIDS Cell, Centre for Community Medicine, AIIMS. Colour lithograph by S. Ghosh for Unesco/Aidthi Workshop, March 1995.
  • An Indian woman between two other women wearing headscarves in front of 3 arches within a decorative border; with a message about how AIDS is not spread as an AIDS prevention advertisement by NGO-AIDS Cell, Centre for Community Medicine, AIIMS. Colour lithograph by Unesco/Aidthi Workshop, March 1995.
  • Two women tending to a man sick with AIDS surrounded by 4 men in a rural setting within a brown and mustard lined decorative border; an AIDS prevention advertisement by NGO-AIDS Cell, Centre for Community Medicine, AIIMS. Colour lithograph by S. Ghosh for Unesco/Aidthi Workshop, March 1995.
  • Medical instructions towards the prevention and cure of chronic diseases peculiar to women: for the use of those affected by such diseases, as well as the medical reader : to which are added, prescriptions, or efficacious forms of medicine in English, adapted to each disease / by John Leake.
  • A man dressed in white with a blue turban holding a white sack greets a woman in a blue sari and her child on a rural road next to her hut; his horse and cart with further white sacks wait idle nearby; with a message about the dangers of having unprotected sex with foreign women; an AIDS prevention advertisement by NGO-AIDS Cell, Centre for Community Medicine, AIIMS. Colour lithograph by Unesco/Aidthi Workshop, March 1995.
  • Polygonum bistorta L. Polygonaceae Bistort, snakeweed, Easter Ledges. Distribution: Europe, N & W Asia. Culpeper: “... taken inwardly resist pestilence and poison, helps ruptures, and bruises, stays fluxes, vomiting and immoderate flowing of the terms in women, helps inflammations and soreness of the mouth, and fastens loose teeth, being bruised and boiled in white wine and the mouth washed with it.” In modern herbal medicine it is still used for a similar wide variety of internal conditions, but it can also be cooked and eaten as a vegetable. The use to relieve toothache, applied as a paste to the affected tooth, seems to have been widespread. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Arctium lappa L. Asteraceae. Greater Burdock. Distribution: Europe to India and Japan. Dioscorides (Beck, 2003) writes: '... helps those who spit blood and who suffer from abscesses ... plastered on it stems the pains around the joints that stem from twistings. The Leaves are applied beneficially on old ulcers.' Culpeper (1650) writes: ‘Burdanae, etc. Of Bur, Clot-Bur or Burdock, ... helps such as spit blood and matter, bruised and mixed salt and applied to the place, helpeth the bitings of mad dogs. It expels wind, easeth pains of the teeth, strengthens the back, helps the running of the reins, and the whites in women, being taken inwardly.’ The roots contain inulin, which is made into a non-digestible sweetener for diabetics. It has a multitude of uses in herbal medicine, in particular it is a component of a compound called ‘essiac’ that has been widely used as a treatment of cancers in the USA, but which is of no proven benefit. The young roots can be eaten raw or cooked. The seeds are hairy and care should be taken when harvesting them as inhaled they are reported as ‘toxic’. The root is licensed for use in Traditional Herbal Medicines in the UK (UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)). Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Electricity in failing health : men and women of all ages, and in all stations of life should stop taking poisonous medicines & drugs & simply wear Dr. Carter Moffat's cool feather-weight electric body belt ... / Dr. Carter Moffat.
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