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  • Article

Eels and feels

For Georgian Londoners, the allure of electric animals was both intellectual and sensual.

  • 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.

  • Book extract

You, a thousand years ago

Jack Hartnell argues that, if we were transported into the medieval past, we’d find ourselves somewhere different yet strangely familiar.

  • Article

Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

All stories (12)

Images

  • The book of cirurgia / by Hieronymus Brunschwig. Strassburg / Johann Grüninger / 1497 ; with a study on Hieronymus Brunschwig and his work by Henry E. Sigerist.
  • Jacob dreams of the heavenly ladder; he consecrates with oil the spot where he slept; he meets Rachel, who is tending sheep in the vicinity of a Mesopotamian city. Woodcut by S.H., 1568, after V. Solis.
  • Caricatural Mediaeval / Renaissance medical practitioners.
  • Eleven decorated initials from the Basel 1555 edition of Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica. Woodcuts, 1555.
  • Eleven decorated initials from the Basel 1555 edition of Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica. Woodcuts, 1555.
  • Eleven decorated initials from the Basel 1555 edition of Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica. Woodcuts, 1555.
  • Germain Colot performing an operation for bladder stone. Coloured pencil drawing by A. Rivoulon.
  • Germain Colot performing an operation for bladder stone. Lithograph by A. Rivoulon, 1851.
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Catalogue

All works (8)