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  • Article

When wounds replace words

For the many thousands of refugees waiting in Greece, the process to establish the truth of their tragic personal histories is often extremely upsetting. But a group of medics and legal workers is working together to make the system more humane.

  • Book extract

Sockets and stumps

Historian Emily Mayhew has met soldiers who have survived the seemingly unsurvivable. Here, she explores the part prosthetics play in the process of military rehabilitation.

  • Article

Blood money: Taking periods out of poverty

Periods are not a wound that needs to heal, nor is the blood a sign of injury. So why are we still so repelled by them?

  • Article

Duelling doctors

An enduring enthusiasm for 18th-century gentlemen to defend their ‘honour’ by duelling placed doctors in a delicate position. Specially when they faced being shot themselves.

All stories (13)

Images

  • Cranio-facial injury: a French soldier with a wounded nose and eye, in profile, before plastic surgery. Photograph, 1915.
  • Cranio-facial injury: a French soldier with a wound to the bridge of his nose and one eye closed, before plastic surgery. Photograph, 1915.
  • Cranio-facial injury: a man with a wounded and discoloured nose and eye area, before plastic surgery. Reproduction, ca. 1940 (?), of a photograph, ca. 1916.
  • Cranio-facial injury: a man following plastic surgery to wounds to his eye, nose and mouth. Reproduction, ca. 1940 (?), of a photograph, ca. 1916.
  • Cranio-facial injury: a man with wounds to his eye, nose and mouth, before plastic surgery. Reproduction, ca. 1940 (?), of a photograph, ca. 1916.
  • Cranio-facial injury: a man with wounds to his eye, nose and mouth, after incomplete plastic surgery. Reproduction, ca. 1940 (?), of a photograph, ca. 1916.
  • Cranio-facial injury: a man following plastic surgery to wounds to his eye, nose and mouth, in profile. Reproduction, ca. 1940 (?), of a photograph, ca. 1916.
  • Achillea millefolium L. Asteraceae. Yarrow or sneezewort, the latter because ground up it made a snuff to induce sneezing. Evergreen, herbaceous perennial. Distribution: Europe, Asia and North America. Dioscorides calls it Achilles’ woundwort, sideritis, writing that the ground-up foliage closes bleeding wounds, relieves inflammation and stops uterine bleeding. Gerard (1633) says that put up one’s nose it causes a nosebleed and so stops migraines. Named for the Greek warrior, Achilles, who used this plant for healing wounds – having been taught its properties by his teacher, Chiron the centaur. Millefolium because of the thousands of fronds that make up the leaf, and which, when applied to a bleeding wound, facilitate coagulation by platelets. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington. Engraving by W.T. Mote after Sir P. Lely.
  • Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington. Stipple engraving by W. Haines, 1810, after Sir P. Lely.
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