Sherlock Holmes and Cocaine: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Sherlock Holmes is the 19th century’s most famous cocaine user, but why did he take it?
Medicine & Disease
Saving Face
The Renaissance face provided clues about the wealth and health of its owner. Those who had been disfigured were often mistreated, but to alter one’s appearance carried a stigma of its own.
Size Matters
In Georgian Britain, England’s ‘heaviest man’ became a celebrity, his likeness reproduced across an array of media.
The Doctor Is In
Mills & Boon’s medical romances helped make the NHS more appealing to an ambivalent public.
Birth of ‘Typhoid Mary’
The infamous Mary Mallon was born on 23 September 1869.
It’s Exhausting
What do attitudes towards fatigue reveal about morality and illness?
The Morality of Medicine
The rise of laboratory science in the late 19th century put stark focus on the moral cost of medical innovation.
Desperate Measures
Driven to extremes by the expectations loaded on them, some men turned to self-castration.
Pandemics in the Parish
The medieval approach to emergency planning may offer lessons for the 21st century.
400 Years of Melancholising
Robert Burton’s encyclopedic curiosity The Anatomy of Melancholy continues to offer remarkable insights into mental health.