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Medical History Archive
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Victorian and Edwardian Sporting Values
Posted on April 23, 2013 | No CommentsIt was understood that a boy's mind might be overtaken, if care were not taken, by one or both of the twin temptations that the cloistered life of the public school could give rise to - masturbation and homosexuality, the two great unmentionables of the Victorian age. -
“The lying’st knave in Christendom”: The Development of Disability in the False Miracle of St. Alban’s
Posted on April 1, 2013 | No CommentsWhat none of these studies have examined, however, is the performance of disability at the center of the St. Alban's episode. -
The Treatment of Disability in 19th and Early 20th Century Children’s Literature
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsIn many books, disability, where it occurs, and its cure are associated with character. Cure may result directly from a healthier attitude to life, often implying a voluntary relinquishment of the disabled role. -
Changing Fortunes during the Fifteenth Century Recession
Posted on March 24, 2013 | No CommentsHow far did the fifteenth-century recession change the relationship between landlords and tenants in Durham? There can be little doubt that this was a period of hardship for landowners. -
“Be unto me as a precious ointment”: Lady Grace Mildmay, Sixteenth-Century Female Practitioner
Posted on March 7, 2013 | No CommentsLady Grace Mildmay's manuscripts represent an unusual presentation of three interrelated areas of family, devotion, and medicine -
University of York to host conference on English physician John Snow
Posted on February 27, 2013 | No CommentsThe University of York is inviting the local community to join a special event commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Snow. -
The Medical Marketplace
Posted on February 17, 2013 | No CommentsMost earlier accounts of early modern medical practice had either focused on the notional three-part occupational hierarchy of physicians who advised, surgeons who operated and apothecaries who prepared drugs, or else were simply dominated by a concern with learned, ‘professional’ practitioners. -
Hysteria and Femininity: A Tentative Investigation into a Victorian and Edwardian Myth
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsBased on the medical narratives of various hysterical women shown in fictional and operatic texts, it meticulously discusses Anglo-American feminist scholars and their French counterparts’ different responses to and interpretative strategies for the same texts, calling for the integration of these two perspectives——a meaningful fusion of humanity and philosophy, essentialisation and romanticisation in ultimately deconstructing the patriarchal myth. -
‘By Merit Raised to That Bad Eminence’: Christopher Merrett, Artisanal Knowledge, and Professional Reform in Restoration London
Posted on January 15, 2013 | No CommentsThis article examines the career and reform agenda of Christopher Merrett as a means of evaluating the changing conditions of medical knowledge production in late seventeenth-century London. -
‘Looking as Little Like Patients as Persons Well Could’: Hypnotism, Medicine and the Problem of the Suggestible Subject in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain
Posted on January 15, 2013 | No CommentsDuring the late nineteenth century, many British physicians rigorously experimented with hypnosis as a therapeutic practice. -
“Thy Righteousness is but a menstrual clout”: Sanitary Practices and Prejudice in Early Modern England
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsAs well as the physical threat that menstrual blood could pose, it might also pose a psychological one: according to an extreme example, a man’s seeing of a woman’s menstrual blood could be enough to cure him of love sickness or infatuation. -
Renaissance plays as a useful source for the comparison between English and Croatian early modern medicine
Posted on January 3, 2013 | No CommentsAs Renaissance made no particular distinction between arts and sciences, plays of that time provide a very common source of medical narrative. -
Lessons from history: asylum patients’ Christmas experience
Posted on December 24, 2012 | No CommentsWhile it may be claimed that contemporary practice offers drug treatments and a wide range of therapeutic interventions unimaginable 150 years ago, it could also be argued that for all the advances in care and treatment the quality of life that patients experienced in the 19th century was, to some extent, superior. -
Demonology, Neurology, and Medicine in Edwardian Britain
Posted on December 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe victory of psychiatry over demonology is a long-familiar theme in the history of medicine. -
“The Nightmare in Early Modern England.”
Posted on December 10, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper was held at Victoria College by the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies and dealt with the idea of the nightmare and its evolution from demonic possession to medical malady. -
When stealing corpses was popular – new book explores body-snatching in Early Modern England
Posted on November 26, 2012 | No CommentsCorpses sold for dissection by body snatchers helped improve understanding of how the human body worked, according to a new book that brings together archaeological evidence from their remains. -
Hot Holiday Reads!
Posted on November 23, 2012 | No CommentsGreat reads & holiday ideas! -
The London Vagrancy Crisis of the 1780s
Posted on November 20, 2012 | No CommentsIn part, this can be seen as simply one more of a broad series of changes in the administration of crime. A whole raft of old and new punishments were being used in new ways, largely as a result of the end of transportation to North America – that had formed so prominent an aspect of penal policy prior to 1776. -
Cunning Folk and Wizards in Early Modern England
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsI aim to offer an original perspective on white witchcraft in this period; revealing its relevance to the historical study of witchcraft in which it is often overshadowed. -
The Glasgow Royal Infirmary: Aspects of Illness and Health Care in the Victorian City
Posted on October 15, 2012 | No CommentsSince the opening of the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow’s growth had been dramatic. In 1791 the population of the city and its suburbs numbered 66,000; a century later it had swollen to three quarters of a million. During this time the Royal endeavoured to treat diseases and mend bodies of a mushrooming populace: in-house medical and surgical wards were extended; vaccination services commenced in 1857. -
The anatomy of beauty in nineteenth-century England
Posted on October 11, 2012 | No CommentsHow then did some nineteenth-century European anatomists come to see human beauty as a branch of science for which they might construct universal laws? -
Dissecting the Living: Vivisection in Early Modern England
Posted on October 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe term ‘vivisection’, which refers to the act of dissecting a live animal or human being, was coined in 1709. Yet, it celebrated a long tradition reaching back thousands of years. One of the earliest recorded accounts dates from 500 B.C., when Alcmaeon of Croton severed the optic nerves of live animals in order to understand how it affected their vision. -
LANT STREET, SOUTHWARK, IN THE MID NINETEENTH CENTURY
Posted on October 9, 2012 | No CommentsIn the nineteenth century, the main industries of the Borough included “leather working, printing and bookbinding, hat making, wharves, warehousing, food processing and engineering”.3 Many of the heads of household of Lant Street in 1851 were employed in these industries. -
Sir Francis Galton and the birth of eugenics
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsIn view of current concerns about the emergence of a new eugenics, it seems appropriate to present a profile of Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911) who coined the word and initiated the original eugenics movement. Galton was a man of diverse interests. -
The “Gin Epidemic”: London’s Public Health Crisis
Posted on September 19, 2012 | No CommentsGin was an easy target to blame for what was happening among the working class poor and, once the authorities found their source, they neglected to see the big picture and the other reforms that needed to be made. -
“Butcher-like and hatefull”: Domestic Medicine and Resistance to Surgery in Early Modern England
Posted on September 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe earl's story points us towards an unexpected set of connections and contests between surgery and domestic medicine. Many historians have treated domestic medicine as a “first port of call” for the “medically promiscuous” early modern patient, the lowest level of “the hierarchy of resort -
The Medical Diagnosis of Demonic Possession in an Early Modern English
Posted on September 6, 2012 | No CommentsIn the families of the English gentry where the majority of the documented cases of demonic possession occurred, doctors played a significant role in interpreting strange and unusual illnesses. It was considered important to first rule out the possibility of natural causation when a supernatural affliction was suspected, and physicians were regarded as crucial in making the distinction. -
A Homelie Herbe: Medicinal Cannabis in Early England
Posted on August 25, 2012 | No CommentsTransformed almost overnight from outlaw to commercial opportunity, cannabis is the sub- ject of urgent investigation on the part of commercial scientists, as companies on both sides of the Atlantic scramble to patent profitable analogues. I suggest that a rational consideration of its venerable history in England, coupled with the evidence of its therapeutic properties (newly confirmed in the language of biochemistry), leads to the inescapable conclusion that the prohibition of medicinal cannabis in England is an historical anomaly that should be rectified as soon as possible. -
Melancholy and the Idle Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe thesis considers Johnson‘s preoccupation with idleness as a symptom of his melancholy, a notion that has received little critical attention. Shenstone‘s experience is used to illustrate the depressing effect that a retired lifestyle could have on the individual. -
Good Reads for the Dog Days of Summer
Posted on August 18, 2012 | No CommentsSee summer off with these fun reads! -
Athletic “Womanhood”: Exploring Sources for Female Sport in Victorian and Edwardian England
Posted on July 11, 2012 | No CommentsWe need to know what women did, how they felt about themselves and their experiences, and how far sport contributed to the reshaping of the image of women in this critical period. -
England’s Answer to God’s Scourge
Posted on June 6, 2012 | No CommentsAmidst the filth, stench, and rats that pervaded the streets, more than two million English subjects succumbed to the Bubonic Plague between 1348 and 1666. -
King George III and porphyria: an elemental hypothesis and investigation
Posted on May 24, 2012 | No CommentsKing George III (1738–1820), who was monarch from 1760 until his death, was one of the longest serving British sovereigns. During his reign, Britain achieved oceanic mastery, the defeat of Napoleonic France, and expansion of its empire to a level similar to a superpower. Despite these achievements, his reign is best remembered for the humiliating loss of the American colonies and his well-documented bouts of madness. -
The blindness, deafness and madness of King George III: psychiatric interactions
Posted on May 24, 2012 | No CommentsIn 1966–69 Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter, mother and son psychiatrists and historians, claimed on the basis of selective reading and interpretation of the medical and contemporary accounts of King George III’s illnesses that he suffered from acute intermittent porphyria. -
Suicide, lunacy and the asylum in nineteenth-century England
Posted on May 24, 2012 | No CommentsThe history of psychiatry and institutional care has attracted considerable attention during recent decades from both social historians1 and psychiatrists. Each group has contributed to the narrative of the rise of the lunatic asylum and the professionalisation of ‘psychiatry’. -
Wet-nurses in early modern England: some evidence from the Townshend archive
Posted on May 18, 2012 | No CommentsThe study gives background information about the nurses and traces connections between them and their employers. It also questions our assumptions about what lay behind the widespread use of wet-nurses at this social level. -
Anatomy of a Plague: A Glimpse of an Epidemic Through the Observations of One London Parish
Posted on April 24, 2012 | No CommentsSt. Giles of Cripplegate is utilized as a representational case study for the impacts of the 1665 plague of London. -
Articulating Episteme: Vernacular Medical Texts in Early Modern England
Posted on April 11, 2012 | No CommentsLecture by Dr Lisa Meloncon, Assistant Professor, English and Comparative Literature of the University of Cincinnati -
Anatomizing the social body: representing the plague in London, 1665
Posted on April 10, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis will analyze the motivations behind a broadsheet produced in response to the outbreak of bubonic plague in the City of London in 1665. -
Illustrated Soap Advertisements in Myra’s Journal 1875-1912: Hygiene, Beauty and Class in Victorian England
Posted on April 3, 2012 | No CommentsIdeas about cleanliness were also changing in the time leading up to the Victorian era; the observance of being clean developed from an activity largely practised by monks and those of the religious community into an exercise that almost anyone could and should adopt, though cleanliness came to be defined as denoting both physical and moral purity. The development of a cult of cleanliness occurred during this time, where this society detested dirtiness to such an extent that in advertisements, cleanliness received praise but dirtiness was ridiculed. -
![Opium was not an enormously expensive commodity, and “at 1d [,] an ounce of laudanum was cheap enough—about the price of a pint of beer,” in consequence, many, even of the working class, were regular users. Self-medicating, the cheapest, and often the only means available to many of the poor when sickness struck, was a socially acceptable practice.](http://earlymodernengland.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Opium-115x115.jpg "Opium Use in Victorian England: The Works of Gaskell, Eliot, and Dickens")
Opium Use in Victorian England: The Works of Gaskell, Eliot, and Dickens
Posted on March 27, 2012 | No CommentsOpium was not an enormously expensive commodity, and “at 1d [,] an ounce of laudanum was cheap enough—about the price of a pint of beer,” in consequence, many, even of the working class, were regular users. Self-medicating, the cheapest, and often the only means available to many of the poor when sickness struck, was a socially acceptable practice. -
Imagining the pain and peril of seventeenth-century childbirth: travail and deliverance in the making of an early modern world
Posted on March 26, 2012 | No CommentsAlice Thornton’s accounts of the pains and perils of childbirth, including this passage on the birth of her fifth child, have attracted the attention of a number of recent historians as particularly detailed and evocative examples of personal testimony to the experience of giving birth in the early modern period. -
To “Bring Down the Flowers”: The Cultural Context of Abortion Law in Early Modern England
Posted on March 25, 2012 | No Comments...their concerns with abortion were based on its providing a means to enable or conceal extra-marital sex, not on any condemnation of abortion per se. -
Conflict, consensus and charity: politics and the provincial voluntary hospitals in the eighteenth century
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsJust as each individual infirmary linked county and town, so collectively the provincial voluntary hospitals displayed both national and local features. On the one hand, they were linked in a national movement. -
Treatments for bubonic plague: reports from seventeenth century British epidemics
Posted on March 12, 2012 | No CommentsThus, when the last plague struck, new views of scientific knowledge were taking hold; Galileo had been active twenty-five years earlier and Copernicus a century before that. Anne Van Arsdall has written, `The scientific revolution that began in the sixteenth century and drastically altered human understanding of nature and the universe affected medicine as well’. -
Body snatching: a grave medical problem
Posted on March 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe activities of the 18th century body-snatchers are among the most lurid and entertaining episodes in the history of medicine and have been cataloged exhuastively by scholars and popularizers of all kinds. -
The anatomy of Charles Dickens: a study of bodily vulnerability in his novels
Posted on February 7, 2012 | No CommentsThis dissertation concludes that the body’s vulnerability is not only a continual presence in Dickens’s novels but is an under-examined yet fundamental element in what makes his writing style distinctive and what makes his work continually popular. -
Seeking the Supernatural: The Exorcisms of John Darrell and the Formation of an Orthodox Identity in Early Modern England
Posted on February 1, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis examines the questions raised by Darrell‘s exorcisms and the ways in which they were shaped by relations of power. I hope that it will shed new light on the ways in which people formed their religious and ideological identities in this pivotal period in English history. -
Beliefs and Approaches to Death and Dying in Late Seventeenth-Century England
Posted on January 27, 2012 | No CommentsThis study evaluates beliefs and practices of death and dying among Puritans and Arminians in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, from the English Civil War era through the Glorious Revolution. -
Imagining the pain and peril of seventeenth-century childbirth: travail and deliverance in the making of an early modern world
Posted on January 23, 2012 | No CommentsAlice Thornton’s accounts of the pains and perils of childbirth, including this passage on the birth of her fifth child, have attracted the attention of a number of recent historians as particularly detailed and evocative examples of personal testimony to the experience of giving birth in the early modern period.