Medicine

The impact of the bubonic plague epidemics of the past still echo across the centuries, reminding us of the devastation that disease can inflict on communities.

Edward Jenner's successful smallpox vaccination led to the global eradication of smallpox and the development of many more life-saving vaccines.

While many infectious diseases began to decline by the end of the 19th century, incidents of polio increased to epidemic proportions. What was going on?

The iron lung was large, cumbersome and very expensive, but it saved the lives of thousands of polio victims.

Medicine has always involved scientific and empirical methods—but in the 19th century, new disciplines emerged that radically changed the way medicine was practised.

Find out how the modern clinical trial has developed over time to produce valid, scientific results and safeguard the rights and well-being of participants.

The development of the microscope allowed scientists to make new insights into the body and disease.

Before the advent of photography, medical texts favoured detailed illustrations of medical conditions and procedures—until technology gave us new ways of visualising the body.

Trace the practice of hospital medicine, from its origins in France after the revolution of 1789 to its essential role in modern healthcare.

Hospitals care for sick people. But which sick people? And what sort of care? That depended on who was funding the hospital.

Infection is a major problem facing health services throughout the world—how do hospitals deal with it?

What was life really like in Victorian mental asylums? The story of Hanwell Mental Asylum reveals that they were kinder places than we might think.

Is mental illness the result of a physical malfunction of the body or is it purely in the mind? This is the question that doctors asked after they discovered the nervous system.

A psychiatric revival in the early 20th century led to a variety of new experimental therapies that didn't necessarily benefit patients.