Medicine and health

The ancient Greek physician Dioscorides

General ancient history

Happy plants and laughing weeds: how people of the ancient world used – and abused – drugs

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Edward Carey talks about Madame Tussaud on the History Extra podcast. (Wax Figure of Marie Tussaud (Photo by Getty Images)

The story of Madame Tussaud . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

After her recovery from smallpox, Queen Elizabeth I started using a ceruse foundation on her face, neck and chest. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

5 weird habits of royals through history

An illustration from 1883 shows the phrenology chart of the skull

The Victorian phrenology craze

An ancient Roman relief shows a midwife delivering a baby. Many midwives had other occupations, and undertook the task as a contribution to their community. (Wellcome Images)

Call the (Roman) midwife

Lady Sybil Grey, an indomitable Englishwoman who, as a nurse in Russia, led a field hospital and had a grandstand view of the February 1917 revolution that toppled the tsar. (Illustration by Sue Gent for BBC History Magazine)

The Library Lady Sybil Grey: a lady in the line of fire

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Paul Morland. (Photo by Frank Monks)

Books interview with Paul Morland: “Even the Spanish flu pandemic wasn’t enough to stop population growth” . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The First World War promoted advances in medicine, and in sectors such as aviation, that had not just military but also peacetime benefits, says David Stevenson. Here Captain Francis Derwent Wood treats the face of a patient, creating a mask which matches as closely as possible to the man's faces before he was injured, c1916. (Photo by Horace Nicholls/ IWM via Getty Images)

The First World War: what was it good for?

The miller Samuel Wood, whose arm and scapula were torn off when entangled in a rope attached to a moving mill machinery in 1737. (Photo by Alamy)

7 bizarre cases in the history of medicine

A 12th-century English manuscript shows a surgeon operating on a patient's eye. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Kill or cure? 10 medieval medical practices and their effectiveness

Nurses serve lunch to patients at a Birmingham hospital, 1939. (Photo by Humphrey Spender/Picture Post/Getty Images)

What was healthcare like in Britain before the NHS?

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A New York opium den. Although US legislators cracked down on opiates in the early 20th century, organised crime networks continued to fuel the illegal trade in narcotics. (Photo by Getty Images)

Books interview with Lucy Inglis: “Opium has held mankind’s hand since the beginning” . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A doctor examines a patient's urine in an illustration from the 13th century. Uroscopy, the study of urine, was one of the medieval physician's most effective tools, and is still employed today. (Photo by Bridgman Art Library)

Medieval medicine: killer or cure?

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An introduction to the Black Death

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Welsh Labour politician Aneurin Bevan making a speech on the freedom of the press at a meeting of the National Council of Civil Liberties at Central Hall, Westminster, London, in 1942. (Photo by Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Getty Images)

My history hero Tanni Grey-Thompson chooses Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan . This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.