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Manlike monsters in medieval manuscripts
From Giovanni Boccaccio’s book’ De claris mulieribus’ What exactly is a monster? According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is an ‘ugly or deformed person, animal or thing’. The narrator of the...
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Quack medicine: the “Grape Cure”
The number of quack cures peddled by doctors and salesmen over the ages never ceases to amaze. Most of the mixtures marketed were at best ineffective, and at worst poisonous enough that prolonged use...
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Filth, disease and Dickens: Jacob’s Island, a London slum
In my last post, on English and North American death records from 1647 to the present, I briefly mentioned how the development of the industrial city in 19th century Europe and North America changed...
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What did people die of in the past?
Slate magazine has created an ‘Interactive Game of Death’ in which you can find out what you might have died of had you been living at various points from 1647 to the present. It churns through...
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A glossary of archaic ailments
The past was a dangerous time to be alive. If you were lucky enough to survive infancy and adolescence, you were very likely to die of any number of frightful diseases well before you reached what we...
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A history of Bedlam, the world’s most notorious asylum
The Bethlem Hospital, or Bedlam as it is more commonly known, is Europe’s oldest extant psychiatric hospital and has operated continuously for over 600 years. It was founded in London in 1247 during...
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Painted faces: cosmetics in the 18th century
The vicissitudes of pre-modern life invariably took their toll on the health and appearance of 18th-century Europeans; their faces were often riddled with smallpox scars, their teeth decaying, their...
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