Smallpox
October 26, 2017
It has wiped out armies, killed Kings and Pharaohs, and devastated civilisations for at least 3000 (and possibly up to 10,000) years, yet the first written records mentioning smallpox only date back to 4th century China. Trade links and the expansion of empires probably brought the disease to Europe in the 7th century, and Europeans …
1977-2017: 40 years of the Queen’s Medical Centre
July 28, 2017
On 28th July 1977, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II opened The Queen’s Medical Centre, the first specifically-built teaching hospital in the UK. This marked her Silver Jubilee. Manuscripts and Special Collections holds a number of the hospital’s papers and photographs, including those relating to the opening event, which were acquired in October 2012. The University …
Doctoring Derbyshire
July 14, 2017
Dr Edward Wrench is so far best recognised for two reasons, firstly, his travel exploits to Europe and America, and secondly, from the earlier University of Nottingham blog post ‘Doctors, Diaries and Descendants’ which concentrated on his time in the Crimea and Indian Mutiny [some of his letters from India are currently on display in …
A spoonful of spermaceti helps the medicine go down
November 21, 2016
It’s that time of year when coughs, colds and flu are doing the rounds. But how did our ancestors cope with ill-health, before the days of ready-prepared pills and potions from the local shop? Manuscripts and Special Collections holds a number of works with useful recipes to be made at home – some possibly more efficacious …
Dead Man Found in Coffin
July 25, 2016
What are Horseshoehead, Purples, Tissick, and Rising of the Lights? If you guessed along the lines of an equestrian accident, a colour, a small village in the Home Counties, and perhaps an indie band on the verge of greatness, then you’d be very wrong. These are just a few of the bizarre-sounding medical conditions that …
Monday Mysteries
August 10, 2015
Those of you who follow us on Twitter might get a sense of deja vu with the images in today’s post! For the last few weeks we have been posting some of the many ‘mystery’ photographs from our collections, in the hopes that someone may be able to shed light on who the people are. Often we …
The First Cut is the Deepest
June 11, 2015
The worst experience in Charles Cullen’s young life was very nearly overlooked. The volume in which it is recorded, Uhg O 1/1, is a Treatment Book, and is unremarkable to look at. The brown binding is battered and the pages are covered in the scrawling handwriting of an 18th century doctor, complete with ink blobs and …
One Born Every Minute
May 2, 2015
As William and Kate welcome their baby daughter into the world at the state-of-the-art private maternity ward The Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Hospital, we had a look back through our collections to see what childbirth was like in the 17th and 18th centuries. Traditionally, pregnancy and birth were social and domestic occurrences, which predominantly …
Thirty minutes of your time; a lifetime to someone else
June 14, 2014
Today is World Blood Donor Day, organized by the World Health Organization to raise awareness of the need for safe blood and blood products and to thank voluntary unpaid blood donors. Appeals for public donations have been made for over sixty years, and the NHS Blood and Transplant service estimates that currently 4% of the …
Feeling under the weather? Try frog’s liver, peacock dung and just a dash of dead man’s skull
December 10, 2013
The above items all form part of a medical recipe contained in a 17th century volume belonging to the Duke of Newcastle. Many family and estate collections contain medical receipt books, in which recipes and instructions for the treatment of various maladies are carefully preserved for future generations. In an age before the widespread provision …
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