In about 1841, Belgian doctor Constantin Pierre Crommelinck toured various psychiatric institutions in England, France, and Germany. His report reviewed not just various English asylums and also the training of English doctors. Peter Carpenter recounts his none too flattering findings.   Constantin Pierre Crommelinck (1814-1884) was the son of a Belgium surgeon who trained as […] The post An unflattering view of English medical education in the 1840s appeared first on British Society for the History of Medicine ..read more

Wallace Mendelson describes how an encounter between two scientists resulted in the creation of cell theory. Matthias Jacob Schleiden (1804-1881), the son of a Hamburg physician, was trained in the law in Heidelberg, and in 1827 returned to his hometown and set up a practice. It was remarkably unsuccessful, and ultimately, he became depressed to […] The post Matthias Schleiden and the Genesis of Cell Theory appeared first on British Society for the History of Medicine ..read more

Edwin Aird describes how Marie Curie created radiological cars to take X-rays to the battlefront in Word War I. In 1914 at the beginning of the First World War, Paris was under threat of invasion from Germany. The situation was sufficiently alarming that the French Government moved to Bordeaux. And Marie Curie moved the precious […] The post Bringing X-rays to the front appeared first on British Society for the History of Medicine ..read more

Susanne Krejsa MacManus explains how pregnancy testing saved the life of a refugee woman biochemist and her family in the run-up to World War II. In the 1930s, the Institute of Animal Genetics at Edinburgh University was the only UK laboratory that ran pregnancy tests. Although the Aschheim-Zondek method invented in Berlin in the late […] The post How a pregnancy test saved the lives of a family in Nazi times appeared first on British Society for the History of Medicine ..read more

Recent estimates suggest that more than 3 per cent of the population of England and Wales died as a direct result of the Civil Wars of 1642–1651. Andrew Hopper describes his work on the widowhood and bereavement of the more than 180,000 women who had lost a male relative. Deaths in Britain and Ireland during […] The post Widowhood and Bereavement during and after the English Civil Wars appeared first on British Society for the History of Medicine ..read more

Graham Kyle explains that a surprising benefit of the harsh Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 was that paupers in the workhouse received free medical care. Perhaps even more unexpectedly, the care had to come from qualified medical practitioners. Near where I live near Llanfyllin in North Wales, there is a fairly well preserved workhouse that […] The post Poor law but better care appeared first on British Society for the History of Medicine ..read more

Having never visited Wales before, 22 year old Robert Drane moved to Cardiff on 8 February 1856, and the history of pharmacy – and pharmacy education – in Cardiff are very much tied up with him.  Briony Hudson explains. A contemporary described Drane as “a young man with a charming manner, a striking appearance and […] The post Robert Drane – a leader of pharmaceutical education in Wales, antiquarian and naturalist appeared first on British Society for the History of Medicine ..read more

Evidence suggests that far from being quacks and uneducated butchers, early modern surgeons were capable and undertook effective procedures, according to Stephen Rutherford. In January 1699, the General Quarter Sessions at Doncaster heard the petition of James Moore of Letwell, West Riding of Yorkshire. James was nearly 80 and reported that while fighting for the […] The post Consulting the past to understand the future: a military surgery perspective appeared first on British Society for the History of Medicine ..read more

A chance encounter with a jam jar of what appeared to be old ping pong balls in the (currently closed) Bakelite Museum in Somerset, set Christine Gowing on a fascinating journey to discover their link to pulmonary tuberculosis. In 1945, someone died every ten minutes from pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) in the United States. Nearly 50 […] The post ‘Wilson’s balls’: TB treatment in the 1940s-1950s appeared first on British Society for the History of Medicine ..read more

Susanne Krejsa MacManus describes how the German Society for Gastroenterology, Digestive and Metabolic Diseases is recovering the stories of its members expelled under the Nazis. She explains how one of them, Ernest Maurice Fraenkel, found exile in Britain.  The German Society for Gastroenterology, Digestive and Metabolic Diseases (DGVS) was founded in 1913 by the famous […] The post German doctors in British exile appeared first on British Society for the History of Medicine ..read more