Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog South Asian Heritage Month takes place every year ending on the anniversary of Partition of... Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog - News & features from LAORS ..read more

Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog From the seventeenth century, women have played a small but significant role in exploring the world of insects by listing, drawing, and collecting them. Some women have also observed and recorded the extraordinary life histories of insects. Eleanor Anne Ormerod (1828-1901) did all this before becoming the first woman to make a scientific study of insect pests of garden and farm in Britain. She is the author of A manual of Injurious Insects (Ormerod 1890) which is held in the LSHTM Library. Portrait of Eleanor Ormerod Eleanor Anne Ormerod was ..read more

Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog In those parts of the world with a written language, the first organisms in the natural world to be studied, documented and figured were plants in recognition of their economic value in agriculture, nutrition, health and well-being.  In Europe these herbals, as they are called, were hand-written in Greek and Latin and often included magnificent illustrations. After the invention of printing in the 15th century herbals had a wide circulation in print in the classical languages before being translated into English and other languages.  ..read more

Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog In the 18th and 19th centuries and until the 20th Century the death of women in childbirth or shortly afterwards was a common occurrence. One early treatise on puerperal fever was written by John Leake, a physician and male midwife :  Practical observations on the childbed fever, first published in 1772. Portrait of John Leake by Godfrey Kneller Leake was born at Ainstable in Cumberland the son of a curate. His medical education included an apprenticeship with a London surgeon followed by training on the continent and the award of an MD a ..read more

Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog The Austrian physician Johann Gottfried Bremser (1767-1827) was born in Wertheim am Main in present-day Germany. He studied medicine in Jena and Vienna where he obtained a licence to practice medicine in 1797. Bremser made a special study of parasitic worm infections in humans and travelled to Paris in 1815 to carry out further research.  He experimented and developed remedies against worm infestations and he also treated poorer sections of the community. He actively promoted the benefits of vaccination against smallpox. He died in Vienna ..read more

Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog Figure 1:  Colourful organisms in a sample of the water supplied by the Southwark & Vauxhall Company to St. Thomas’s Hospital in 1854 as seen under the microscope (Hassall 1855a : page 248, Plate 19). This illustration of a microcosm of the natural world in London’s water in 1854 was published in a book in the School’s Library, Report of the Medical Council … in relation to the cholera-epidemic of 1854 (General Board of Health. Medical Council 1855). It formed part of the evidence gathered for a government investigation at a time when ..read more

Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog Figure 1: Rhazes, Princeton University Chapel c. 1924–1928 (Picture by David Keddie – licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0) Rhazes (full-name: Muhammad ibn Zakariyā al-Rāzī) made notable contributions to many areas of medicine. His manuscripts, carefully preserved down the centuries, were among the first medical books printed in Europe in the 15th century. After translation into Latin Rhazes’s writings became widely disseminated and were to influence the future direction of modern medicine.   Rhazes wrote the first known medical description of sma ..read more

Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog Figure 1: Portrait of A.R. Wallace ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE (1823-1913) : British naturalist, humanist, geographer, social critic… and anti-vaccination activist(!) Alfred Russel Wallace was one of the founders of evolutionary biology. In 1858 he and Charles Darwin jointly proposed a theory for the process of evolution by natural selection before a meeting of eminent scientists at the Linnean Society of London.  It was the catalyst that Darwin needed to finish writing The Origin of Species published in 1859. Wallace, by profession a natural h ..read more

Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog HENRY VANDYKE CARTER (1831-1897) : author of On Leprosy and Elephantiasis,  and the artist for Gray’s Anatomy.  Gray’s Anatomy is a classic medical textbook, used by doctors, anatomists and medical artists.  Yet, despite Henry Gray’s (1826/27-1861) scholarly text running to 720 pages, it is unlikely the book would have retained its acclaimed position (it has been in print continuously since 1858), were it not for the brilliant 363 text-figures – one on every other page. Credit for the illustrations is due to the subject of this ..read more

Library, Archive & Open Research Services blog By Mia Annesen-Wood Firstly, I would just like to thank the whole LSHTM Library and Archives team for being so welcoming and friendly. It has been a wonderful experience to both observe and play a small role in the work they do here, I am so grateful for the amount of time you have given to me despite your busy schedules. On my first day I was greeted by David and Heather who gave me a tour and outlined my week. I then attended a focus group asking the LSHTM students their thoughts on the Library and how they use it. Later, I researched the me ..read more