Medical London: City of Diseases, City of Cures

Monday 10 November sees the publication of Medical London: City of Diseases, City of Cures, a work which charts the many roles that diseases, treatments and cures have played in the city’s sprawling story, and reveals how London, in turn, has shaped the professions and practices of modern medicine.

Authored by Richard Barnett, edited by Mike Jay and published by Strange Attractor Press, the work is composed of three parts:

A volume of essays exploring some of the threads that medicine has woven through London life, from its earliest beginnings to the multicultural metropolis of today: its roles in contagion and sanitation, in wealth and its consumption, in empire and immigration, in pleasure and in madness.

A definitive guide to London’s medical landscape: its museums and hospitals, its grand monuments and secret corners, and the characters and events that lie behind them.

Six elegantly designed maps for self-guided walks, from Daniel Defoe’s Plague Year wanderings to the druggists of Soho’s night haunts, the homeopaths of bohemian Chelsea to the naval surgeons of maritime Greenwich.

Further details and video extras featuring locations from the walks in the book are available on the Medical London site and from the Wellcome Trust. The book is available to purchase from all good bookshops and is available in the Wellcome Library.