Author: Guest contributor

John Dee (1527–1609) is a man who continues to fascinate us today. As discussed in a previous post, Dee was involved in a large and varied number of activities. He advised Queen Elizabeth I on astrological and scientific matters, published… Continue reading

“We’re on Number 12 platform at Waterloo Station, one of the ten big metropolitan stations that are engaged today (1 September 1939) on the evacuation of London’s schoolchildren,” reads the BBC’s radio announcer to the sound of puffing steam engines.… Continue reading

A 62-year-old pharmaceutical drug developed by the Burroughs Wellcome Co. hit the news recently when the drug company who purchased the US marketing rights and increased the price by 5,000%. Today pyrimethamine (brand name Daraprim) is mainly used to treat… Continue reading

Galenic and Hippocratic medical traditions did not see all bodies as the same. Indeed, recent work by Hannah Newton has shown that early modern physicians treated and perceived children as ‘physiologically distinct’ from adults. Children, including infants, were moist, warm… Continue reading

In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest the character Prospero uses magical powers to intimidate his enemies and to manipulate the natural world. The character may have been inspired by the Elizabethan mathematician, astrologer and book collector John Dee. Prospero is the… Continue reading

Why was Shakespeare so interested in twins? Did they have a special meaning for his audience? Dr Daisy Garofalo investigates in the second of our Shakespeare themed posts. Shakespeare features twin characters in two of his comedies, The Comedy of… Continue reading

Why should a library that specialises in the history and culture of medicine commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death? Dr Anna Maerker, who provides a Shakespeare and Medicine lecture at the Wellcome Library for acting students, kicks off our… Continue reading

Like modern-day students, medieval people used diagrams and images to reinforce learning and memorisation. In long and complex philosophical manuscripts, occasionally an image was used to break the monotony of reading. The tree diagram considered here was part of a… Continue reading

John Dee (1527–1609) was a true Renaissance polymath. He pursued many different branches of learning, including medicine. The current Royal College of Physicians (RCP) exhibition, ‘Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee’, explores Dee’s life and legacy through… Continue reading

Chemist and Druggist is a trade journal for pharmacists but the variety of its content and the abundance of images and advertising from 1859 through to 2010 give it a far wider appeal. This is probably why Chemist and Druggist… Continue reading