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Tag: 18th century

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  • Woman who lived off smell

    Smell and medical efficacy in 18th-century England

    08/02/2018

    The next seminar in the 2017–18 History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminar series takes place on Tuesday 13 February. Speaker: Dr William Tullett (Institute of Historical Research, University of London) Smell and medical efficacy in 18th-century England Abstract: In recent years a growing scholarship… Continue reading

  • Image of Aristotle and hairy woman.

    ‘Aristotle”s bestselling sex manual

    09/12/2016

    Sex, childbirth and reproductive health were topics of considerable interest to people in early modern England. The Wellcome Library has a substantial collection of different editions of a hugely popular printed work addressing these issues in 17th- and 18th-century England,… Continue reading

  • Some fatherly advice from the king

    08/08/2016

    What right do we have to subject our children to potentially dangerous medical intervention in the interests of sparing them from a devastating disease that they may never contract? In the early 18th century several British royal children were inoculated… Continue reading

  • Linking letters across archives

    19/01/2016

    On a recent visit to the Library, archivist Karen Rushton made some interesting connections between letters in the Wellcome Library archives and others in archives at the University of Manchester Library. By their very nature, correspondence by particular individuals often… Continue reading

  • Doctors and the invention of the English seaside

    20/10/2015

    How did the so-called ‘sea cure’ supplant the taking of waters at fashionable spas for Georgian England’s worried well? This was the question I sought answers for in the Wellcome Library’s collections. There I found several intriguing medical tracts, not… Continue reading

  • Peter the Wild Boy

    22/06/2015

    The Heberden archive (Library reference SA/HEB) has recently been catalogued and is available for consultation in the Library. While it mostly relates to rheumatism and arthritis, it also includes a collection of historic medical manuscripts, which were put together by… Continue reading

  • 17th century royal proclamation

    Royal proclamations: King Charles II and beyond

    06/05/2015

    We have recently finished cataloguing a small collection of 18 royal proclamations dating from the reigns of King Charles II (1662), through William and Mary to Anne (1702). Part of the Library’s ephemera collection, the proclamations have a similar overall… Continue reading

  • Madness and civilization: a lecture in 45 tweets

    26/03/2015

    Couldn’t make it to Professor Andrew Scull’s terrific Porter Lecture on madness and civilization at Wellcome Collection? The helpful people at the History of Human Sciences Journal tweeted a ‘blow by blow’ account which they’ve storified into a handy guide… Continue reading

  • Sex tourism in 18th century London?

    16/02/2015

    We’ve all heard of the Grand Tour, when 18th century Englishmen went off to the Continent to further their cultural education and cultivate their aesthetic tastes, returning with paintings and statuary to adorn their homes. But what about traffic in… Continue reading

  • 17th-18th century Burney Collection newspapers

    10/02/2009

    This outstanding collection of parliamentary papers, newspapers and pamphlets gathered by the Revd Dr Charles Burney (1757-1817) can now be accessed from the Wellcome Library. The Burney Collection, held at the British Library, represents the largest single collection of news… Continue reading