Tag: public health

Librarian Elizabeth Graham reveals how a new acquisition for the Library collections turned out to have a connection with the former Wellcome Historical Medical Museum. Dr Helen MacMurchy was a distinguished but controversial figure: a pioneering reformer of public health,… Continue reading

Wednesday November 19th is World Toilet Day. For readers in the developed world, this conjures up images of gleaming white porcelain and a hole down which bodily waste vanishes swiftly to be dealt with, somewhere, by someone else: a machine,… Continue reading

Professor Barry Doyle discusses how the Library’s online public health resource, London’s Pulse, enabled him to do new research into the influenza epidemic of 1918, and shares his findings with us. With the centenary of the First World War and… Continue reading

‘Global Health’ is very much in the news with the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa. We tend to take the notion of such global health initiatives for granted now but David MacFadyen’s research reminds us that this was not always… Continue reading

In 1907 a new type of health centre opened in London. The ‘Mothers and Babies Welcome’ (also known as the St Pancras School for Mothers)  provided a range of services aimed at reducing infant mortality. This centre was not the first to provide… Continue reading

To mark the centenary of the pioneering animator Joy Batchelor, Moving Image and Sound curator Angela Saward discusses one of her films – The Five – and relates daughter Vivien’s account of her mother’s life and work.  One of the… Continue reading

Tuberculosis has been called the social disease. It has lived with mankind for thousands of years, and our view of the disease has changed with time and social context. On World Tuberculosis Day (24 March), here’s an example of how… Continue reading

According to the Medical Officer of Health (MOH) report from the London County Council for the year 1900, 158 babies out of every 1000 died before the age of one. As a result of such statistics, local authorities began to take… Continue reading

Dr C. J. B. Aldis (1808-1872) worked as a Medical Officer of Health (MOH) for St George’s, Hanover Square, London, an area that is now part of Westminster City Council. Appointed in 1855, he remained in post until his death 17… Continue reading

Melville Douglas Mackenzie (1889-1972) was no ordinary doctor. In his lifespan, he travelled the globe providing relief and support to countries stricken with cholera, typhus, malaria, and other rapidly spreading contagions. His travels took him from Mesopotamia to Russia, and… Continue reading