Episodes

Considers the changing public perception of drugs such as cannabis and the factors which have influenced its longevity, including immigration, diplomacy, medical science, and politics.

Prof. Chris Philo explores the ‘madness’ of both human and animals.

Anna Dhody talks about the ways scientists are looking to the past to improve our future.

Dr Kristin Hussey discusses William Harvey, one of Britain’s foremost anatomists and discoverer of the circulation of blood.

Dr Gavin Hardy discusses the history of plants in medicine during the time of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

Katie Birkwood explores John Dee’s life story, thoughts and personality, which survive in the personally annotated collection of his books, now residing at the library of the Royal College of Physicians, London.

Focuses on an under-represented area of medical history: the depiction of places of medicine in 19th-century travel guides.

Considers some of the ways in which lay consumers, merchants and medical experts appropriated and ‘domesticated’ exotic foods and drugs within the French metropolitan world.

How were bizarre reactions to food described before the coining of the term ‘allergy’ in 1906? Dr Matthew Smith explains.

Explores popular reactions to the ‘great influenza’ of 1918-20, primarily in relation to other epidemics of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

For much of the 19th-C there was serious medical discussion about the dangers of excessive music in girls’ education. This examines theories relating to this medical panic and consider motivations behind it.

Medical Innovation in the British Empire: The Edinburgh Connection, by Professor Mark Harrison.

The Heroic Anatomist: 18th Century Dissection and the Stoic Ideal, by Simon Chaplin.

Reveal the place and purpose of animals within human pathological anatomy during the later 19th century.

"What Killed Burns and What Did Not?" by Professor Emeritus David Purdie.

Traces the history of stress in the twentieth century, exploring scientific theories, clinical formulations and personal experiences of stress and stress-related diseases.

After the 1832 Anatomy Act a distinctive pattern of corpse procurement was creatively forged in Scotland - Dr Helen MacDonald explains.

Doctor-Patient Relationship in Art (From Ancient Greece to the Present Day) by Prof Alan Emery.

The Evolution of Controlled Trials Before the Middle of the Twentieth Century, by Sir Iain Chalmers.

Dr Catherine Jones examines the links between Benjamin Rush’s autobiography ‘Travels through Life’ and his protracted feud with William Cobbett.

Prof Anne Hardy discusses how forensic and investigative techniques were used to study epidemics in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Prof. Lisa Rosner takes a CSI-style approach to discuss the notorious murders carried out by Burke and Hare, who supplied bodies for dissection at Edinburgh's medical school.

Examines the development of thinking on the mind-stomach nexus, and how such thinking was incorporated into critiques of modern Britain.

Explores the migratory patterns of Irish patients into and through the Lancashire asylum system in the later 19th century.