Season 1

Aug. 7, 2020

Ep.37 - Jim Mills - Substance Abuse: Past and Present

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.
July 24, 2020

Ep.36 - Chris Philo - The Wild and Tranquil Geographies of Animals and Madness

Prof. Chris Philo explores the ‘madness’ of both human and animals.
July 10, 2020

Ep.35 - Anna Dhody - Looking To The Past To Improve Our Future

Anna Dhody talks about the ways scientists are looking to the past to improve our future.
June 26, 2020

Ep.34 - Kristin Hussey - William Harvey, College of Physicians and the Discovery of Circulation

Dr Kristin Hussey discusses William Harvey, one of Britain’s foremost anatomists and discoverer of the circulation of blood.
June 14, 2020

Ep.33 - Gavin Hardy - The Uses of Plants in Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome

Dr Gavin Hardy discusses the history of plants in medicine during the time of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.
June 10, 2020

Ep.31 - Katie Birkwood - John Dee: Magic, Medicine And The Tudor World

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.
June 10, 2020

Ep.32 - Martin Willis - Medical Tourism in Victorian Edinburgh

Focuses on an under-represented area of medical history: the depiction of places of medicine in 19th-century travel guides.
June 10, 2020

Ep.30 - Emma Spary - Knowing and Selling Exotic Drugs in Paris c.1700

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.
June 10, 2020

Ep.29 - Matthew Smith - Food allergy before “allergy”

How were bizarre reactions to food described before the coining of the term ‘allergy’ in 1906? Dr Matthew Smith explains.
June 10, 2020

Ep.28 - Samuel Cohn - ‘The great influenza’ of 1918-20: A plague of compassion

Explores popular reactions to the ‘great influenza’ of 1918-20, primarily in relation to other epidemics of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
June 10, 2020

Ep.27 - James Kennaway - The Piano Plague: The Medical Campaign Against Female Musical Education

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.
June 10, 2020

Ep.26 - Mark Harrison - Medical Innovation in the British Empire: The Edinburgh Connection

Medical Innovation in the British Empire: The Edinburgh Connection, by Professor Mark Harrison.
June 10, 2020

Ep.25 - Simon Chaplin - The Heroic Anatomist: 18thc Dissection and the Stoic Ideal

The Heroic Anatomist: 18th Century Dissection and the Stoic Ideal, by Simon Chaplin.
June 10, 2020

Ep.23 - Abigail Woods - Animals And Their Pathologists In London, 1846 - 1900

Reveal the place and purpose of animals within human pathological anatomy during the later 19th century.
June 10, 2020

Ep.24 - David Purdie - What Killed Burns And What Did Not?

"What Killed Burns and What Did Not?" by Professor Emeritus David Purdie.
June 10, 2020

Ep.21 - Mark Jackson - The Age of Stress: Myth or Reality?

Traces the history of stress in the twentieth century, exploring scientific theories, clinical formulations and personal experiences of stress and stress-related diseases.
June 10, 2020

Ep.22 - Helen MacDonald - After Burke And Hare: Procuring Corpses To Dissect In Scotland

After the 1832 Anatomy Act a distinctive pattern of corpse procurement was creatively forged in Scotland - Dr Helen MacDonald explains.
June 10, 2020

Ep.20 - Alan Emery - Doctor-Patient Relationship in Art (From Ancient Greece to the Present Day)

Doctor-Patient Relationship in Art (From Ancient Greece to the Present Day) by Prof Alan Emery.
June 10, 2020

Ep.19 - Iain Chalmers - The Evolution Of Controlled Trials

The Evolution of Controlled Trials Before the Middle of the Twentieth Century, by Sir Iain Chalmers.
June 10, 2020

Ep.17 - Catherine Jones - Benjamin Rush, the Yellow Fever, and the Rise of Physician Autobiography

Dr Catherine Jones examines the links between Benjamin Rush’s autobiography ‘Travels through Life’ and his protracted feud with William Cobbett.
June 10, 2020

Ep.18 - Anne Hardy - Epidemiology and the Science of Detection, 1890-1960

Prof Anne Hardy discusses how forensic and investigative techniques were used to study epidemics in the 19th and 20th centuries.
June 10, 2020

Ep.16 - Lisa Rosner - Crime Scene Edinburgh: Forensic Science In The Era Of Burke And Hare

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.
June 10, 2020

Ep.15 - James Kennaway - Fashionable Stomach Complaints and the Mind in Georgian Britain

Examines the development of thinking on the mind-stomach nexus, and how such thinking was incorporated into critiques of modern Britain.
June 10, 2020

Ep.14 - Catherine Cox - Irish Migration, Institutionalisation and Mental Illness in 19thC England

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