History of medicine podcast episodes

Elma Brenner examines the state of healthcare in the Middle Ages

Lindsey Fitzharris delves into the terrifying world of 19th-century hospitals and shows how scientific advances transformed the situation

Join us for episode four in our six-part series examining how the Black Death shook the Middle Ages…

Elinor Cleghorn traces the long history of the misdiagnosis and mistreatment of women’s health issues, from the ancient world to the modern day

From transfusions of lambs’ blood to tooth replacements, Paul Craddock chronicles the strange history of transplant surgery

Professor Barry Doyle explains what kind of treatment you could expect If you were ill before the National Health Service was founded in 1948

Mary Fissell responds to listener questions and popular search enquiries about the history of medicine

Elma Brenner explores some of the diseases that afflicted people in the Middle Ages, and the steps they took to heal the sick and avoid becoming ill in the first place

Simon Bowman of the Royal College of Physicians explores how the work of doctors has changed over the past 500 years

Lindsey Fitzharris chronicles the innovations of plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who worked tirelessly to reconstruct the faces of WW1 soldiers

Jim Downs reveals how the conditions created by colonialism, war and slavery affected the study of disease and its spread

Steven Johnson explores innovations in science and public health that have led to huge increases in life expectancy

As the campaign to vaccinate the population against Covid-19 picks up pace, Gareth Williams explores previous efforts to combat lethal diseases, from smallpox to polio