Museum & Herb Garret
‘Pain has an element of blank’
Posted: August 1, 2019
We assume that our ancestors felt pain in much the same way as we do today. But perhaps this ‘common-sense’ assumption is incorrect. The way individuals relate to the world,…
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Introduction to English Witches in the Early Modern Period
Posted: August 1, 2019
Between 1450 and 1750 ecclesiastical and secular courts tried and executed tens of thousand of people throughout Europe for the crime of witchcraft. Witchcraft may be defined as supernatural activity,…
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An Englishman’s Paradise
Posted: August 1, 2019
In 1862, while the new buildings of St Thomas’ were under construction near Westminster Bridge, the hospital temporarily moved to Surrey Gardens. Now a populous area between the Kennington and…
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There Together Be Suspended
Posted: August 1, 2019
On November 13th 1849, the felonious couple Frederick and Maria Manning were publicly executed at the Horsemonger Lane Gaol, Southwark, for the murder of Patrick O’Connor – an affair that…
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Victorian Attitudes Towards Self-Murder
Posted: August 1, 2019
On New Year’s Eve 1811 the body of John Williams, who had hanged himself in prison while awaiting trial for the Ratcliff Highway murders, was paraded through the streets of…
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The Natural Ordure of Things
Posted: August 1, 2019
“Why, what I may think after dinner is one thing, and what I may think before dinner is another.” Mr Jopling, ‘Bleak House’. It’s a fair assumption that not many of…
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The Invention of Rubber Gloves: A True Love Story!
Posted: August 1, 2019
In 2006 Professor Harold Ellis, CBE Mch FRCS, during an interview at the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret shared this little love story connected to the invention of…
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Review: Quacks and Anaesthesia
Posted: August 1, 2019
Set in a time of change for medicine, Quacks also embraces the introduction of pain relief. Quacks is treating anaesthesia for effect, but there are also kernels of historic truth…
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Polyps: A Real Life Hydra in Miniature
Posted: August 1, 2019
Previously, I wrote a blog about the reintroduction of Rhinoplasty to European surgery in the early 19th century by Joseph Constantine Carpue. The idea of transplanting tissue had been neglected for such…
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Precious Objects as Materia Medica
Posted: August 1, 2019
Coral & Pearl In the Secrets of Maister Alexis, translated into English by William Warde in 1558 we find on folio 69 (recto) a recipe for a distilled water which “is very…
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The Fear of Female Physicians (Cunning-Women) in Anglo-Saxon England
Posted: August 1, 2019
‘Woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word, a perilous object.’ Saint Jerome, 4th century. In the small Cotswold village…
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Seeing is Believing: Spiritualism in the Victorian Era-Part 4
Posted: August 1, 2019
The Society of Psychical Research was one of a number of organisations established in Britain in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It was founded in 1882 by a…
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Seeing is Believing: Spiritualism in the Victorian Era-Part 3
Posted: August 1, 2019
In the dawn of modern spiritualism the general means of communication employed by the spirits were made by “raps” or “alphabet rapping”, where a medium could relay messages from the…
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Seeing is Believing: Spiritualism in the Victorian Era-Part 2
Posted: August 1, 2019
In mid-Victorian London the early spiritualist movement was relatively small and mainly dominated by the upper circles of society. A varied grouping of middle-class intellectuals and professionals became the early…
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Seeing is Believing: Spiritualism in the Victorian Era-Part 1
Posted: August 1, 2019
“There exists… a Higher science, which is also religion in the truest sense, which deals with hidden forces in nature at which Physical science stops short, but which are more…
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Dried Marigold Flowers
Posted: August 1, 2019
Many flowers have names associated with the Virgin Mary – Lady’s Mantle and Lady’s Smock to name two. It would seem reasonable to assume that Marigold, old name Marygold, is…
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The Christmas Rose as a Medicinal Plant
Posted: August 1, 2019
Today we know Black Hellebore (botanical name Helliborus Officinalis) as the Christmas Rose, but it also had a much older name, Christe Herb. The reason for both of these alternative names is…
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Gum Arabic: History and Uses
Posted: August 1, 2019
Gum Arabic is a gummy exudation from the branches of the Acacia Senegal (L.) Willd and other species of the Leguminosae Family. It is also known as Gum Acacia, Kordofan Gum, Gum…
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Unicorns and Disingenuous Apothecaries
Posted: August 1, 2019
On the 30th of January I attended the opening of the current exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians, ‘A Cabinet of Rarities’: the Curious Collections of Sir Thomas Browne.…
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The Black Poppy
Posted: August 1, 2019
A TALL AND FINE PLANT BUT NOT SO ELEGANT AS THE FORMER [THE WHITE POPPY]. IT IS A YARD HIGH. THE STALK IS ROUND, UPRIGHT AND FIRM, AND SMOOTH, AND…
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William Lowder: A Male Midwife in 18th-Century England
Posted: August 1, 2019
Midwifery was a developing science in the 18th century. New discoveries were being made in anatomy and physiology; new instruments were developed, and midwifery schools began to open, with courses…
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Ether, Anaesthesia and the Old Operating Theatre
Posted: August 1, 2019
In August 2008, as part of the building works at the museum, samples of sawdust from under the operating theatre were taken by conservator Jonna Holt. Apart from other things,…
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The Resurrection Men
Posted: August 1, 2019
Anatomy and physiology are most important disciplines to a surgeon. By the middle of the 18th century, dissection of the dead had become central to surgical education, and this meant…
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Dr. Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, a.k.a. “Mummy Pettigrew”: A Short Biography
Posted: August 1, 2019
On the 28th October 1791, Thomas Joseph Pettigrew was born in a house on Fleet Street in London. He was the son of a naval surgeon and began his own…
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