Helen King

Fun with pigs

by Helen King May 10, 2013
Fun with pigs

By Helen King   Finally, I understand what it is about dissection… Regular readers will know that, among other things, I’m a visiting professor at a medical school. As a recently-founded medical school, this one does not teach through human dissection. Instead, students learn their anatomy through books, computer simulations, models, and ‘surface anatomy’. The [...]

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Life and Death, Pompeii and Herculaneum

by Helen King April 10, 2013

by Helen King   It’s all about the fear… when you never get to eat your daily bread. I made it to Day 1 of the much-awaited British Museum exhibition on these two Roman cities – not because of careful planning but because, when I went online to book, that was simply the first day when slots [...]

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Julia Pastrana, ‘bearded lady’

by Helen King March 10, 2013
Julia Pastrana, 'bearded lady'

  by Helen King Lucy Inglis recently posted on the ‘Hottentot Venus’. Last month, there was a big day for the ‘bearded lady’: Julia Pastrana’s body was repatriated to her native Mexico and buried, her coffin covered with white roses. Julia, ‘the world’s ugliest woman’, suffered from excessive hair growth on her face. She was [...]

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The history of menstruation

by Helen King February 10, 2013

Julia Margaret Cameron’s Hypatia     By Helen King (W&M Regular Contributor) Everything has a history. I suppose it was only a matter of time before I wrote about menstruation here; my doctoral thesis was on menstruation in classical Greece. One of the questions I couldn’t answer there was ‘What did women actually do about the [...]

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The Mummy returns

by Helen King January 10, 2013
The Mummy returns

By Helen King Have you seen the Egyptian mummies in the British Museum? Even if you’ve never been to London, you may have caught the travelling exhibition, ‘Mummy: The Inside Story’, which focuses on the priest Nesperennub, and has so far been seen by nearly 2 million people. Mummies are endlessly fascinating. They give nightmares [...]

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12 Days of Books – Greek and Roman Medicine, and constipation

by Helen King December 15, 2012
12 Days of Books - Greek and Roman Medicine, and constipation

By Helen King (W&M Contributor) I don’t know how you cope with deadlines: I am a lapsed perfectionist, so I’ve learned just to watch them sailing by. Some are real, some are imaginary. Telling the difference can be a challenge. Sometimes I’ve worked flat out to meet one, only to find that none of the [...]

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Women and humour in history

by Helen King November 10, 2012

 By Helen King Do men always get the best punch-lines? I was recently at a conference where one of the speakers illustrated his points about gender in ancient Rome by referring to a story about Winston Churchill and Nancy Astor. Quick-witted, the first woman Member of Parliament, Nancy Astor’s reputation has been tarnished by her [...]

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Theatres of Anatomy

by Helen King October 10, 2012
Theatres of Anatomy

By Helen King (W&M contributor) I was recently lucky enough to visit for the first time two historic anatomy theatres: the oldest permanent structure, the Padua anatomy theatre of 1594, and the 1638-39 one in Bologna. Before 1594, anatomy theatres were temporary structures, in some cases erected at the expense of the professor performing the dissection. [...]

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Seeds, wombs and ‘legitimate rape’

by Helen King September 10, 2012
Seeds, wombs and 'legitimate rape'

  By Helen King! W&M Contributor Last month, in a much-repeated comment, Todd Akin recently claimed that ‘if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down’. Not surprisingly, he has been ridiculed for the lack of knowledge of biology that this comment betrays. It didn’t take [...]

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Diana, Callisto and Philip II

by Helen King August 10, 2012
Diana, Callisto and Philip II

By Helen King Between 1553 and 1562, Titian painted a number of mythological scenes for Philip II. Among these was a painting of Diana and Callisto. In the story, told most famously by the Roman poet Ovid, Callisto is one of the unmarried girls forming the virgin goddess’s entourage. Jupiter catches sight of her, and [...]

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Meet Helen King (Contributor Q&A)

by Holly Tucker August 3, 2012
Meet Helen King (Contributor Q&A)

As you may have seen, we’ve been adding some amazing contributors to Wonders & Marvels. We want you to get to know each of them. This time around, we’re hearing from the amazing Helen King, Queen of the Traveling Vulva! Here’s a sampling of Helen’s W&M posts.  Some of my favorites include: Midwives and Murderers in [...]

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Midwives as murderers in 17th century London

by Helen King July 10, 2012
Midwives as murderers in 17th century London

By Helen King In my last post for Wonders & Marvels, I introduced you to my favourite historical character, the ‘Popish midwife’ Elizabeth Cellier. When I was researching her for the first time some years back, I came across another midwife who was in London at precisely the same time: Mary Awbry, or Hobry. Like [...]

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Midwifery and ventriloquism: did Elizabeth Cellier write her own books?

by Helen King June 10, 2012
Midwifery and ventriloquism: did Elizabeth Cellier write her own books?

By Helen King Possibly my favourite historical figure of all time is Elizabeth Cellier, the ‘Popish Midwife’ who was involved in one of those complicated ‘plots’ of late seventeenth-century England; the ‘meal-tub plot’, in which a list of plotters turned up in her kitchen. Was it genuine, or planted by those who wanted to represent [...]

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The vulva goes on pilgrimage

by Helen King May 10, 2012
The vulva goes on pilgrimage

In a recent post, W&M contributor Tracy Barrett mentioned in passing the pewter badges worn in the hat during the Middle Ages, and in a moment of recognition I felt compelled to respond with my favourite one, showing a vulva wearing a jaunty pilgrim’s hat. I found out about these tiny objects when I was [...]

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Imaginary body parts

by Helen King April 10, 2012
Imaginary body parts

    I’ve been thinking a lot about imaginary body parts recently. The Queen’s Gallery is opening a new exhibition of the anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in May; put it on your ‘to do’ list if you are in London – http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci-anatomist -  and I have done some work for the audio guide and the [...]

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