History

Reading Women, and Reading Women

by tracybarrett May 20, 2013
Reading Women, and Reading Women

by Tracy Barrett (W&M contributor) That is, reading women (the act of reading works written by women) and reading women (women who read). When I received a grant from the NEH to study texts about women written by women in the Middle Ages, many of my friends were puzzled that this was possible. “Medieval women [...]

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The famous surgeons of St Bartholomew’s Hospital

by Lucy Inglis May 13, 2013
The famous surgeons of St Bartholomew's Hospital

St Bartholomew’s hospital has provided care for up to four hundred City patients since its founding in 1123 but it was during the eighteenth century the hospital moved from a treatment model based on medieval nursing to that of an active working hospital with many different types of medicine and medical science going on within [...]

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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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The Jeffers Petroglyphs: Historical Treasure in an Unexpected Place

by JackEl-Hai May 9, 2013
The Jeffers Petroglyphs: Historical Treasure in an Unexpected Place

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor The Upper Midwest of the U.S. is not well known for its archaeological treasures, and it’s easy to see why. The region has utterly transformed over the past 200 years through the loss of 99 percent of its tall grass prairie, the felling of most of its original [...]

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A Labyrinth of Kingdoms

by PamelaToler April 18, 2013
A Labyrinth of Kingdoms

By Pamela Toler Sometimes a book grabs you by the throat and won’t let you put it down. I recently experienced that with Steve Kemper’s A Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 Miles Through Islamic Africa. I got so wrapped up in the story that I broke my long-standing rule about traveling with hardcover books because I [...]

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Ivory Bangle Lady

by CarolineLawrence April 15, 2013
Ivory Bangle Lady

Sometimes I miss Rome so much I think I might die. They found her body in York. Her bones show she died young, aged around 19. She was probably beautiful, for her skull is symmetrical and her teeth were good. Isotopes (trace elements) in her molars prove she came from a hot country, almost certainly [...]

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A Blaze of Loyalty – Lucy Inglis

by Lucy Inglis April 14, 2013
A Blaze of Loyalty - Lucy Inglis

  Britain’s only remaining illuminations (in the true sense) are in Blackpool, where they are associated with trams, tableaux and tackiness. But where did Blackpool, first lit up in 1879, get the idea for such a display? Georgian London of course. The London illuminations of the 18th century are a small and almost forgotten element [...]

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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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Charles Dawes: Vice President, Nobel Winner and Musical Hit Maker

by JackEl-Hai April 9, 2013
Charles Dawes: Vice President, Nobel Winner and Musical Hit Maker

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor Barry Manilow, Van Morrison, the Four Tops, Cass Elliot, Isaac Hayes, Bing Crosby and Nat “King” Cole all owe a lot to a now obscure United States vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner named Charles Dawes. Those musical artists, as well as dozens of others, recorded a [...]

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Imagine a world without the arts

by stephaniecowell April 6, 2013
Imagine a world without the arts

by Stephanie Cowell “The world will be saved by beauty,” Dostoevsky once said. I try to remember that when I find the life of a professional writer difficult. Before writing I was a classical singer and for a brief time an actress and I have spent many hours (likely weeks if you add up a [...]

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Latin Horse Names

by CarolineLawrence March 15, 2013
Latin Horse Names

by Caroline Lawrence In book XI of Virgil’s Aeneid a horse named Aethon weeps over his fallen master, the young Trojan warrior Pallas. (Aeneid XI 89-90) The Romans loved their horses and we find their names on inscriptions, epigrams, souvenir beakers and even lead curse tablets. When I was researching my 12th Roman Mystery, The Charioteer [...]

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A historical novelist’s search for the secrets behind Shakespeare’s Sonnets

by stephaniecowell March 11, 2013
A historical novelist’s search for the secrets behind Shakespeare’s Sonnets

by Stephanie Cowell It is fortunate we have these miraculous sonnets at all, as only thirteen copies remain of their original publication in 1609. The writing of them, the subject of them and the unexpected bisexuality of them (incomprehensible to some) remain much disputed more than four hundred years after that date.  Here is something [...]

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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 Black Stork: A physician’s cinematic argument for eugenics

by JackEl-Hai March 8, 2013
The Black Stork: A physician’s cinematic argument for eugenics

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor One of the most infamous movies of the silent era, which made a case for allowing disabled infants to die, sparked a national debate between 1917 and the late 1920s before sinking into obscurity. Along the way, The Black Stork rocketed a physician to fame and symbolized America’s [...]

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An Old Doctor, a Convent Apothecary, and an Eighteenth-Century Medical Dispute

by Lisa Smith March 2, 2013
An Old Doctor, a Convent Apothecary, and an Eighteenth-Century Medical Dispute

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor In December 1718, Dr. Tolozé, who styled himself an ‘Ancien Medecin’ (Old Doctor), wrote to physician Étienne-François Geoffroy.[1] Tolozé wanted Geoffroy to settle a dispute between him and the nuns of St. Eutrope near Chartres. Geoffroy, he believed, was well-placed to help, being the doctor of a Mme Cossins who [...]

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