Gaslight Stories: Women in White, Eccentric Heirs, Inconvenient People Event Date: Wed, 14/08/2019 The 1800s saw a series of scandals concerning individuals being locked away in lunatic asylums – the victims of unscrupulous persons who wanted to be rid of a ‘difficult’ family member, spouse or friend. But who were...
Concerning Beards: Facial Hair, Health and Hygiene in Britain, c. 1650-1900 Event Date: Wed, 03/07/2019 Speaker: Dr Alun Withey, University of Essex Despite growing historical interest in the male body, historians have, until fairly recently, overlooked a principle component of both men’s bodies and masculinity - facial...
Moonstruck Exhibition Launch Event Date: Thu, 13/06/2019 This event celebrates the launch of our exhibition, ' Moonstruck: 500 years of mental health. ' The event will begin in our foyer with a drinks reception. You will then have the opportunity to hear two speakers, Jo...
Creative Writing with E. S. Thomson Event Date: Thu, 15/08/2019 Join historical crime fiction writer E.S. Thomson for a unique creative writing workshop. In this 3 hour session you will use real historical material from one of the oldest medical collections in the UK. Images,...
The Nose Knows: Syphilitic Noses in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Art Event Date: Wed, 05/06/2019 Speaker: Dr Noelle Gallagher, Senior Lecturer in 18th Century British Literature, University of Manchester “For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the...
Coping with Plague: Public Health and Epidemics in Renaissance Italy Event Date: Wed, 08/05/2019 Speaker: Professor John Henderson, Professor of Italian Renaissance History, University of London Italy, though best known for the birth of the Renaissance, is also renowned for the precocious development of its public...
Sugar and Spikes: Changing Approaches to Diabetes Care During the last 100 years, the treatment of diabetes mellitus in Britain underwent radical transformation. One of the most striking features of twentieth-century diabetes care was the increasing amount of self-...
Coal Miners and Stonemasons: Uncovering a New Disease and a Very Old Disease in Georgian Edinburgh Event Date: Mon, 29/04/2019 Speaker: Professor Ken Donaldson, Emeritus Professor of Toxicology, University of Edinburgh By the mid-19th century around 200,000 miners were employed in a UK coal mining industry still growing with the advances of the...
Spitting Blood: Tuberculosis, Past and Present Speakers: Dr Helen Bynum and Dr Derek Sloan, Senior Lecturer/Consultant in Infectious Diseases, University of St. Andrews Tuberculosis: a contagious, infectious disease that has been a challenge over much of human...
Syphilis: Then and Now In the 1600s Peter Sartorius, a citizen and surgeon of Strasbourg, compared syphilis to ‘an angry dog’, which viciously threatened communities. Join the Edinburgh Skeptics Society and the Royal College of Physicians of...
