Tag: History of Medicine
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The Pill that Changed the World: A Complicated History
Written by Sophie Whitehead. The history of birth control pills is not commonly understood, despite their presence in the everyday lives of hundreds of millions of people. Sophie Whitehead discusses its murky history both in relation to narratives of historical exceptionalism and uncomfortable associations.
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The Four Humours: Understandings of the Body in Medieval Medicine
Written by Amy Hendrie. Popular conceptions of the Middle Ages as cruel and gruesome extend to ideas about medieval medicine. But the medieval understanding of the body was steeped in history, and likely extended into modernity more than one would think.
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The Impacts of Li Shizhen’s Bencao gangmu
Written by Kat Jivkova. The history of the natural world and study of the natural world has much to owe Li Shizhen’s Bencao gagmu, a sixteenth century text created from years of research and exploration, and often referred to as a “dictionary of Chinese knowledge”.
Retrospect Journal 