Physicians' Gallery Blog

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the College’s Council heard a number of disciplinary cases regarding doctors accused of “unbecoming and unprofessional” behaviour by advertising their services...

The College's collection provides a fascinating insight into both neoclassical sculpture and the history of the College itself. The portrait busts tell some of the College’s history as the...

Remedies to improve the complexion and remove warts, spots and boils have been in use since antiquity. Donkey milk, turpentine and crocodile faeces were all applied to the skin....

Working-class skin was a source of fear and a source of knowledge. In the 1800s an increased understanding of contagionist theory lead to an increased fear of the proximity...

Skin markings can be natural, artificial or cultural. They can be marks of transformation, of illness or of self-expression. Scars in the 1500s and 1600s were seen as external...

Dermatology has a relatively short history. Although the first medical text specifically written on the skin dates from the 1500s it was only in the late 1700s that it...

The skin held little interest for medical practitioners during antiquity and the Renaissance. When it was cut open during an autopsy, it was quickly laid aside to study the...

Exposed skin was a site of suspicion for any cutaneous change. Alongside other disfiguring maladies, the plague manifested on the skin and was a significant anxiety for many. Therefore,...

When groups of people leave their home and move to other countries or even just regions within the same country they take with them their culinary habits. Familiar food...

In the Middle Ages intentional food deprivation was associated with religious fasting, in more extreme cases known as holy anorexia or ‘great starvation’. This practice was most commonly adopted...

The origins of evacuatory medicine lie with the humoural system. When a person’s humours became imbalanced this needed to be corrected by removing the ‘bad humours’ from their body....

From Ancient Greece to the 1800s much of medical practice was based around humoural theory. According to this idea, there were four humours, or fluids, in the body which...