By This week’s blog post takes the form of a video produced by Dr Christelle Rabier and Dr Jon Adams called ‘Capturing the Cut’. In it we return again to the topic of bladder stones and lithotomy. In the eighteenth century, surgeons were rapidly developing new techniques for invasive surgery. But
Beauty and the Pox
This blog post is really an addition to the Beautiful Healthy Bodies post from January. In that blog post I discussed the connections between physical appearance and disease. The blog started by discussing the connections between venereal disease, appearance and morality. Venereal disease could be an obvious bodily affliction causing
The Secret Disease?
In this week’s blog I want to talk a little bit about venereal disease. It has made regular appearances in my research over the last few months and I am always left wondering the same thing – were people ashamed to have venereal disease? Did they attempt to keep it
Hazardous Horse riding
This week instead of looking at a particular disease I wanted to think a little bit about manly behaviours and how they were thought to interact with the manly body. Can we see any tension between the actions it was necessary display in order to achieve masculinity and the bodily