Julia Wells
[British Central Africa] is a country where Europeans can live healthily by the careful practice of the rules of sanitation and hygiene.” – John Murray, Guide to Health in Africa (London: The African World, 1912).
Tropical medicine of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is remembered today primarily for its ground-breaking medical discoveries. The identification of the malaria parasite and its mosquito vector, the development of commercially synthesised and mass-produced prophylactic quinine, and advances in the treatment of sleeping sickness, for example, all helped to define tropical medicine as the epitome of modern medical science. [Read more…] about Dressing well for going troppo
Alyssa Kennedy, studying Medical History, has been examining the late nineteenth century casebooks of the Dunedin hospital held at Archives New Zealand (Dunedin Branch). She chose to examine uterine complaints. Her findings remind us of the different reproductive experience of women in the past.
After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 the armies of Islam swept out of the Arabian Peninsula. Within fifty years they had overrun all the territory conquered by Alexander the Great nine hundred years before. Within one hundred years their empire extended from Spain to India and from Egypt to the Caspian Sea in the north. The Caliphs then set about consolidating their empire, building a new capital of Baghdad in 762. This was strategically located on the fertile plain of the river Tigris, away from the reach of marauding armies, yet on the lucrative trading route of the Silk Road to China. The centre piece of the new capital was The House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma), a combination of publishing house, library and research institute. This became the focus of a vigorous expansion of knowledge in all of the sciences including medicine.
