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The Historical Collection: Small Pox and the debate over early vaccination

In this blogpost we take a look at a couple of books found in the Reece Collection, a collection of items largely on the topics of small pox and early vaccination once owned by Richard J Reece.

In the early 19th century, the advent of vaccination sparked intense debates within…

Book Display: World Environment Day 2024

World Environment Day, observed annually on 5 June, serves as a global platform for raising awareness and prompting action for environmental protection. Established by the United Nations in 1973, this day has become one of the most significant global events dedicated to environmental advocacy, engaging individuals, communities, and governments in…

Historical Collection: The Victorian meat market, tainted meat, and public health crisis—a look at W. Wylde’s The Inspection of Meat. 

This is a blog post about the book “The Inspection of Meat: A Guide and Instruction Book to Officers Supervising Contract-Meat and to All Sanitary Inspectors Embodying the Teaching Imparted to the Army Service Corps.” By W. Wylde. This item is part of the London School of Hygiene and…

Book display: Nutrition & Hydration Week 2024

It’s Nutrition and Hydration week from the 11th to the 17th March 2024.

Nutrition and Hydration Week, 11th – 17th March 2024

This year, the theme around the week is “Making a Difference Everyday”, it’s all important we all consider if we’re getting enough nutrients in our diets…

Indian medicinal plants : an early twentieth  century illustrated reference book by the Indian physicians K.R. Kirtikar and B.D. Basu LSHTM Rare Book Blog series No. 9. February 2024.

In those parts of the world with a written language, the first organisms in the natural world to be studied, documented and figured were plants in recognition of their economic value in agriculture, nutrition, health and well-being.  In Europe these herbals, as they are called, were hand-written in…

India in the Historical Collection (pt. 2): Plants and Pharmacology

As we’ve already seen in this blog series, the Historical Collection furnishes a huge variety of pre-twentieth-century material that is of value to anyone interested in the history of science or social studies or LSHTM as an institution. The work done to improve catalogue records for this…

Understanding puerperal fever in the eighteenth century : the work of John Leake (1729-1792), man-midwife. LSHTM Rare Books Blog No. 8 January 2024.

In the 18th and 19th centuries and until the 20th Century the death of women in childbirth or shortly afterwards was a common occurrence. One early treatise on puerperal fever was written by John Leake, a physician and male midwife:  Practical observations on the child-bed fever, first published in…

It’s ‘Dry January’ Month!

Devised by the Alcohol Change UK charity, ‘Dry January’ was created to encourage people to take a break from drinking alcohol for one month. The Alcohol Change UK works to reduce alcohol harm and to provide information and support around drinking. Taking a month off drinking allows people to start…

Johann Gottfried Bremser’s early 19th century medical books on parasitic worms with hand-coloured plates. LSHTM Rare Books Blog Series No. 7. August 2023

The Austrian physician Johann Gottfried Bremser (1767-1827) was born in Wertheim am Main in present-day Germany. He studied medicine in Jena and Vienna where he obtained a licence to practice medicine in 1797. Bremser made a special study of parasitic worm infections in humans and travelled to Paris…

India in the Historical Collection (pt. 1): Food and Diet

As we’ve already seen in this blog series, the Historical Collection furnishes a huge variety of pre-twentieth-century material that is of value to anyone interested in the history of science or social studies or LSHTM as an institution. The work done to improve catalogue records for this…