Physicians' Gallery

Many exotic plant materials would become household words for the well-to-do during the decades around 1700. A language of curiosity, innovation and invention surrounded attempts to understand, trade in and profit from them. This talk considers some of the ways in which lay consumers, merchants and medical experts appropriated and ‘domesticated’ exotic foods and drugs within the French metropolitan world. The aim is to show how consumption, innovation, trade, knowledge and colonialism intersected in medical advertising, and how the city facilitated the emergence of new practices and commodities out of plants that had grown thousands of miles away.

Speaker: Dr Emma Spary (University of Cambridge)

Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage

Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/

Facebook: facebook.com/PhysiciansGallery

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physiciansgallery

How were bizarre reactions to food described before the coining of the term ‘allergy’ in 1906? Symptoms reminiscent of food allergy have been observed since Ancient Greece and Rome, with Lucretius stating that one person’s food could be another’s poison. Many physicians were convinced that reactions to food were responsible for symptoms ranging from asthma to migraine. At the root of debates about food allergy were questions about the value of patient testimony and the difficulty in proving the link between food and chronic reactions, issues that remain to this day.

Speaker: Dr Matthew Smith (University of Strathclyde)

Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage

Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/

Facebook: facebook.com/PhysiciansGallery

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physiciansgallery

This talk explores popular reactions to the ‘great influenza’ of 1918-20, primarily in relation to other epidemics of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It will contest scholars’ contention that big epidemics, regardless of the disease, inevitably stirred suspicion and blame of the ‘other’, and that an essential factor stirring that hate rested on the mysteriousness of the disease and medical practitioners’ inability to cure or control it.

Speaker: Professor Samuel Cohn (University Of Glasgow)

Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage

Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/

Facebook: facebook.com/PhysiciansGallery

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physiciansgallery

Although playing the piano was often seen as a thoroughly respectable pastime for young ladies, for much of the nineteenth century there was serious medical discussion about the dangers of excessive music in girls’ education.

Many of the period’s leading psychiatrists and gynaecologists argued that music could over-stimulate the female nervous system, playing havoc with vulnerable nerves and reproductive organs, and warned of the consequences of music lessons on the developing bodies of teenage girls. This talk examines some of the theories relating to this medical panic and consider the motivations behind it.

Speaker: Dr James Kennaway (Durham University)

Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage

Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/

Facebook: facebook.com/PhysiciansGallery

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physiciansgallery

Speaker: Professor Mark Harrison (University of Oxford)

Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage

Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/

Facebook: facebook.com/PhysiciansGallery

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physiciansgallery

Speaker: Simon Chaplin (Royal College of Surgeons of England)

Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage

Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/

Facebook: facebook.com/PhysiciansGallery

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physiciansgallery

The poet and songwriter Robert Burns died in 1796, aged 37. There was no post-mortem and hence no tissue diagnosis. Detractors, commencing with unsigned obituaries, assigned the cause firmly to alcoholism.

This talk examines the evidence for a range of alternative diagnoses.

Speaker : Professor Emeritus David Purdie (Hull & York University Medical School)

Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage

Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/

Facebook: facebook.com/PhysiciansGallery

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physiciansgallery

This talk uses the records of the Pathological Society of London, a key institution for the advancement of pathology, to reveal the place and purpose of animals within human pathological anatomy during the later 19th century.

While animals, both wild and domestic, accounted for less than 5% of the specimens exhibited at their meetings, they were nonetheless regarded as legitimate subjects of pathological research by doctors. Their routes into PSL meetings illustrate the ubiquity of animals within Victorian society, the professional and social settings in which Victorian doctors encountered them, and the networks through which they were acquired for pathological purposes.

Speaker: Dr Abigail Woods (Imperial College, London)

Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage

Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/

Facebook: facebook.com/PhysiciansGallery

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physiciansgallery

Grave-robbing and the Burke and Hare murders have become anatomy’s enduring reference points, but during the nineteenth century most bodies were stealthily acquired by medical schools through other means.

After the 1832 Anatomy Act a distinctive pattern of corpse procurement was creatively forged in Scotland, through alliances between the country’s anatomists, anatomy inspectors, local law makers, and the men who were in charge of hospitals, poor houses and lunatic asylums. This system was one that the English schools could only envy.

Speaker: Dr Helen MacDonald (University of Melbourne)

Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage

Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/

Facebook: facebook.com/PhysiciansGallery

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physiciansgallery

Since the late nineteenth century, stress has emerged as a popular means of explaining the onset of both physical and psychological disorders. Yet the definition of stress remains problematic and the manner in which stress might cause disease is still undetermined. This talk traces the history of stress in the twentieth century, exploring scientific theories, clinical formulations and personal experiences of stress and stress-related diseases.

Speaker: Professor Mark Jackson (University of Exeter)

Twitter: twitter.com/RCPEHeritage

Instagram: instagram.com/physiciansgallery/

Facebook: facebook.com/PhysiciansGallery

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@physiciansgallery