Was Dr James Barry a pioneering transman or was she an insanely driven genius woman who sacrificed everything, even her own identity for her career? Iszi ponders the difficulty of trying to fit morden genders on people in the past.

Iszi Lawrence is a presenter of BBC's Making History and The British Museum Membercast.www.iszi.com and on twitter: @iszi_lawrence.

A new series of BBC Radio 4 Making History Presented by Iszi and Tom Holland is out now listen on BBC Sounds and herehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qxrc

Please do check out more of iszi's podcasts onwww.iszi.comand support the show by donating to paypal here: ; https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=7ZECZ8GLF5SSU