T’is the Season for yummy yuletide foods! There are tables groaning under the weight of roast turkey or ham, brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, roasted potatoes, stuffing and assorted vegetables. Mugs of hot buttered rum or apple cider are clutched and glasses of cold eggnog are passed around. Not to mention the multitudes of desserts. Mince… Read more Gingerbread Houses to Keep You Warm
New discoveries are regularly made about the human body, and a lot of those discoveries center on how important the microbiota – the bacteria, fungi, viruses and other tiny organisms – that live in our guts are for our health and wellbeing. The ability of those little guys to flourish and procreate is the key… Read more Of Mind and Microbiota
For millennia, Western medicine was in thrall to the humoral theory of ancient Greece. It wasn’t until the scientific revolution of the Victorian era that germs were understood to cause illness, but even then medical ideas about a woman’s body had more in common with those espoused by Helenic doctors than modern ones. Germs there… Read more Green Sickness and the Cultural Construction of Women’s Health
One of the many irrational beheadings Henry VIII ordered as an older king was the execution of his loyal and indispensably helpful minister Thomas Cromwell. King Henry’s deteriorating brain function might have been the result of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition only recently diagnosed by medical science, but it may have also been due to… Read more The Untimely Death of Thomas Cromwell
James Barry, famous for being the first doctor in British history to keep both mother and baby alive after a cesarean-section, was actually a woman disguising herself as a man in order to practice medicine. Barry was born Margaret Ann Bulkley in late 18th century Ireland, and with the help of some progressive friends —… Read more James Barry, Nee Margaret Ann Bulkley
No one expected King Edward VI to die so young. Although he was re-written retroactively as “frail” and unhealthy, there is no evidence to support that conclusion. A French ambassador described Edward as being “remarkably tall for his age” when the future king was four years old, which indicates reasonably good health. (Murphy, 2011:246). Furthermore,… Read more Edward VI
Princess Elizabeth Tudor, the 4th child and second daughter of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, was born on 2 July 1492. She seemed healthy enough as a baby, but the little girl died while she was only a toddler in the royal nurseries at Eltham Palace on 14 September 1495. Her parents were,… Read more Elizabeth Tudor, and Medieval Child Mortality
Henry VIII was born 28 June 1491 at the Palace of Placentia the third child of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. As hard as is it to believe, considering the stir he would make in the historical record, the little prince was an extremely second fiddle to his elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales.… Read more The Incredible Life of Henry VIII
Henry VIII married his brother’s widow, Katherina of Aragon, at a small ceremony in Greenwich on 11 June 1509. They were a handsome couple, and initially very much in love. Henry probably lied when he claimed his father had told him to marry her while Henry VII was on his death bed, but the… Read more Henry VIII’s First Wedding
Depression isn’t a modern disease. It’s been recorded throughout history, and many English kings – including Henry VIII – were believed to have suffered from what their doctors would have called “excessive melancholy”. Shakespeare immortalised the symptoms of depression in Hamlet, wherein the titular Prince of Denmark complained that, “I have of late, but wherefore… Read more Be of Good Cheer