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Disease is the true serial killer of human history: the horrors of bubonic plague, cholera, syphilis, smallpox, tuberculosis and the like have claimed more lives and caused more misery than the depredations of warfare, famine and natural disasters combined. Murderous Contagion tells the compelling and at times unbearably moving story of the devastating impact of diseases on humankind - from the Black Death of the 14th century to the Spanish flu of 1918-19 and the AIDS epidemic of the modern era. In this book Mary Dobson also relates the endeavours of physicians and scientists to understand and identify the causes of diseases and find ways of preventing them. This is a timely and revelatory work of popular history by a writer whose knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, her subject shines through her every word.
Disease is the true serial killer of human history: the horrors of bubonic plague, cholera, syphilis, smallpox, tuberculosis and the like have claimed more lives and caused more misery than the depredations of warfare, famine and natural disasters combined. Murderous Contagion tells the compelling and at times unbearably moving story of the devastating impact of diseases on humankind - from the Black Death of the 14th century to the Spanish flu of 1918-19 and the AIDS epidemic of the modern era. In this book Mary Dobson also relates the endeavours of physicians and scientists to understand and identify the causes of diseases and find ways of preventing them. This is a timely and revelatory work of popular history by a writer whose knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, her subject shines through her every word.
This book provides a penetrating account of death and disease in early modern England. Using a wide range of sources for the southeast of England, the author highlights the tremendous variation in levels of mortality across geographical contours and across two centuries of time. She explores the epidemiological causes and consequences of these mortality variations, and offers the reader a fascinating insight into the way patients and practitioners perceived, understood and reacted to the multitude of fevers, poxes and plagues in past times.
Includes Roman Aromas, Tudor Odours, Victorian Vapours, Vile Vikings, Greek Grime, Mouldy Mummies, Wartime Whiffs, Reeking Royals, and Medieval Muck,
A comedy play. Robin, with the help of a Merry Man wannabe simply known as the Town's Guy, turns this once-simple legend into a hysterical trip through Sherwood Forest with surprises at every turn. Our charming-but-egotistical hero leads his band of familiar wood-dwellers as they battle the delectably evil Prince John and his haughty henchman, the Sheriff of Nottingham. Roboin's one and only love, the Lady Marian, remains true to her champion as she assists his crusade by wishing the prince and sheriff a rash of various skin afflictions. Incredibly, our model good guy Robin discovers that even heroes have a few important life lessons to learn.
Get a real "sense" of the past with these pungent and hilarious tours through history.
Get a real 'sense of the past' with these pungent and hilarious tours through our history. Scratch and sniff your way through time, to savour the awful and the aromatic (mostly the awful), and pick up some fascinating facts on just how smelly life must have been.
Humorous drawings discuss the aromas of life in Victorian England.
In' The Story of Medicine', esteemed medical historian Mary Dobson charts the ways in which we have fought with disease and injury over several millennia - from the 'humours' of Hippocrates to Edward Jenner and the eradication of smallpox, and from Florence Nightingale's nursing reforms to Crick and Watson's DNA chain. Richly illustrated with paintings, illustrations and photographs, this volume is filled with the trauma as well as the triumph of medical science, including the pain of the surgeon's knife in the centuries before anaesthetics, the body-snatchers of the nineteenth century and the realities of battlefield surgery. Moving and revealing, here is a fascinating study of the glorious - and sometimes dangerous - pursuit of medical science.
Very successful when first performed in London in 1908, Diana of Dobson’s introduces its audience to the overworked and underpaid female assistants at Dobson’s Drapery Emporium, whose only alternative to their dead-end jobs is the unlikely prospect of marriage. Although Cicely Hamilton calls the play “a romantic comedy,” like George Bernard Shaw she also criticizes a social structure in which so-called self-made men profit from the cheap labour of others, and men with good educations, but insufficient inherited money, look for wealthy wives rather than for work. This Broadview edition also includes excerpts from Hamilton’s autobiography Life Errant (1935) and Marriage as a Trade (1909), her witty polemic on “the woman question”; historical documents illustrating employment options for women and women’s work in the theatre; and reviews of the original production of the play.