This article examines a fifteenth-century remedy book, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson c. 299, and describes its collection of 314 medieval medical prescriptions. The recipes are organised broadly from head to toe, and often several remedies are offered for the same complaint. Some individual recipes are transcribed with modern English translations. The few non-recipe texts are also noted. The difference between a remedy book and a leechbook is explained, and this manuscript is situated in relation to other known examples of late medieval medical anthologies. The particular feature that distinguishes Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson c. 299 from other similar volumes is the evidence that it continued to be used during the sixteenth century. This usage was of two kinds. Firstly, the London lawyer who owned it not only inscribed his name but annotated the original recipe collection in various ways, providing finding-aids that made it much more user-friendly. Secondly, he, and other members of his family, added another forty-three recipes to the original collection (some examples of these are also transcribed). These two layers of engagement with the manuscript are interrogated in detail in order to reveal what ailments may have troubled this family most, and to judge how much faith they placed in the old remedies contained in this old book. It is argued that the knowledge preserved in medieval books enjoyed a longevity that extended beyond the period of the manuscript book, and that manuscripts were read and valued long after the advent of printing.

This paper analyses how research on antibiotic resistance has been a driving force in the development of new antibiotics. Drug resistance, while being a problem for physicians and patients, offers attractive perspectives for those who research and develop new medicines. It imposes limits on the usability of older medicines and simultaneously modifies pathologies in a way that opens markets for new treatments. Studying resistance can thus be an important part of developing and marketing antibiotics.

The chosen example is that of the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. Before World War Two, Bayer had pioneered the development of anti-infective chemotherapy, sulpha drugs in particular, but had missed the boat when it came to fungal antibiotics. Exacerbated by the effects of war, Bayer’s world market presence, which had been considerable prior to the war, had plummeted. In this critical situation, the company opted for a development strategy that tried to capitalise on the problems created by the use of first-generation antibiotics. Part and parcel of this strategy was monitoring what can be called the structural change of infectious disease. In practice, this meant to focus on pathologies resulting from resistance and hospital infections. In addition, Bayer also focused on lifestyle pathologies such as athlete’s foot. This paper will follow drug development and marketing at Bayer from 1945 to about 1980. In this period, Bayer managed to regain some of its previous standing in markets but could not escape from the overall crisis of anti-infective drug development from the 1970s on.

The present article seeks to fill a number of lacunae with regard to the study of the circulation and assimilation of different bodies of medical knowledge in an important cultural contact zone, that is the Upper Guinea Coast. Building upon ongoing research on trade and cultural brokerage in the area, it focuses upon shifting attitudes and practices with regard to health and healing as a result of cultural interaction and hybridisation against the background of growing intra-African and Afro-Atlantic interaction from the fifteenth to the late seventeenth century. Largely based upon travel accounts, missionary reports and documents produced by the Portuguese Inquisition, it shows how forms of medical knowledge shifted and circulated between littoral areas and their hinterland, as well as between the coast, the Atlantic and beyond. It shows that the changing patterns of trade, migration and settlement associated with Mandé influence and Afro-Atlantic exchange had a decisive impact on changing notions of illness and therapeutic trajectories. Over the centuries, cross-cultural, reciprocal borrowing contributed to the development of healing kits employed by Africans and non-African outsiders alike, which were used and brokered by local communities in different locations in the region.

Demographic trends, and older people over 65 years disproportionately occupying beds in psychiatric hospitals, pointed to their increasing clinical needs. Clinical work with older people often required different skills from work with younger people. ‘General psychiatrists’, nominally working with adults of all ages, usually had little interest in working with older people. By 1977, it was clear to clinical leaders in the field of psychogeriatrics that official recognition of their specialty by the government was essential to ensure service development. Official recognition would provide the means to collect data to identify gaps in services, to obtain information on the implementation of government guidance and to advocate for resources, including ensuring high quality training posts for doctors wanting to specialise in the field. Doctors have traditionally taken the lead in creating new medical specialties, and psychogeriatrics was no exception. However, support fluctuated towards the specialty from the leadership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Health service leaders who did not undertake work with older people, were incredulous that others wished to do so. Negotiations between the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Department of Health and Social Security about recognising psychogeriatrics were convoluted and prolonged. Recognition was achieved in 1989, following intervention by the Royal College of Physicians of London.

The ecological fecundity of the northern shore of Lake Victoria was vital to Buganda’s dominance of the interlacustrine region during the pre-colonial period. Despite this, protein-energy malnutrition was notoriously common throughout the twentieth century. This paper charts changes in nutritional illness in a relatively wealthy, food-secure area of Africa during a time of vast social, economic and medical change. In Buganda at least, it appears that both the causation and epidemiology of malnutrition moved away from the endemic societal causes described by early colonial doctors and became instead more defined by individual position within a rapidly modernising economy.

The Pioneer Health Centre, based in South London before and after the Second World War, remains a source of interest for advocates of a positive approach to health promotion in contrast with the treatment of those already ill. Its closure in 1950 for lack of funds has been blamed on the then recently established National Health Service, but this article argues that such an explanation is over-simplified and ignores a number of other factors. The Centre had struggled financially during the 1930s and tried to gain support from the Medical Research Council. The Council appeared interested in the Centre before the war, but was less sympathetic in the 1940s. Around the time of its closure and afterwards, the Centre was also involved in negotiations with London County Council; these failed because the Centre’s directors would not accept the changes which the Council would have needed to make. Unpublished documents reveal that the Centre’s directors were uncompromising and that their approach to the situation antagonised their colleagues. Changes in medical science also worked against the Centre. The success of sulphonamide drugs appeared to render preventive medicine less significant, while the development of statistical techniques cast doubt on the Centre’s experimental methods. The Centre was at the heart of the nascent organic farming movement, which opposed the rapid growth of chemical cultivation. But what might be termed ‘chemical triumphalism’ was on the march in both medicine and agriculture, and the Centre was out of tune with the mood of the times.