̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - history of medicine

Do not try this at home: Medieval medicine under the spotlight in major new project

zs332 — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 07:22:50 +0000

How did our medieval ancestors use dove faeces, fox lungs, salted owl or eel grease in medical treatments? A Wellcome-funded project at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library is about to find out.

Syphilitic City: one in five Georgian Londoners had syphilis by their mid-30s, study suggests

ta385 — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 08:45:00 +0000

250 years ago, over one-fifth of Londoners had been treated for syphilis by their 35th birthday, historians have calculated.

COVID-19: ̽��ֱ��long view

ta385 — Fri, 22 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��COVID-19 pandemic should only present a short-term interruption to 250 years of improving life expectancy, argues historian Leigh Shaw-Taylor.

Opinion: Patient zero: why it's such a toxic term

fpjl2 — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 15:14:09 +0000

Dr Richard McKay traces the history of the 'patient zero' idea through epidemics such as HIV and typhoid, and the return of this trope with COVID-19.

Pride and prejudice at high altitude

ta385 — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 09:30:00 +0000

Tensions between foreign climbers and Sherpas began over 200 years ago, a new study suggests

From the casebooks of the most notorious astrologer doctors in all England

fpjl2 — Wed, 15 May 2019 23:16:46 +0000

A ten-year project to study and digitise some 80,000 cases recorded by two famous astrological physicians has opened a “wormhole” into the worries and desires of people who lived 400 years ago.

Spanish Flu: a warning from history

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 09:22:27 +0000

̽��ֱ��early origins and initial geographical starting point of the pandemic still remain a mystery but in the summer of 1918, there was a second wave of a far more virulent form of the influenza virus than anyone could have anticipated.

Soon dubbed ‘Spanish Flu’ after its effects were reported in the country’s newspapers, the virus rapidly spread across much of the globe to become one of the worst natural disasters in human history.

Doctors, nurses and volunteers were left helpless as their patients, the majority previously healthy young adults, languished and died from respiratory failure. There is now a broad consensus among experts that in just three years, Spanish Flu killed between fifty and one hundred million people. Despite this, public awareness of the disaster and the ongoing threat posed by influenza remains limited.

To mark the centenary and to highlight vital scientific research, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has made a new film exploring what we have learnt about Spanish Flu, the urgent threat posed by influenza today, and how scientists are preparing for future pandemics. ̽��ֱ��film presents original photographs from the 1918 outbreak and exclusive interviews with four leading experts:

Dr Mary Dobson, a historian of infectious diseases
Professor Derek Smith, Director of Cambridge’s Centre for Pathogen Evolution
Dr AJ te Velthuis, a virologist studying how RNA viruses amplify, mutate and cause disease
Professor Julia Gog, a mathematician of infectious diseases including influenza

One hundred years ago, celebrations marking the end of the First World War were cut short by the onslaught of a devastating disease: the 1918-19 influenza pandemic.

Spanish Flu: A Warning from History

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Study unearths Britain’s first speech therapists

ta385 — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 08:15:00 +0000

Until now, historians had assumed that John Thelwall became Britain’s first speech therapist in the early nineteenth century.*

But Cambridge historian Elizabeth Foyster has discovered that James Ford was advertising his services in London as early as 1703, and that many other speech therapists emerged over the course of the eighteenth century.

Ford’s advert (pictured), published in the Post Man newspaper on 23 October 1703, states that "he removes Stammering, and other impediments in Speech", as well as teaching "Foreigners to pronounce English like Natives".

Ford had previously worked with the deaf and dumb but realised that there was more money to be made by offering other speech improvement services as a branch of education for wealthy children.

“In the eighteenth century, speaking well was crucial to being accepted in polite society and to succeeding in a profession,” said Foyster. “Speech impediments posed a major obstacle and the stress this caused often made a sufferer’s speech even worse. At the same time, wealthy parents were made to feel guilty and they started spending increasingly large sums to try to “cure” their children.”

By 1703, Ford was based in Newington Green, in the suburbs of London, but twice a week he waited near the city’s Royal Exchange and Temple Bar to secure business from merchants, financiers and lawyers desperate to improve their children’s life chances.

By 1714, some of these families were seeking out the help of Jacob Wane, a therapist who drew on a 33-year personal struggle with the condition. And by the 1760s, several practitioners were competing for business in London.

“We have lost sight of these origins of speech therapy because historians have been looking to identify a profession which had agreed qualifications for entry, an organising body, scientific methods and standards, as we have today,” said Foyster. “In the eighteenth century, speech therapy was regarded as an art not a science. But with its attention to the individual, and the psychological as well as physiological causes of speech defects, we can see the roots of today's speech therapy.”

Art and business

Foyster’s study, published in the journal Cultural and Social History, shows that speech specialists emerged in the early eighteenth century as new attention was given to the role of the nerves, emotions and psychological origins of speech impediments.

Prior to this, in the seventeenth century, the main cure on offer had involved painful physical intervention including the cutting of tongues. But as speech defects came to be understood as resulting from nervous disorders, entrepreneurial therapists stepped in to end the monopoly of the surgeons.

“These men, and some women, made no claim to medical knowledge,” Foyster says. “In fact, some were very keen to emphasise that they were nothing like the surgeons who had caused so much unnecessary pain. They described themselves as ‘Artists’ and their gentler methods were much more attractive to wealthy clients.”

These speech ‘artists’ jealously guarded their trade secrets but gave away some clues to their methods in print. Close attention was paid to the position of the lips, tongue and mouth; clients were given breathing and voice exercises to practise; and practitioners emphasised the importance of speaking slowly so that every sound could be articulated.

By the 1750s, London’s speech therapists had become masters of publicity publishing books, placing advertisements in newspapers and giving lectures in universities and other venues. In 1752, Samuel Angier achieved the remarkable feat of lecturing to Cambridge academics on four occasions about speech impediments and the ‘art of pronunciation’, despite having never attended university himself.

Foyster has identified several successful speech therapy businesses, some of which were passed down from one generation to the next. Most of these were based in London but practitioners would often follow their clientele to fashionable resort towns such as Bath and Margate.

In 1761, Charles Angier became the third generation to take over his family’s business; and by the 1780s, he claimed to be able to remove all speech impediments within six to eight months if his pupils were ‘attentive’. By then, he was reported to be charging fifty guineas ‘for the Cure’ at a time when many Londoners were earning less than ten guineas a year.

To be successful, these entrepreneurs had to separate themselves from quackery. Some heightened their credibility by securing accreditation from respected physicians while others printed testimonials from satisfied clients beneath their newspaper advertisements.

Suffering and determination

Foyster’s study also sheds light on the appalling suffering and inspirational determination of stammerers in the eighteenth century, including some well-known figures.

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), the theologian, scientist and clergyman (pictured), recalled that his worsening stammer made ‘preaching very painful, and took from me all chance of recommending myself to any better place’.

His fellow scientist, Erasmus Darwin, also suffered from a stammer, as did Darwin’s daughter, Violetta, and eldest son, Charles. In 1775, Darwin compiled detailed instructions to help his daughter overcome her stammer which involved sounding out each letter and practising problematic words for weeks on end.

“It is tempting to think that sympathy for stammering is a very recent phenomenon but a significant change in attitudes took hold in the eighteenth century,” said Foyster. “While stammerers continued to be mocked and cruelly treated, polite society became increasingly compassionate, especially when someone demonstrated a willingness to seek specialist help.”

References:

Elizabeth Foyster, ‘Fear of Giving Offence Makes Me Give the More Offence’: Politeness, Speech and Its Impediments in British Society, c.1660–1800.' Cultural and Social History (2018). DOI: 10.1080/14780038.2018.1518565

* Denyse Rockey, ' ̽��ֱ��Logopaedic thought of John Thelwall, 1764-1834: First British Speech Therapist', British Journal of Disorders of Communication (1977). DOI: 10.3109/13682827709011313

On International Stammering Awareness Day (22 October), a new study reveals that Britain’s first speech therapists emerged at least a century earlier than previously thought.

It is tempting to think that sympathy for stammering is a very recent phenomenon but a significant change in attitudes took hold in the eighteenth century

Elizabeth Foyster

National Portrait Gallery, London

Joseph Priestley: theologian, scientist, clergyman and stammerer. Pastel by Ellen Sharples, probably after James Sharples, c.1797

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