Lucy Inglis BornThe untold history of childbirth336pp. Bloomsbury Continuum. £25. Hannah Marsh ThreadA Caesarean story of myth, magic andmedicine320pp. Leap. £20. Lucy Inglis’s new book Born: The unto

Edward Jenner developed the world’s first vaccine in 1796, when he inoculated a young boy against smallpox with pus collected from a cowpox sore on a milkmaid in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. In the 19th

Ayoush Lazikani The Medieval Moon A history of haunting and blessing 272pp. Yale University Press. £20 (US $30). Something fundamental changed in our relationship with the moon when we realized we cou

A HUNDRED YEARS ago on 26 January 1926, in an attic room in London’s Soho (more famous for ladies of the night than technological breakthroughs), a Scottish engineer gave the first public display of p

→ When John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working television set in 1926, a theatre impresario was so worried about the impact on the West End that he offered the scientist £1,000 to throw his de

A woman whose baby got trapped in her ...