Everything you wanted to know about the black death

From miasma to miracles: how medieval medicine desperately battled the bubonic plague

At Merrivale on Dartmoor a line of granite stones once marked the boundary between the sick and the living. Today it marks the start of one of the country’s most haunting walks.

What does your wee say about your health? Well, plenty – but perhaps not in quite the way medieval physicians understood it. Before the in-depth study of anatomy and physiology, establishing the cause

I n 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That, at least, is what the famous rhyme tells us. Memorising such dates is a common experience of being taught history – a cliché superbly lampooned by the w

On the morning of 4 August 1577, the good Christian folk of Bungay assembled in St Mary’s Church for their regular Sunday service. But more sinister forces were also gathering in the Suffolk town. Dar

One answer to this question is relatively straightforward. For much of Greek history, people living near the coast or on the islands ate plenty of fish and seafood – not out of obsession, but out of p