This week, our theme is medicine - and the practitioners and discoveries that saved so many lives.
Englishman Edward Jenner is considered the founder of vaccinology in the West in 1796, after he inoculated a 13 year-old-boy with vaccinia virus (cowpox), and demonstrated immunity to smallpox. In 1798, the first smallpox vaccine was developed.
Manufactured in billions every year, the hypodermic syringe could arguably be the greatest medical device ever invented - especially in the context of the current global vaccination endeavour. A Scottish physician was a pioneer of this concept.
The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret are a preserved medical building near London Bridge, offering visitors a glimpse into the brutality of surgery in an earlier era. It is the oldest surviving operating theatre in Europe.
Florence Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War in the 1850s, in which she organised care for wounded soldiers. She won nursing a favourable reputation for her innovative approach to care, and became an icon of Victorian culture.
On the 8th September 1854, the authorities removed the handle of the water pump in Broad Street in Soho, London - suspecting that infected water from it was causing an outbreak of deadly cholera. When this action proved effective in reducing the rates of the disease, it was finally understood that cholera spread through water not air.
Malaria is now regarded as a tropical disease, but it was once endemic in England - known as 'the ague'. Its occurences brought fear and panic, as can be seen in this satirical print from 1788. It was not known at the time that mosquitoes were the vector of the disease.
