The vital city: public analysis, dairies and slaughterhouses in nineteenth-century Britain

Epidemics and Infections in Nineteenth-Century Britain

We would like to thank Graham Mooney and Andrew Noymer and Beth Jarosz for their responses to our ‘Second Opinion’ on ‘Infectious Disease and the Epidemiological Transition in Victorian Britain’. Mooney offers a robust attack on our general claim that the importance of infectious diseases as a cause of death in the nineteenth century has been overstated, while seeming to accept what we say abou...

Mortality in mid nineteenth century Britain

RICHARD CAVENDISH, The powers of evil in western religion, magic and folk belief, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, 8vo, pp. ix, 299, £5.95. Evil supernatural agencies are part of every culture in degrees varying with their sophistication. As is to be expected, primitive man is surrounded by them, but they are of course still believed in by races who boast advanced social and cultural devel...

A science of impurity: water analysis in nineteenth century Britain

The following notes are not intended to detract from this very useful piece of work. Omissions include the headless statue of Alexander, a (fourth-century?) doctor from Ephesus (Jahrbuch des osterreichischen archdologischen Instituts, 1959, 44: Beiblatt, pp. 352, 363). The mosaics of Cosmas and Damian from Hagios Georgios, Thessalonica (fifth-century), and from SS Cosma e Damiano, Rome (sixth-c...

A geography of nineteenth-century Britain

Drug Adulteration, Detection and Control in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Drug adulteration is equally important for the history of medicine, pharmacy, the pure sciences such as chemistry and physics, and social history. This is fully appreciated by Stieb whose book, in some measure, forms a companion volume to F. A. Filby's A History of Food Adulteration and Analysis, London, 1934. After a general introduction leading to the year 1820 (Accum's Treatise on Adulterati...