Medical London

About Medical London

A stunningly-presented guide to London’s past that charts the many roles that diseases, treatments and cures have played in the city’s sprawling story—and how London, in turn, has shaped the professions and practices of modern medicine.

A unique, stunningly-presented guide to London’s past and a treasure trove of information for historians, residents, medical professionals and tourists, Medical London charts the many roles that diseases, treatments and cures have played in the city’s sprawling story. It also reveals how London, in turn, has shaped the professions and practices of modern medicine.

Medical London comprises three parts:

A volume of essays exploring some of the threads that medicine has woven through London life, from its earliest beginnings to the multicultural metropolis of today: its roles in contagion and sanitation, in wealth and its consumption, in empire and immigration, in pleasure and in madness.

A definitive guide to London’s medical landscape: its museums and hospitals, its grand monuments and secret corners, and the characters and events that lie behind them.

Six elegantly designed maps for self-guided walks, from Daniel Defoe’s Plague Year wanderings to the druggists of Soho’s night haunts, the homeopaths of bohemian Chelsea to the naval surgeons of maritime Greenwich.

Published in collaboration with Wellcome Collection.