Medicine

Seven thousand years of trying to fix the human body, told through what survives: trepanned skulls and bronze acupuncture figures, anatomical theatres and plague broadsides, the first ether operation and the first vaccine, iron lungs and X-ray tubes, midwives and asylums and field hospitals. It follows the instruments and the buildings as much as the discoveries, because those are what the record actually holds. Where medicine did harm, and it did a great deal, that is here too, stated once and plainly. The patients in these pictures did not choose to be in them, and the archive is built to respect that.

A chronological documentary of 1,997 moments spanning -5000–2026 on Loreline.

Curated by Olivier · last updated 2026-09-20

Eras

Surgery, Cutting, from trepanation through the pre-anaesthetic era of speed, to the operating theatres that made it survivable. The instruments in this facet are the argument: they get finer as the century turns.
Pharmacy, The apothecary and the drug: albarelli and shop rounds, materia medica, patent nostrums, opium, aspirin, insulin and antibiotics. The line between medicine and poison is a matter of dose.
Prosthetics, Replacing what is missing: the Cairo toe, iron hands, the vast prosthetic effort after the First World War, spectacles, hearing aids and dentures.
Instruments, The tools themselves: trepans, lancets, amputation sets, stethoscopes, ophthalmoscopes, syringes. Cased sets of surgical steel are among the most photographed objects in the medical record.
Traditions, Medical systems outside the European lineage: Traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, Ayurveda and the Sushruta Samhita, Unani and the physicians of the Islamic Golden Age, Kampo, Tibetan and African healing. Coverage is uneven and the reason is itself a finding: much of what the free record holds was collected by colonial institutions, and a lot of it cannot be shown without using people as specimens.
Midwifery, Birth: the midwife, the obstetric forceps kept secret by one family for a century, the lying-in hospital, and the puerperal fever that made those hospitals more dangerous than the street.
Nursing, Nightingale, Seacole, the field hospital and the professionalisation of care. Nursing is the part of medicine most often photographed and least often credited.
Ethics, Consent and its absence: Tuskegee, Guatemala, the Nuremberg Code, Henrietta Lacks, thalidomide. Stated once, factually, without dwelling. This facet exists because the rest of the archive would be dishonest without it.
Antisepsis, Semmelweis, Lister and carbolic acid. Handwashing was resisted for decades because it implied doctors were carrying the thing that killed their patients, which is exactly what it implied.
Microbes, The germ theory and the equipment that proved it: Leeuwenhoek and Koch, culture plates, the microscope as the instrument that changed what a disease was understood to be.
Imaging, Seeing inside a living person: Röntgen's X-rays and the shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, then ultrasound, CT and MRI. The early radiologists did not know what the dose was doing to them.
Hospitals, The building as a medical instrument, from the bimaristan and the monastic infirmary to the pavilion ward and the modern block. How a hospital is laid out is a theory about what makes people ill.
Epidemics, Plague, cholera, influenza, smallpox, polio, HIV and COVID. Plague doctors, quarantine flags, fever hospitals and the ordinary municipal paperwork of a city trying not to die.
Herbals, The illustrated plant book, from Dioscorides through the great printed herbals. For most of history the pharmacy was a garden, and these are its catalogues.
Anatomy, The body mapped: Vesalius and the anatomical atlases, wax and ivory models, écorché figures, and the long argument about what is actually inside us. The drawings are often beautiful and were often made from people who had no say in the matter.
Asylums, Institutional psychiatry and its buildings, restraints and treatments. A facet handled carefully: the record here is overwhelmingly photographs of patients who could not consent, so it is built from architecture, instruments and documents rather than from their faces.
Dissection, The anatomical theatre and everything around it, including the body trade that supplied it. Dissection was a punishment appended to execution long before it was a teaching method, and the resurrection men were a real profession.
Sanitation, The unglamorous facet that saved the most lives: sewers, clean water, the Broad Street pump, drainage and housing. Public health is mostly civil engineering.
Vaccines, From variolation and Jenner's cowpox to the polio campaigns and the eradication of smallpox. Includes the anti-vaccination cartoons, which are as old as vaccination itself.
Anaesthesia, Ether, chloroform and the moment in 1846 when surgery stopped being torture. Also the inhalers, the masks and the long tail of accidents while dosage was learned.

-5000 - Diorama showing trephination in Neolithic times, England, 19. Trephination involves cutting into the skull to remove a small area of bone. It is probably the oldest surgical procedure, thought to date from around 5000 BCE. Dated 5000 BC in the Commons record. Trepanation, cutting a hole in the skull, is among the oldest surgical procedures known, and many prehistoric skulls show bone regrowth around the opening, meaning the patient lived.
-3300 - Trepanned skull, found at Börnecke Schützenholz, c. 3300 BC. Exhibit in the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, Braunschweig, Germany. Dated 3300 BC, credited to Daderot. Trepanation, cutting a hole in the skull, is among the oldest surgical procedures known, and many prehistoric skulls show bone regrowth around the opening, meaning the patient lived.
-3300 - Trepanned skull, found at Börnecke Schützenholz, c. 3300 BC. Exhibit in the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, Braunschweig, Germany. Dated 3300 BC, credited to Daderot. Trepanation, cutting a hole in the skull, is among the oldest surgical procedures known, and many prehistoric skulls show bone regrowth around the opening, meaning the patient lived This copy is catalogued separately in the 3300 BC group.
-2225 - Pharmacopoeia from Nippur, circa 225BC. The image records pharmacopoeia from Nippur, circa 2225BC General Collections. Dated 2225 BC in the Commons record. A pharmacopoeia fixes what a drug name means and how it must be prepared, turning a local recipe into a standard that can be enforced.
-2013 - BCIAward2013. The jury, organizers, and winner of the 2013 BCI Award. Dated 2013 BC, credited to Alexander Lechner. Prosthetics are designed at the meeting point of engineering and daily life, and the successful ones are the ones people actually wore.
-1000 - Flickr - archer10 (Dennis) - Egypt-10A-029 - Qasr Ibrim. Visitors may only gaze upon Qasr Ibrim (Qasr is Arabic for "fort" so its name means Fort of Ibrim) from a Lake Nasser Cruise boat, as it is no longer accessible to tourists. The site dates to about 1000 BC. Dated 1000 BC, credited to Dennis G. Jarvis. The object is described here as its own tradition understood it, without being read as a rehearsal for later Western practice.
-1000 - Neolithic infant feeding cup, Africa, 1000 BCE-400 BCE. Infants sucked liquids through the conical spout of this simple earthenware feeding cup. It was excavated in 1912 from the grave of twin children in Jebel Moya, Sudan, where Henry Wellcome funded and led a major archaeological expedition. Dated 1000 BC in the Commons record. The doctor's instruments record which parts of the body had become measurable and when.
-650 - Lurestan Fibula. Luristan bronze, disk pin showing a woman giving birth between 2 antelopes, ornamented with flowers, Iranian iron age (1000 to 650 BCE) at the Louvre museum, Paris, France, March 2010. The name “canonical bronze of Luristan” refers to a set of objects testifying of the original culture of a nomadic civilization who lived at the beginning of the iron age on the territory of the actual Iranian. Dated 650 BC, credited to dynamosquito from France. Midwifery was women's work with its own transmitted knowledge until male practitioners entered it with instruments.
-369 - Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Isaac Appleton Jewett. Manuscript letter Archives Number: 1011/002.001-008#003 Pittsfield. Aug 26th, 1838. Dated 369 BC, credited to Fanny (Appleton) Longfellow (1817-1861). War, industrial injury and disease drove prosthetic design, and each produced different requirements.
-330 - 7175 - Piraeus Arch. Museum, Athens - A woman dead in childbirth - Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto. Attic funerary stele, showing a seated woman who died in childbirth bidding farewell to her husband, mother and newborn's nurse. Around 350/330 BC. Dated 330 BC, credited to Giovanni Dall'Orto .. Nursing's history is largely undocumented because it was performed by women whose names were not recorded.
-206 - Qing Hao. The Recipes for Fifty-two Kinds of Diseases among archaeological findings in the Mawangdui tomb mentioned Qinghao. A prescription book titled “The Prescription for fifty-two kinds of diseases” was unearthed in 1979 from a Han Tomb (Han dynasty 206 BC, 220 AD) at Ma Wang Dui in the Hunan Province. Dated 206 BC, credited to Unknown author Unknown author. The Mawangdui silk manuscripts, including Recipes for Fifty-Two Ailments, came from a tomb sealed in 168 BCE.
-199 - Bronze scoop, Roman, 199 BCE-400 CE. It is thought that the roughened end of this scoop was used to feel around the bladder for stones. The removal of stones from the bladder is called lithotomy and it can be an incredibly painful process. Dated 199 BC in the Commons record. Surgical instruments were made by cutlers and jewellers, and the finish reflects the trade that made them rather than the wound they entered.
-199 - Thigh tourniquet, Roman, 199 BCE-500 CE. A tourniquet is used to control bleeding, especially during amputations. It is a device that is still in use today. Dated 199 BC in the Commons record. Before anaesthesia the whole design of an amputation set was built around speed, since the patient was awake and held down.
1 - Bacteria used to make wheat seeds nearly immune to wheat take-all. "Wheat seeds treated with bacteria like those colonized in this petri dish are nearly immune to wheat take-all, a root-destroying fungal disease. The sequencing gel in the background bears the genetic code for bacterial enzymes that synthesize natural antibiotics.". Dated 1, credited to Jack Dykinga. Medical ethics is largely written after the fact, and each rule marks a harm that was already done.
0009 - Lave tes mains protocole. Hygienic hand washing protocol illustrated (in French). Dated 9, credited to Vorzinek. Antisepsis was resisted because it accused the surgeon's own hands, which is the part of the story that keeps recurring.
0050 - Reduction of a dislocated mandible by a Greek surgeon.. The image records reduction of a dislocated mandible by a Greek surgeon, from the Commnetary with illustrations of Apollonius of Kitum (1st century B.C.) on Hippocrates, Ms. of 9th century. Dated 50 in the Commons record. Operating theatres were built for teaching as much as for operating, with tiers of students looking down.
0150 - Bronze forceps BM GR1878.10-19.145-GR1814.7-4.969. Forceps romain with fine-toothed hollow jaws. Dated 150 in the Commons record. Dentistry's instruments record a trade that separated from barbering and surgery slowly, and its chairs were built for restraint as much as for comfort.
0150 - KMM - Trepanation. Celtic Museum Manching ( Bavaria ). Skull with trepanation ( 2nd century BC ) from the east gate of the oppidum of Manching. Dated 150, credited to Wolfgang Sauber. Trepanation, cutting a hole in the skull, is among the oldest surgical procedures known, and many prehistoric skulls show bone regrowth around the opening, meaning the patient lived.
0450 - Surgical tools, 5th century BC, Greece (reconstruction). The image records surgical tools, 5th century BC, Greece. Reconstruction based on descriptions within the Hippocratic corpus. Dated 450, credited to Gts-tg. Wound management, not heroic operating, is most of surgery's actual history.
0750 - Skulls from Tel el Duweir. One of the group of 500 skulls from the late 8th Century deposit of human remains which filled the 18th dynasty chamber. Cleared spring 1936. Dated 750 in the Commons record. Military campaigns drove surgical innovation because they supplied injuries in volume.
0950 - Oude Kerk - Old Church Delft.. Although there was another church in the 10th century on this place the year 1246 is given as the official date of birth. Bartholomeus van der Made started rebuilding and extending the church in the middle of the thirteenth century. Dated 950, credited to FaceMePLS from The Hague, The Netherlands. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek made the first direct observations of microorganisms in the 1670s using single-lens microscopes he ground himself, calling what he saw animalcules.
1000 - DeepLearningReconstruction. Figure 8 from Andreas Maier, Christopher Syben. Tobias Lasser. Dated 1000, credited to Andreas Maier. Medical imaging repeatedly arrived from physics and engineering rather than from medicine.
1000 - Ganzkörperhyperthermie Iratherm1000 HeilkundePraxis Werder. Ganzkörperhyperthermiegerät Iratherm 1000, Firma von Ardenne Dresden. Dated 1000, credited to HeilkundePraxis Werder. An instrument case is a portrait of a practice, since it holds only what its owner actually used.
1011 - Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Isaac Appleton Jewett. Manuscript letter Archives Number: 1011/002.001-008#003 Pittsfield. Aug 26th, 1838. Dated 1011, credited to Fanny (Appleton) Longfellow (1817-1861). The choice between imitating the body and doing the job runs through the whole history of replacement limbs.
1037 - Avicenna (980 - 1037). The image records avicenna (980 - 1037) Arzt, Gelehrter, Medizin, Porträt. Dated 1037, credited to Lithograph by Bauer, printed by J.Ratch. Ibn Sina completed the Canon of Medicine in 1025. It lists roughly 800 medicinal substances and 650 compound formulas, and was still in use as a teaching text as late as 1715 in Padua.
1056 - Semmelweiss Ignác dombormű a Pannon Kincstár épületében. Semmelweis Ignác dombormű a Pannon Kincstár épületében, Budapest, Váci u. Dated 1056, credited to 12akd. Ignaz Semmelweis introduced chlorinated lime handwashing at the Vienna General Hospital in mid-May 1847, and mortality in the First Clinic fell from 18.3 per cent that April to 1.2 per cent by July.
1126 - Averroes. Lithograph by P. R. Vignéron, 1825.. Genre/Technique: Portrait prints. Suject name: Averroës, 1126-1198. Dated 1126 in the Commons record. Manuscript copying preserved these texts across centuries, and the surviving copies are usually much later than the composition.
1150 - Yamai no Soshi - Woman with Cholera Nostras. Yamai no Soshi (病草紙). Dated 1150, credited to Unknown artist Unknown artist. Epidemic response leaves behind administrative objects: notices, registers, cordons and bills of mortality.
1150 - Plan du quartier de Notre-Dame 1150, 1550, 1750. Aerial plans of the area around Notre-Dame Cathedral. Three maps, in order from left to right, show the area in 1750, 1550, and 1150. Dated 1150, credited to Theodor Josef Hubert Hoffbauer. Hospital architecture is an argument about disease made in brick, and each theory of contagion produced a different floor plan.
1154 - Damaskus, Bimaristan Nuri (Nurredin Hospital), 1154. 1154 wurde aus christlichen Lösegeldern von Nurrddin Zengi dasm Krankenhaus und die Medizinische Hochschule im Stil einer seldschukischen Medresse mit Iwanen in den Seiten um einen zentralen Brunnenhof erbaut. Dated 1154, credited to Herbert Frank from Wien (Vienna), AT. The Islamic bimaristan tradition runs from Baghdad in 805 CE, with Cairo's Al-Fustat hospital of 872 CE noted for its treatment of mental illness and the Qalawun complex of 1284 accommodating very large numbers.
1200 - 66-Erbario inglese - 1200 ca. Herbal 66-Erbario inglese. Dated 1200 in the Commons record. A herbal had to be accurate enough to prevent a fatal misidentification, which is why botanical illustration developed such precision.
1219 - Hara Shimetaro-Ijishimbun-1927. First page of Hara Shimetarō: Effects of Moxa on hemoglobin and RBC count. Iji Shinbun 1219, 1927. Dated 1219, credited to WolfgangMichel. Illustrated medical manuscripts were working references, annotated and corrected by the practitioners who owned them.
1224 - Warrior with the Plant Kestron, De Materia Medica of Dioscorides, Iraq 1224. The image records warrior with the Plant Kestron, De Materia Medica of Dioscorides, Iraq 1224. Harvard Art Museums “Official” Turkish figures wear a standard combination of a sharbūsh, a three-quarters length robe, and boots. Dated 1224, credited to 13th century artist. Dioscorides compiled De Materia Medica in the first century CE, and it remained a working reference in Europe and the Islamic world for more than 1,500 years.
1250 - Anatomical figure; c. 1400. Skeletal figure, fol. 169v from University Library, Basle, MS D.11.II, 13th century. Dated 1250 in the Commons record. Anatomical atlases were expensive, slow to produce and copied freely, so a single good plate could shape teaching for a century.
1250 - Examination of nursing mother's breast, 13th Century. The image records examination of nursing mother's breast. Below: medicine draught. Dated 1250 in the Commons record. Obstetric illustration was often the only way a practitioner could study a birth they would not be permitted to attend.
1250 - Antonius Musa, De herba vettonica, 13th century.. Whole page including illustration of bear. Archives & Manuscripts. Dated 1250 in the Commons record. Most of the world's drugs began as plants, and the herbal is where that knowledge was first written down.
1250 - The Susruta-Samhita or Sahottara-Tantra (A Treatise on Ayurvedic Medicine) LACMA M.87.271a-g (2. Nepal, Text- 12th-13th century; Images- 18th-19th century Books Ink and opaque watercolor on palm leaf Gift of Emeritus Professor and Mrs. Ballinger (M.87.271a-g) South and Southeast Asian Art. Dated 1250 in the Commons record. Ayurveda's eight branches are first documented in the Mahabharata, around the fourth century BCE.
1250 - Blood-letting scene. First half of the 13th century. From Iran. Fragment, a bottom of a bowl. Blood-letting scene; a physician, a patient (woman), and a servant. Dated 1250, credited to Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg). Materia medica traditions catalogued local plants and minerals, and the lists record what grew and traded within reach.
1284 - Flickr - HuTect ShOts - Corridor - The Complex of Sultan Qalawun مجمع السلطان قلاوون - El.Muiz. The complex of Sultan Qalawun was built for the sultan by Amir 'Alam al-Din Sanjar al-Shuja'i in 1284-5 and consisted of the founder's mausoleum, madrasa, and a maristan (hospital). The complex was located on al-Mu'izz Street. Dated 1284, credited to Ahmed Al.Badawy from Cairo, Egypt. The Islamic bimaristan tradition runs from Baghdad in 805 CE, with Cairo's Al-Fustat hospital of 872 CE noted for its treatment of mental illness and the Qalawun complex of 1284 accommodating very large numbers.
1300 - Mortar and pestle, AD 900-1300. Stone mortar and pestle, AD 900-1300, Spurgeon Draw site, Catron County, New Mexico. Dated 1300, credited to Netherzone. The mortar and pestle is the pharmacy's oldest surviving instrument and remained the trade's sign long after machines took over the grinding.
1310 - Officers and nurses, Camp Jackson (NCP 1310), National Museum of Health and Medicine. The image records officers and nurses, Camp Jackson (NCP 1310), National Museum of Health and Medicine Description: Officers and nurses of the Base Hospital at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, during the influenza epidemic. This was an emergency hospital during the epidemic. Dated 1310, credited to National Museum of Health and Medicine. Death estimates for the 1918 influenza pandemic run from 17 to 100 million, with 25 to 50 million generally accepted. The name Spanish flu is a misnomer produced by wartime censorship elsewhere.
1341 - C14 Chinese medication chart; Vomiting, coughing etc.. Medication chart: Vomiting, coughing, sore throat, jaundice. From a manuscript copy ofShanghan diandian jin shu(The Gold-dust Book of Cold Damage) dated '1st year of the Zhengyuan reign period of the Yuan dynasty' (1341), section entitledShanghan diandian jin yongyao muji(Cold Damage Gold-Dust Repertory of Medication).The text states: Vomiting illnesses are normally treated with Five-Drug powder. Dated 1341 in the Commons record. Philippe Pinel is remembered for striking the chains from asylum inmates in Paris, an image reproduced far more often than the administrative reforms it stood for.
1341 - C14 Chinese medication chart; Convulsions etc.. Medication chart: Convulsion,er zhi(?), warm poison rash and beri-beri (jiaoqi) symptoms. From a manuscript copy ofShanghan diandian jin shu(The Gold-dust Book of Cold Damage) dated '1st year of the Zhengyuan reign period of the Yuan dynasty' (1341), section entitledShanghan diandian jin yongyao muji(Cold Damage Gold-Dust Repertory of Medication).The text states:Zhiconvulsion (zhijing) is. Dated 1341 in the Commons record. Acupuncture is evidenced from the second and first centuries BCE, and the AB Canon of Acupuncture and Moxibustion was compiled between 256 and 282 CE.
1347 - Diffusion de la peste noire en europe 1347-1351. An object held in the epidemics material of the free record, catalogued on Wikimedia Commons. Dated 1347 in the Commons record. Cities met epidemics with the tools of government before they had the tools of medicine.
1348 - Boccaccio's 'The plague of Florence in 1348'. The plague of Florence in 1348, as described in Boccaccio's Decameron ('Il decameron'). Etching by L. Dated 1348 in the Commons record. What an epidemic was believed to be determined what was built against it, and the buildings outlast the beliefs.
1350 - Darstellung der Geißlerzüge. The image records darstellung der Geißlerzüge, um 1350, Chronik von Gilles Li Muisis, fol. 16v Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brüssel. Dated 1350, credited to Pierart dou Tielt (fl. 1340-1360). Counting the dead was itself a contested act, and the numbers usually arrived late.
1352 - Doutielt1. Miniature by Pierart dou Tielt illustrating the Tractatus quartus by Gilles li Muisit (Tournai, c. Title: "Gilles li Muisis, Antiquitates Flandriae (Tractatus quartus)". Dated 1352, credited to Pierart dou Tielt (fl. 1340-1360). Boards of health were often created during an outbreak and dissolved once it passed.
1368 - Chinese Materia Medica illustration, Ming; Cinnabar. Traced copy of an illustration fromBencao pinhui jingyao(Materia Medica Containing Essential and Important Material Arranged in Systematic Order, completed 1505), in red and black ink. In 1503, the Ming emperor Li Zong put imperial physician Liu Wentai in charge of compiling a new herbal (bencao). Dated 1368, credited to Wang Shichang et al. (Ming period, 1368-1644). Dioscorides compiled De Materia Medica in the first century CE, and it remained a working reference in Europe and the Islamic world for more than 1,500 years.
1368 - Bencao Gangmu -- Ming materia medica, Trifoliate orange, etc.. Li Shizhen's monumental pharmaceutical encyclopediaBencao gangmu(Systematic Materia Medica) contains entries on 1892 medicinal substances and 1109 illustrations. The illustrations in the first edition (shown here) are credited to his son Li Jianyuan.Gouju(trifoliate orange),suanzao(spine date),shanzhuyu(dogwood),zhizi(cape jasmine, Gardenia jasminoides Ellis),ruihe(Prinsepia uniflora Batal.). Dated 1368, credited to Li Jianyuan (Ming period, 1368-1644). Dioscorides compiled De Materia Medica in the first century CE, and it remained a working reference in Europe and the Islamic world for more than 1,500 years.
1368 - Medical talisman (Chinese C19 woodcut). 'Red Talismanic Symbol' fromZun sheng ba jian(Eight Texts on Following the Way of Life), a work on 'nourishing life' (yangsheng) by Gao Lian (Ming period, 1368-1644), woodblock edition of 1810 (15th year of the Jiaqing reign period of the Qing dynasty, Geng Wu year).The Eight Texts (jian) into which it is divided are:Qingxiu miaolun(Wondrous discourse on cleansing and repairing),Sishi. Dated 1368 in the Commons record. Diagnostic systems here were built on pulse, observation and questioning rather than on instruments.

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MEDICINE

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