On Saturday, 26 September 1818, James Blundell conducted the first medical blood transfusion between human subjects. During the course of the century, transfusion was applied as a remedy to different kinds of sicknesses and injuries, and performed at different times with various fluids. Image: James Blundell’s Gravitator, from “Observations on the Transfusion of Blood, with a Description of his Gravitator.” This image is in the public domain in the United States as its copyright has expired.

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Matthew Rowlinson, “On the First Medical Blood Transfusion Between Human Subjects, 1818″

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by David Rettenmaier

In January 1829, William Burke was tried for the murder of sixteen people in Edinburgh, for the purpose of selling their bodies to anatomists in Edinburgh. His accomplice, William Hare, turned King’s evidence and avoided prosecution. He was hanged and sentenced to be anatomized and displayed; his skeleton still hangs today in the Anatomy Museum at Edinburgh University Medical School. Image: Drawing of Hare and Burke (c. 1850). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Pamela Gilbert, "On Cholera in Nineteenth-Century England"

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by David Rettenmaier

The first major cholera pandemic to cross the Channel began in Sunderland in September 1831, spread throughout the country, and was not determined to be over until more than a year later, in December of 1832.

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Pamela Gilbert, "On Cholera in Nineteenth-Century England"

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by David Rettenmaier

The Great Reform Act of 1832 was passed in June 1832 after long discussion, with King William IV giving the royal asses on 7 June 1832. This followed a failed attempt on September 1831 that was vetoed by the House of Lords. A second draft was passed after the King intervened. The Bill eliminated many rotten boroughs and created a new class of eligible voters, providing a model by which non-landowners might claim representation in Parliament. Image: First page of the Reform Act, from the British government's national archives. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Carolyn Vellenga Berman, “On the Reform Act of 1832″

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Janice Carlisle, “On the Second Reform Act, 1867″

Pamela Gilbert, "On Cholera in Nineteenth-Century England"

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by David Rettenmaier

In response to the growing trade in corpses for anatomy schools, and in particular to the sensational murders of Burke and Hare to acquire such corpses, Parliament passed The Anatomy Act in July 1832, giving access to corpses that were unclaimed after death. Most of these were those who died in prison or workhouses, and whose families could not afford to claim or bury them. Image: The Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

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Pamela Gilbert, "On Cholera in Nineteenth-Century England"

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by David Rettenmaier

On 22 June 183, the anatomist and surgeon Sir Charles Bell published The Hand: Its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as Evincing Design as the fourth of eight Bridgewater Treatises. Its publication is part of a century-long fascination with a body part that rests in an uneasy ideological position between animality and mechanization. Image: Illustration from Sir Charles Bell's The Hand 115. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Peter Capuano, “On Sir Charles Bell’s The Hand, 1833″

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by David Rettenmaier

In July 1842 Edwin Chadwick, with Dr. Thomas Southwood Smith, published his ‘The Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population,’ at his own expense. The report detailed the sanitary conditions of the poor and advocated reform, tracing public health problems directly to the awful state of urban housing the poor endured. Chadwick’s report launched the mid-century sanitary movement, though it had a slow start because change was expensive. Image: Photograph of Sir Edwin Chadwick. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Pamela Gilbert, "On Cholera in Nineteenth-Century England"

Barbara Leckie, “‘The Bitter Cry of Outcast London’ (1883): Print Exposé and Print Reprise”

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by David Rettenmaier

On 24 August 1846, Patrick Brontë had cataract surgery performed on his eye. Charlotte Brontë, who had accompanied her father to Manchester for the operation, used this time to begin writing the book that was to make her famous, Jane Eyre (1847). Image: Traditional position for cataract surgery. Courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London.

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Mary Wilson Carpenter, “A Cultural History of Ophthalmology in Nineteenth-Century Britain”

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by David Rettenmaier

Spurred by the 1848 cholera epidemic and Edwin Chadwick’s report on The Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population, a Central Board of Health was established that provided for taxation to enforce sanitary reform and the creation of local Boards of Health. Image: The Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

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Pamela Gilbert, "On Cholera in Nineteenth-Century England"

Barbara Leckie, “‘The Bitter Cry of Outcast London’ (1883): Print Exposé and Print Reprise”

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by David Rettenmaier

The second major cholera epidemic in the UK began in Scotland in October 1848 and is generally agreed to have largely subsided in the UK by the end of 1849.

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Pamela Gilbert, "On Cholera in Nineteenth-Century England"

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by David Rettenmaier

The third major cholera epidemic in the UK began in August 1853 and extended through November 1854. It is during this epidemic that John Snow deduced the mode of transmission, by water contaminated with feces.

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Pamela Gilbert, "On Cholera in Nineteenth-Century England"

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by David Rettenmaier

The last cholera epidemic is conventionally termed “of 1866” as that was the period of the highest mortality. The epidemic arrived in Britain in September 1865 and ended in November 1866.

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Pamela Gilbert, "On Cholera in Nineteenth-Century England"

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by David Rettenmaier

In 1877, Philadelphia neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell published Fat and Blood, and How to Make Them, the medical text that popularized the infamous Rest Cure for nervous women. (Exact month of publication unknown; if you have information about the correct date, please email felluga@purdue.edu with this information.) Principle elements of the cure included bed rest, force feeding, isolation, massage, and electrical stimulation of muscles. Image: Photograph of Silas Weir Mitchell, 1881. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Anne Stiles, “The Rest Cure, 1873-1925″

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by David Rettenmaier

In January 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her semi-autobiographical short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in the New England Magazine. The tale’s heroine is a depressed new mother who goes mad while enduring a modified Rest Cure. Gilman herself underwent the Rest Cure in 1887 at the hands of Philadelphia neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, who is briefly mentioned in the story. Image: Photograph of Silas Weir Mitchell, 1881. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Anne Stiles, “The Rest Cure, 1873-1925″

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by David Rettenmaier

In 1905, Elizabeth Robins, a well-known actress and feminist, published a novel about the Rest Cure called A Dark Lantern. (Exact month of publication unknown; if you have information about the correct date, please email felluga@purdue.edu with this information.) The novel fictionalized aspects of Robins’ own rest cure in 1903, including her infatuation with her physician, Dr. Vaughn Harley. Image: Albumen of Elizabeth Robins, circa 1890s, by W&D Downey, London. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

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Anne Stiles, “The Rest Cure, 1873-1925″

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by David Rettenmaier