HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/topic/medicine-and-health Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:01:03 GMT en hourly 1 Malaria once ravaged Britain. Could it come back? https://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/malaria-once-ravaged-britain-could-it-come-back/ Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:00:22 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/malaria-once-ravaged-britain-could-it-come-back/ As recently as the 20th century, a major killer disease in the UK was ‘marsh fever’ or ‘ague’ – or malaria by another name According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there were 263 million cases of malaria and 597,000 deaths around the world in 2023. The life-threatening disease, spread by infected mosquito bites, is most associated with sub-Saharan Africa, but it used to be a scourge in the UK.
From the 15th to 19th centuries, the marshland areas of southeast England, the Fens and up the Yorkshire coast were ravaged by malaria, although under names like ‘marsh fever’ and ‘ague’. Spread by the Anopheles mosquito, it came with high levels of mortality. Parishes in marshland areas in the 1600s and 1700s recorded deaths rates from ague at between 60 and 80 per 1,000 people, or two or three times as much as non-marshland parishes.
This was also a time when people believed in the miasma theory, which claimed that diseases spread through foul-smelling air. So, even though it is extremely rare for malaria to be passed from person to person, there was a fear that once someone came down with ague, the whole community could be in danger.
How widespread was malaria and what were the cures?
Ague was so prevalent that it merited mentions in literature throughout the centuries, from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales to Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. William Shakespeare referred to the disease in a number of his plays, including Julius Caesar, Macbeth and The Tempest. In King Lear, he even coined the term, “ague-proof”.
Not only the poor living on marshland perished, either, since malaria could be found along the length of the River Thames, bringing it to the capital of London. James VI and I contracted the disease as his health finally failed in 1625, and Oliver Cromwell succumbed to malaria in 1658.
Common remedies included opium and alcohol, although they didn’t prove to be overly effective. The treatment of malaria truly improved with the introduction of quinine, found in the bark of the cinchona trees of South America. It was called Jesuit’s Bark, as it had been brought to Europe by Jesuit missionaries.
This association with Catholics, however, meant that physicians in Protestant England were initially reluctant to administer the medicine. After its first use in England, attributed to Robert Brady in 1660, quinine grew in popularity after being used to treat Charles II.
Why did malaria die out in the UK?
Malaria gradually died out in England, helped by better healthcare, sanitation and housing, along with the drainage of marshlands. Larger livestock populations may have also distracted mosquitoes from biting humans, too.
The disease remained a threat until the 20th century, though. The last outbreak in the UK occurred in the years after the First World War, when British soldiers serving in the Balkans, where malaria was endemic, fell ill in huge numbers. When they were brought back to the UK for recuperation, especially to areas with lots of mosquitoes, such as the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, the infection spread quickly.
It is thought that there were nearly 500 cases between 1917 and 1921, although this paled in comparison to the Spanish Flu that wreaked havoc in Europe at the same time.
Could malaria return?
The last indigenous case of malaria in the UK came in the 1950s, and by 1975 WHO declared the eradication of the disease in Europe.
While highly unlikely to be endemic once more, scientists have suggested that climate change and the volume of traffic with areas where malaria remains a serious risk could bring new types of mosquitoes to the UK.
]]> Would you eat an Egyptian mummy? Here's why the Victorians did exactly that https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/would-you-eat-an-egyptian-mummy-heres-why-the-victorians-did-exactly-that/ Tue, 20 Oct 2026 10:30:29 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/would-you-eat-an-egyptian-mummy-heres-why-the-victorians-did-exactly-that/ For centuries, ground-up mummy was a medical mainstay in Europe – but that was far from the only way that ancient remains were used by the Victorians In the Victorian age, the mummified remains taken from ancient Egyptian tombs had multiple purposes beyond historical and scientific study. While some mummies went on public display in museums and exhibitions, others were bought to be the main attraction at special ‘unwrapping parties’ where the bandages would be removed for the entertainment of the guests.
That’s perhaps the most respectful option. Mummies could be used as fuels on the railways, ballast on ships and fertiliser in the fields; they were mulched to make paper and ground up to make a special type of paint, called Mummy Brown. This was a favourite of the pre-Raphaelites, but still available to buy well into the 20th century.
And yes, the Victorians did think that eating mummies was a good idea, believing the ancient remains had medical benefits. That said, they did not come up with the idea themselves; the morbid practice began in the Middle Ages.
Why did Europeans start eating mummies?
At the time of the crusades, Europeans travelled to the Holy Land in large numbers and started hearing about mumiya, a tar-like substance that occurred naturally in parts of modern-day Iran and known throughout Persia for its healing qualities.
Through misunderstandings and poor translations, the belief spread among Europeans that mūmiyā referred instead to the similar substance found on mummified bodies, used in the embalming process. The meaning continued to evolve until it meant the actual bodies themselves. The name ‘mummy’ comes from mūmiyā.
- Read more | Is the mummy's curse real? False tales about ancient Egyptian mummies (plus some true ones)
How did mummia work?
Ground-up mummies, or mummia, therefore became medicine in medieval Europe. It could be added to tinctures or to alcohol and swallowed, or rubbed onto the skin of the patient.
Such was the belief in its curative powers that mummia was said to cure a host of ailments, injuries and diseases, from bruising and nosebleeds to epilepsy and syphilis. It was a painkiller, blood thinner, anti-inflammatory and menstrual aid.
According to this medical cannibalism, the part of the mummified body consumed related to the issue – for instance, the skull would be needed to treat headaches – and by ingesting the powdered mummy a person would imbibe the spirit and strength of the deceased person.
How popular was medical cannibalism?
The demand for mummia led to widespread tomb raiding in Egypt to ensure there were enough mummies being sent to Europe. When this was not enough to meet demand, enterprising graverobbers began digging up fresher bodies and treating them as best they could in order to pass them off as millennia-old mummies.
In 1564, a French royal physician named Guy de la Fontaine examined dozens of mummies being sold by a dealer in Alexandria only to find that they were recently executed criminals or slaves.
In fact, a whole area of medicine flourished promoting the consumption of fresh body parts, arguing that it had more healthy nutrients and stronger vitality than the desiccated bones of ancient Egyptians. It became customary for people to stand underneath the scaffold of an execution and try and catch the blood with the intention of drinking it.
- Read more | The Victorians were facing a population crisis, until this ‘obscene’ invention turned out to be the solution
When did people stop eating mummies?
Medical cannibalism reached its peak in the 16th and 17th centuries, widely prescribed by doctors and used by the likes of Francis I of France and Charles II of England. But while it did fade away as medical understanding grew, as well as a deeper respect for archaeological artefacts, the practice did find a new audience in the Victorians, at a time of Egyptomania sparked by Napoleon’s campaign to Egypt and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
Not everyone approved of how mummies were being used, however. The artist Edward Burne-Jones, on discovering that his tube of Mummy Brown actually contained real mummy, insisted on giving his paint a proper burial. But mummia remained on the price list of a German pharmaceutical company until 1924.
]]> From plague 'searchers' to strawberry birthmarks: a history of women's bodies https://www.historyextra.com/membership/from-plague-searchers-to-strawberry-birthmarks-a-history-of-womens-bodies/ Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:00:07 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/from-plague-searchers-to-strawberry-birthmarks-a-history-of-womens-bodies/ Erin Maglaque explores the history of the female body – and society's longstanding beliefs about it. What was 'nidgeting'? How did women know they were pregnant before modern tests? And what did people in the past believe a mother’s imagination could do to her unborn child?
In this episode, Lauren Good speaks to historian Erin Maglaque about her book Presence, which explores the history of the female body – and society's longstanding beliefs about it.
]]> The pioneering surgeon who stood up to Rasputin https://www.historyextra.com/membership/pioneering-surgeon-who-stood-up-to-rasputin-podcast/ Tue, 13 Oct 2026 10:03:42 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/pioneering-surgeon-who-stood-up-to-rasputin-podcast/ Acclaimed biographer Miranda Seymour explains the remarkable life and accomplishments of pioneering surgeon Vera Gedroits – and why her story was erased She pioneered lifesaving battlefield surgery, challenged the medical establishment, stood up to Rasputin, and became the world's first female professor of surgery – yet today, few people have heard of Vera Gedroits.
In today's episode, acclaimed biographer Miranda Seymour tells Elinor Evans about Vera's remarkable life and accomplishments – and why her story was erased.
]]> Victorian London's poop explosion: why even Queen Victoria couldn't escape the stench https://www.historyextra.com/membership/victorian-londons-poop-explosion-why-even-queen-victoria-couldnt-escape-the-stench/ Mon, 12 Oct 2026 10:30:16 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/victorian-londons-poop-explosion-why-even-queen-victoria-couldnt-escape-the-stench/ The dumping of waste into the Thames caused such an unbearable smell in one hot summer that it forced major changes in London – and one of the greatest engineering achievements of the Victorian age The River Thames has long been a major artery of London, used for transportation and trade with ships constantly moving up and down delivering and picking up people and goods. But at the same time that it helped build the British capital into a bustling metropolis, and the very centre of a global empire, it was also used as a dumping ground for waste.
Whether the chemicals from the factories, animal parts from abattoirs, or household sewage, much of the city’s effluent ended up in the river. By the turn of the 19th century, the state of the Thames was dire. What’s more, it was the source of London’s drinking water, allowing diseases to wreak havoc. There were three cholera epidemics between 1832 and 1854.
- Read more | What did Victorians do with their poo? The battle over the 19th-century excrement explosion
To make matters worse, the population rose rapidly to beyond 2.5 million by 1850. And even the introduction of the more-hygienic water closets exacerbated the problem as flushing toilets meant there was more sewer water flowing into the river. The antiquated system of small sewers and cesspits was overwhelmed.
Newspapers clamoured for change, with illustrated papers like Punch personifying the river into a disgusting old man called Father Thames. Scientists and engineers drew up plans of how to deal with London’s sewage problem, but still nothing was done. A desperate Michael Faraday warned that a single “hot season” would give the people of London “sad proof of the folly of our carelessness”.
The summer of stink
Faraday’s warning came true in 1858. An unusually hot summer, with temperature rising over 30°C, saw the river levels drop, which left the filth to bake in the sun. The odour became unbearable.
“Gentility of speech is at an end – it stinks, and whoso once inhales the stink can never forget it and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it,” read the London City Press.
Queen Victoria herself attempted a river cruise, hoping that the bouquet of flowers she held would be enough to mask the stench, only to give up after a few minutes and demand the boat be returned to shore.
Being next to the Thames became nearly impossible. At the time, it was believed that diseases spread through foul air, or miasma, so for Londoners to get a whiff of the Thames during the Great Stink was not only deeply unpleasant but a risk to life.
Cutting through the red tape
One group of people especially affected were politicians, since the newly built Palace of Westminster, home to the British parliament, sat on the riverbank. They ordered tons of lime to be poured into the Thames and for the curtains to be doused with chloride of lime to mask the smell, but to no effect. Committee rooms had to be abandoned and there were serious talks of moving Parliament to another city, such as Oxford.
It turned out that political action could be swift when the politicians were faced with the problem themselves. In just 18 days, MPs passed a bill authorising £3 million to deal with what the Chancellor of the Exchequer Benjamin Disraeli described as “a Stygian pool, reeking with ineffable and intolerable horrors”.
Joseph Bazalgette, hero of the capital
The Metropolitan Board of Works was tasked with building a new sewer system for the city, led by chief engineer Joseph Bazalgette. He had been trying for years to implement his plans for improved sanitation; now, he was the mastermind behind an ambitious vision.
Bazalgette ripped up London to build a network of interconnecting sewers that led to the river, but joined major sewers running parallel with it. The waste would be diverted to pumping stations – some, like Crossness and Abbey Mills, were architectural marvels themselves – and away downstream.
The project changed the very look of the city, most notably with the addition of embankments. These concealed the sewers and narrowed the river, making it less likely that filth in the water could collect. Completed in 1875, it took more than 318 million bricks to realise Bazalgette’s vision.
The smell improved, the water became clearer and cases of disease dropped. There was another cholera epidemic, but only in the part of London not yet connected to Bazalgette’s network. Such was the success of the new sewer system that London still relies on it to this day.
]]> Being disabled in the medieval era https://www.historyextra.com/membership/being-disabled-in-the-medieval-era-podcast/ Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:14:05 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/being-disabled-in-the-medieval-era-podcast/ Rae Gillibrand highlights how bodily difference was understood in this pre-modern era Prosthetic legs, wheelbarrow wheelchairs and guide… children? Those were just some of the assistive technologies and body augmentations available to our medieval and early modern ancestors.
In this episode, Rae Gillibrand highlights how bodily difference was understood in this pre-modern era, and explores the medical marketplace and community support that was available. Speaking to Emily Briffett, Rae reveals a world of ingenuity, adaptation and care.
Beyond the podcast
To find out more about Tudor attitudes to disability – and why they may have been more compassionate than you might think – don’t miss this HistoryExtra article written by Phillipa Vincent-Connolly
]]> This strange medieval ritual was designed to protect a mother from grief. How did it work? https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/middle-ages-childbirth-motherhood-charm/ Wed, 23 Sep 2026 14:08:50 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/middle-ages-childbirth-motherhood-charm/ An early medieval text describes rituals intended to protect pregnancies and address the loss of a child. Historian Elinor Cleghorn explains what it can tell us about maternal grief and attitudes towards children There is one early medieval English childbirth charm that contains a rather unusual instruction. According to the text of the charm, a woman whose child has died should take soil from the grave, wrap it in black wool and sell it to a merchant, speaking a short formula as she does so.
The passage forms part of a group of rituals commonly known as For a Delayed Birth. They concern the difficulties of bearing and rearing children, combining prescribed movements, spoken words and objects associated with pregnancy and loss.
For historian Elinor Cleghorn, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, these instructions offer evidence of how medieval society acknowledged maternal bereavement. They also challenge the assumption that parents became emotionally detached from their children, because so many children died so young.
“It was a common assumption for a while that parents in history, especially in the Middle Ages, didn't really love their children in the way that we do today because lives were so precarious and short,” she says. Clearly, she says, that wasn't true.
A medieval collection of remedies
Cleghorn places For a Delayed Birth among the “metrical charms”: writings that use the rhythms and patterns of poetry as part of a prescribed ritual. They were, she says, “medical prayers”, which “could be recited to aid all sorts of things”.
Their subjects included concerns familiar to medieval households.
“There was a metrical charm for protection on journeys,” she says. Other charms addressed bees, the protection of cattle and the recovery of stolen livestock. These texts belong to a world in which religious practice, certain words, and ritual actions offered ways of seeking protection alongside other responses to illness or misfortune.
“For a Delayed Birth [is] a beautiful set of birthing rituals, not just around birth, but also around the hope for a child,” Cleghorn explains.
The text survives in British Library Harley MS 585, a manuscript containing medical remedies, prayers and charms. The collection in which it appears is known as the Lacnunga, an Old English word meaning “remedies”. The childbirth passages were copied in approximately between the years 1000 and 1050, before the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. They combine prose instructions with short passages of Old English verse intended for recitation.
Pregnancy after an earlier loss
The title of the charm doesn’t fully describe the text’s concerns. A modern reader might understand “delayed birth” as prolonged labour, but the instructions extend to carrying a pregnancy successfully and keeping a child alive.
Cleghorn interprets them as intended for “a woman who has experienced trauma and tragedy in childbirth, so perhaps has lost a child, or by a woman who hopes to again become pregnant and give birth safely after experiencing such a loss”.
This connects the experience of bereavement with expectations surrounding another pregnancy. The rituals address both an earlier death and the possibility that it might be repeated.
One sequence instructs that a woman hoping for a smooth pregnancy should step over her husband as he lies in bed. It recommends an “elaborate stepping sequence, and the woman has to make sure that her husband doesn't wake up while reciting her intentions to become pregnant again and have a healthy child,” Cleghorn says.
The soil and the black wool
Another passage concerns what a woman should do if she has previously lost a child.
“One of the sequences involves a woman going to the grave of her dead child and taking some of the soil and wrapping the soil in some black wool,” Cleghorn explains.
The instruction specifies material from her own child’s grave, linking the ritual to a particular bereavement. The soil is then transferred to someone outside the household.
“The ritual was completed if she gave this black wool containing the soil from her child's grave to a travelling merchant, who would then take it away from the area where she lived to symbolise her grief and the threat of another loss being taken far away from her.”
- Read more | Medieval family planning: meet the strong-willed women who redefined motherhood in the Middle Ages
“So there was also a little collaborative element as well in this,” she says, “that the merchant would then leave town, taking with him the grief and the danger.”
This reading suggests a practice that joined remembrance of a deceased child to concern for future pregnancies. It also provided a defined action through which a woman might respond to circumstances she had been unable to control: a way of reasserting some agency in a decidedly uncertain context.
Instructions rather than a personal account
The evidence has clear limitations. The charm survives as a written prescription, rather than a description of an observed ceremony or a mother’s account of her own experience.
“We know they exist and were written down, but we don't know how these rituals were performed, or by whom,” Cleghorn cautions.
Nor can the text establish how common these practices were or whether women found them reassuring. However, its survival demonstrates that certainly someone considered these responses to reproductive difficulty worth recording.
For Cleghorn, that’s significant in itself. It indicates “a real sense of a necessity to create practices around mothering and childbirth that could bring some safety, bring some degree of protection”.
So, the assumption that frequent childhood deaths produced parental indifference confuses two different questions: how often families experienced bereavement, and how they responded to it. These birth charms, however, show that the loss of a child was understood as an experience requiring emotional action and attention.
Grief may certainly have been more common, though no less profound.
Elinor Cleghorn was speaking to Lauren Good on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]> "He came out of the Valleys like a projectile" – and altered the course of British history https://www.historyextra.com/membership/he-came-out-of-the-valleys-like-a-projectile-and-altered-the-course-of-british-history/ Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:30:31 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/he-came-out-of-the-valleys-like-a-projectile-and-altered-the-course-of-british-history/ Producer, actor and writer Jonny Owen chooses Nye Bevan (1897–1960) as his history hero In profile
Nye Bevan was a Welsh Labour politician best known for the key role he played, as Minister of Health, in creating the National Health Service and for his wider role in the founding of Britain’s welfare state. Bevan, the MP for Ebbw Vale from 1929–60, went on to serve as shadow foreign secretary (1956–60), and deputy leader of the Labour Party and deputy leader of the opposition (1959–60). He died in 1960, aged 62.
When did you first hear about Bevan?
He died just over 10 years before I was born, but he was such a mythical figure in south Wales, where I grew up, that I heard about him as a kid. “This was the guy,” I was told in that very Welsh way, “who invented the National Health Service.”
What kind of man was he?
Born in modern-day Blaenau Gwent, south Wales, he left school at 13 and followed his father down the pit, at a time when the Welsh coalfields were powering much of the world’s industry. Bevan, a man of great energy with a huge appetite for life, came out of the valleys “like a projectile”, and I think saw himself as a man of destiny who had been put on Earth to make the world a fairer place.
- Read more | How Britain fell in love with the NHS
What made Bevan a hero?
The role he played in creating the welfare state. There was no safety net for the working classes in the Britain of Bevan’s youth. So if a woman’s husband was injured or died, she and her children could soon find themselves on the breadline, in the absence of a supportive family. Similarly, child mortality was a fact of life in the 1920s in areas like south Wales – for instance, three of my grandfather’s siblings died as children. The welfare state, imperfect as it may be, is one of his greatest legacies.
What was Bevan’s finest hour?
It’s got to be the pivotal role that he played in creating the NHS, despite the opposition of the British Medical Association among others. It took courage to force through the legislation necessary – he was branded everything from a ‘communist’ to a ‘fascist’ for wanting to create an organisation providing medical health care free at the point of need across the UK. I think he’d be disappointed by some of the ‘privatisation by stealth’ over recent decades, and the overall state of today’s NHS.
Is there anything that you don’t particularly admire about him?
Yes, the fact that he never seems to have given much consideration to his own health – smoking, drinking and eating what he wanted. I wish someone had taken him aside and said: Why does Britain keep changing prime ministers? The answer lies in history“If you don’t look after yourself, you’re not going to last.”
Can you see any parallels between Bevan’s life and your own?
I’d never compare myself to him, but he felt his background influenced everything he did, and I feel that too. Being a proud son of Merthyr Tydfil, with a similar coal-mining background in my own family, I think we’d have got on well.
What would you ask Bevan if you could meet him?
He never seems to have expressed any interest in sport, which is unusual in the valleys. So I’d ask him if he was a sports fan – and, if so, what sport he most enjoyed.
Jonny Owen has appeared in TV shows such as Shameless and My Family, and won a Welsh Bafta for the documentary The Aberfan Disaster, which he co-produced. Britain’s Murder Map with Vicky McClure and Jonny Owen is streaming on History Play
This article was first published in the September 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]> The ancient Mesopotamians were freakishly ahead of their time – and here are 8 reasons why https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-ancient-mesopotamians-were-freakishly-ahead-of-their-time-and-here-are-8-reasons-why/ Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:00:31 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-ancient-mesopotamians-were-freakishly-ahead-of-their-time-and-here-are-8-reasons-why/ Ideas developed by ancient peoples in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers still shape our lives today. Selena Wisnom explains why we should celebrate the pivotal roles they played in the development of beer, writing, AI, horoscopes – and even credit cards 1. Writing
They gave us the means to pen novels – and official records
The ancient peoples of the so-called ‘cradle of civilisation’ – the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers – grew up fast. In the five or so millennia BC, four major civilisations emerged in the region known as Mesopotamia – and the advances they made would leave an indelible imprint on history.
From around 4000 BC, Sumerians built the first city-states in the region’s south. The next great power was the Akkadian empire, founded about 2334 BC. In the early 19th century BC, the Babylonians became the dominant force in southern Mesopotamia. Meanwhile, to the north, from the 21st century BC, the Assyrians conquered much of west Asia.
Mesopotamia was a place of rich soils and access to plentiful water for irrigating crops. Unsurprisingly, it’s believed to be where settled farming emerged. Its inhabitants grew rich, with elites enjoying time to think and to develop ways of preserving their best ideas – most notably writing.
Around 3500 BC, Sumerian accountants in the city of Uruk devised a method for keeping track of the rations they gave to their workers – and developed the most advanced bureaucracy the world had yet seen. Writing started here as a system of pictures, known today as proto-cuneiform, which could record any commodity going in or out. Delivered three jars of oil to the temple? Just draw a jar of oil three times.
Proper writing, which can record abstract ideas and the sounds of speech, evolved by about 3100 BC. At this point, pictures were used to spell out the sounds of the objects for which they stood; to provide an analogy in English, drawing a bee and a leaf might spell the word ‘belief’. This writing system, known as cuneiform (from the Latin for ‘wedge’), involved pressing a reed stylus into soft clay tablets, combining multiple wedge-shaped marks to create pictures. Over time, these became more abstract and less like things they originally depicted. So by the first millennium BC, you’d never guess that the sign ‘ni’ was originally supposed to be a jar of oil.
Cuneiform was still being written on clay tablets in the Middle East in the first century AD, some 3,100 years after the system was first devised – a period spanning well over half of recorded human history.
Such tablets don’t decay in the ground, and they’re not destroyed by fire, so around half a million of them survive today, with more surfacing in excavations all the time. As a result, Mesopotamia is one of the best-documented parts of the ancient world, helping us learn about its extraordinary innovations.
2. Banking
They invented spreadsheets, credit and interest payments
Alongside those early accounting systems, the Mesopotamians developed the world’s first spreadsheets, as well as sophisticated banking systems. They also invented the concept of credit – and, with it, interest-bearing loans.
As early as the third millennium BC, grid-like tablets recorded loans of grain from the palace to the temple, enabling lenders to keep tabs on how much was repaid and what was still owed. A series of surviving tablets detail how the royal granaries of Lagash – a city-state sited between the sites of modern Baghdad and Basra – supplied the White Temple, which failed to repay the full amount of grain the following year, necessitating the recording of a deficit on the loan.
Temples functioned as banks, lending silver and barley at discounted rates in times of need. They also financed commercial ventures, charging annual interest at 33 per cent on barley.
The private sector took off in the early second millennium BC, with fully fledged private enterprises in which people could invest. Assyrian merchants organised trading partnerships to finance their trips to Anatolia, where they sold textiles made by their wives at home. Traders were keen to invest their profits and not let their silver lie idle. Precious metals sitting in the money bag rather than being put to work increasing their value were described as ‘getting hungry’.
The Babylonian word for interest, which translates as ‘increase’, originally referred to herds of animals. Just as the flocks would reproduce and multiply over time, money and debt could also burgeon. Given the huge interest rates levied by lenders, profits could grow quickly. But so could debts – and ordinary people who found themselves unable to repay their creditors were sometimes enslaved. In the second millennium BC, Babylonian kings frequently had to proclaim debt amnesties to provide relief.
National deficits also caused problems. The first documented war in history, between the Sumerian cities of Lagash and Umma, a little to the north-west, flared up over a refusal to repay a loan. The conflict, which dragged on for 150 years (c2500–2350 BC), was a convoluted tale of claim, counterclaim, and battles won and lost – all over a dispute over a loan agreement based on a rich strip of fertile territory, the Gu’edena or ‘edge of the plain’.
So you can thank the Mesopotamians for your credit card – and also be grateful that interest rates have, by and large, fallen in the past 4,000 years.
- Read more | He tried to conquer knowledge itself – instead this ancient Mesopotamian king resorted to rule with terror
3. Pubs
They adored beer, and created venues to drink it
People have probably been quaffing beer for at least 12,000 years, but the earliest-known written evidence for brewing comes from Mesopotamia. Indeed, some of the very first surviving examples of writing were made by temple accountants working out how much grain they needed to make enough beer for festivals.
The Sumerians adored beer. One list, albeit compiled later as a lexical teaching aid, records 38 different types including dark, light, red and “triple beer”, plus beer with and without foam – and the enigmatic “beer in the middle of the sea”. That’s enough varieties to make any modern craft brewery proud.
Drinking beer was a highly social activity. People gathered around a communal vat and sipped through reed straws. Such a scene is depicted on cylinder seals belonging to Queen Puabi of Ur in the 26th century BC, who was later buried with a gold and lapis lazuli drinking straw. Straws were perhaps used to penetrate a floating layer of residue, or simply to enhance the fun of sharing a drink with others.
Mesopotamians built the first pubs, too. One tavern in Lagash, established c2700 BC, had a kitchen, an outdoor seating area and 150 serving dishes as well as the all-important beer.
It’s often assumed that early beer was low in alcohol, mainly because it was given to children. But there is plenty of evidence that Sumerian beer was highly intoxicating. One myth tells of Inanna, goddess of war, love and sex, getting the god Enki (or Ea) drunk so that she can steal from him the powers of civilisation.
Later medical recipes contain cures for hangovers and even alcoholism. And one of the texts that gives us our most detailed information about brewing – the Sumerian hymn to the goddess Ninkasi – might have been taught to school children in the second millennium BC, along with a drinking song that has become famous via YouTube: As I spin around the lake of beer, while feeling wonderful, feeling wonderful, while drinking beer, in a blissful mood, while drinking alcohol and feeling exhilarated, with joy in the heart and a contented liver – my heart is a heart filled with joy!
4. Maths
They had plenty of time for numbers and calculations
Whenever you check a clock to tell the time, you are using a Mesopotamian system of counting – sexagesimal. Our modern decimal system uses the number 10 as the base, but the Mesopotamians used base 60 – which is why we have 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute. It was also the Mesopotamians who decided that a circle should be divided into 360°; that’s neatly divisible by 60, and explains why it makes sense for clocks to have circular faces (though ancient Mesopotamians used water clocks).
Unlike us, they counted lots of other things in 60s, a fact reflected in the Mesopotamian system of writing numbers. One vertical wedge could stand for 1, 60 or even 360 (6x60). You can tell which number is indicated only from the context which does make Mesopotamian maths a bit of a headache.
And these people were extremely good at maths. Babylonian schoolchildren were learning a version of Pythagoras’ theorem more than 1,000 years before the Greek polymath triangulated his thinking in the sixth century BC. As early as the 18th century BC, they also knew the square root of two, needed to find the diagonal of a square.
Babylonian students were taught methods of calculating areas of land so that they could be taxed efficiently. However – and seemingly just for the fun of it – teachers used some huge numbers when setting exercises. Later, the Babylonians came up with sophisticated maths that was key to the development of data science.
- Read more | Long before the Bible, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation predicted one of its most famous stories
5. Poetry
They gave us gloomy introverts who ponder life
It wasn’t all admin in Mesopotamia. The region produced the world’s first literature, too, in all sorts of genres. The earliest named author in Mesopotamia – and, therefore, the first known writer in history – was Enheduanna, a priestess of the moon god in the city of Ur, who lived around 2300 BC.
Known as “the Sumerian Shakespeare”, Enheduanna wrote wonderful poems about a turbulent world governed by capricious gods – classics that were still being studied in schools five centuries after she died.
A snippet from Exaltation of Inanna gives a flavour of her verse:
I approached the light but it burned me
I approached the shade but was covered by a storm
My honeyed mouth turned to spittle
My talent for lifting spirits has turned to dust
The Mesopotamians were also great storytellers. The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh – dating back to at least the 18th century BC – charts the fate of a king on a quest for eternal life. It’s the earliest known example of the ‘hero’s journey’ that underpins so many of today’s Hollywood films. Babylonian stories about struggles between gods and heroes influenced the Homeric epics, Greek mythology and even the Bible: does a flood wiping out humanity and an ark that boards animals two by two sound familiar?
But it wasn’t all serious. The Sumerians wrote the first rap battles – debate poems between entities such as Summer and Winter, Bird and Fish, and Date Palm and Tamarisk, arguing over who deserves the crown.
Similar slanging matches also took place between people. A recently discovered text from c1740 BC describes a cat fight between two women from the city of Nippur. They accuse each other of being bad at baking and of buying ready-made food, hurling insults – “Your butt sticks out” – and accusations: “You can’t even operate a spindle.”
Poems about the goddess Inanna describe the first instance of teenage rebellion, recounting how she sneaked out to meet her boyfriend without telling her parents. And some of the earliest jokes are written in Sumerian. One starts: “A dog walks into a bar and says ‘I can’t see a thing – I’ll open this one’!” The punchline, we can only assume, has been lost in translation.
6. Astrology
They read the stars and created zodiacal archetypes
Whether you’re a feisty Leo or a cool-headed Capricorn – indeed, whatever your star sign – you can thank the Babylonians for inventing it. Astrology was practised in Mesopotamia by at least the third millennium BC, when the stars and planets were thought to carry messages from the gods to the king. An eclipse usually meant that a king would soon die, whereas the rising and setting of Venus could portend a good harvest, reconciliation of kings, or even war.
None of these outcomes was inevitable, though. Rituals could be performed to ask the gods to change their minds, or for help interpreting these astral signs: if a king will die, which king will it be? One surviving prayer to the moon god worries over “the evil of a lunar eclipse” and “portents and omens, unpleasant and unfavourable” as it pleads for intercession and the hope of a more “favourable” path.
In the fifth century BC, Babylonian priests divided the sky into 12 equal chunks that we now call the zodiac. The Persians who ruled Babylon at that time had no interest in taking advice from the Babylonian gods, so astrologers started taking private clients – and invented horoscopes. These forecast the future based on a person’s date of birth and the exact positions of the planets, making predictions such as: “His days will be long” and “He will have sons”.
The names of most modern star signs are direct translations into Latin of the Babylon constellations: Libra is a pair of scales, Cancer is a crab and Taurus is the Babylonian bull of heaven who, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes down from the sky to trample the land. Others took their classical names from Babylonian images – Aquarius the water carrier is depicted in the same way as the water god Ea (or Enki), often shown with water pouring from his shoulders. Meanwhile, Virgo the maiden was named after a Babylonian picture of a woman holding an ear of wheat (this constellation was ‘the Furrow’ in Babylonian).
- Read more | Behold his nightmarish nether regions: this ancient Mesopotamian demon was secretly a divine hero
7. Data science
They laid the foundations for modern machine learning
Without the Babylonians, we would have no artificial intelligence – because they invented the algorithm. The roots of data science lie in astrology: the original purpose of the zodiac was to measure the sky more accurately. Babylonian astronomers measured the position of a star or planet by holding up hands to the sky: 12 fingers corresponded to an angle of 1°. They studied the heavens each night, recording observations in diaries maintained for at least 600 years – arguably the longest scientific project in history.
With such a huge amount of data, they quickly spotted patterns. For instance, Venus moves in an eight-year cycle, so they could work out that planet’s position on a future date by simply checking their records to see where it had been recorded eight years before then. Eventually, astronomers developed mathematical formulae to calculate the positions of celestial bodies without having to consult past records – and the algorithm was born.
The Greeks picked up these data and calculations along with the zodiac, and they became part of Greek science. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy used Babylonian eclipse records dating back to 747 BC. Modern mathematical astronomy, directly descended from that Greek work, exists only because of astrology – ancient scholars carefully observing the sky for messages from the angry gods. So the algorithm, along with the idea that trends can be extrapolated from data, comes from a core principle of Mesopotamian religion – the idea that the gods write messages in the heavens for humans to interpret.
8. Medicine
They performed surgery and introduced the system of striking off dodgy doctors
The Egyptians usually get the credit for producing the earliest known medical texts – but the Mesopotamians were first. The oldest medical recipe, for making a salve to heal a bite wound, dates from the third millennium BC in Ebla, Syria.
The code of Hammurabi, which covered 282 legal scenarios – including disputes – attests that the Babylonians were performing eye surgery in the 18th century BC. These laws, which survive on a stele topped with a relief image of Hammurabi with Shamash – who worked double time as the sun god and the god of justice – mandated harsh penalties for medical malpractice. If an operation went wrong and the patient was blinded, the physician’s hand should be cut off – a hand for an eye, as it were. It was also stated that doctors should charge rates on a sliding scale based on the social class of the patient. Ordinary people paid half as much as the wealthy.
Mesopotamian medicine was fundamentally holistic. A physician would give you drugs to treat symptoms, but an exorcist would also be called to fix the root problem, understood to have involved angering the gods. Incantations at the bedside would reassure a patient that the gods would soon calm down, while omens could tell the exorcist whether the patient would live or die even before that spirit-expeller arrived at the sufferer’s house. If, for example, he saw a potsherd standing up in the street, a patient was clearly too dangerously ill to go near.
In the seventh century BC, Assyrian king Ashurbanipal commissioned an encyclopaedia to collect and standardise the vast numbers of medical texts and traditions that were circulating by then. These included treatments for everything from minor ailments, such as headaches and digestive problems, to serious problems such as mental illness and epilepsy – known to the Babylonians as ‘fallen from the sky’.
To treat a headache, you should mix a selection of seeds then “boil down [the mixture] in vinegar, sprinkle parched grain flour [and] emmer flour on it, and smear [the mixture] onto a piece of leather. Shave his head [and] put it on as a bandage; he will get better.”
Hippocrates is usually credited with inventing the concept of diagnosis based on observation, but the Mesopotamians pioneered this approach hundreds of years earlier, considering five grades of temperature variation, among many other factors. Their knowledge was then incorporated into Hippocratic writings, Roman treatises on eye disease and, later, Arabic medicine.
Mesopotamian advances travelled widely thanks to the cosmopolitan nature of the ancient world. To the east, Sumerians had been trading goods and ideas with the Indus Valley and Afghanistan as early as the third millennium BC, while in the other direction Alexander the Great united lands from Babylon to Greece under one rule. Whether via commerce or conquest, people moved – and took their cultures with them. And Mesopotamian expertise survived and spread because successive cultures found it to be practical, useful and effective.
Selena Wisnom is lecturer in the heritage of the Middle East at the University of Leicester. She is the author of The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History (Allen Lane, 2025)
This article was first published in the September 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]> How opium became a powerful global commodity https://www.historyextra.com/membership/how-opium-became-a-powerful-global-commodity-podcast/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 10:47:22 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/how-opium-became-a-powerful-global-commodity-podcast/ Benjamin Robert Siegel explores how opium became such a powerful global commodity – and how it has shaped medicine, money and power for centuries Opium has been a painkiller, a vice and the fuel for at least two wars. But what makes it such a powerful global commodity?
Benjamin Robert Siegel takes Isabel King through this complex history, exploring how opium shaped capitalism, medicine and global power from ancient poppy fields to the modern opioid crisis.
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