Making Signs

Available for over a year

Series exploring over 2,000 years of western medicine, written and presented by medical historian Andrew Cunningham. Systematic post mortems revolutionised the study of disease. It enabled physicians armed with new instruments such as the stethoscope to translate the signs they were reading on the outside of the body into what was going on inside. Andrew explores how doctors in the Paris hospitals could now link the symptoms of many different patients with particular diseases. But what did this mean for the patient who up until the 1800s had always expected to be seen as special and unique? The readers are David Rintoul, Peter Capaldi, Jason Watkins and Scott Handy.