A beautifully gruesome and strangely enthralling visual tour through disease in an age before colour photography.

Exquisitely detailed illustrations from some of the world’s rarest medical books form an unforgettable and profoundly human reminder of mankind’s age-old struggle with disease.

This evocative overview, incorporating historic maps, charts, medical instruments and case notes, reveals the fears and preoccupations of an era at the mercy of epidemics, infection and bodily decay.