2026 Charles and Linda Wilson Lecture in Humanities in Medicine

What was everyday life like in early modern London when illness carried stigma as well as suffering? In this lecture, Olivia Weisser, Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston, explores London between 1650 and 1750 through the unexpected lens of a shameful sexually transmitted disease. While venereal disease was widespread, the lived experiences of those who carried it have often been hidden from history. Moving beyond medical institutions and learned texts, the talk follows patients into the streets, shops, and homes where treatment was sought and sold. Drawing on more than 700 advertisements for cures, it reveals a bustling underground marketplace in which pills and potions were offered not only by healers, but discreetly by bakers, grocers, and other everyday retailers-foreshadowing a booming proprietary drug trade far earlier than historians once believed.