Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
Some diseases are specialised in using sexual behaviour for transmission. Major pandemics including HIV and syphilis have been transmitted via this route, along with the cancer-causing infections Hepatitis B and HPV. Along with these are highly transmissible diseases such as gonorrhoea and herpes. Another way people share bodily fluids is via needles, and several diseases can be transmitted this way, including HIV and Hepatitis. Changing sexual behaviour is hard, so other methods have to be found to control these diseases.
Many major diseases are transmitted by food or drink. Cholera (water), brucellosis (milk), BSE/nvCJD, typhoid and many parasites are ingested as part of a normal diet.
How does the law consider children in cases involving medical consent? This lecture will look at how doctors (and parents) should talk their children about illness. It will also consider what should happen when parents and doctors disagree about what a child should be told. The overall law on consent has changed markedly in England and Wales since Montgomery (2015), and requires doctors to share and explain risks, but it is not clear how far this applies to children, particularly older children.
Mathematics has been used as a tool to understand and control infectious disease for over a century, but Covid-19 brought along a whole epidemic of new challenges.
What the NHS has provided and had to treat over its existence has changed much more radically than most people realise. Some of this change is rightly the domain of politics, but much is driven in response to changing health needs, improvements in medical science and priorities of society.
Knife violence is one of the biggest challenges facing our society. Simulation offers a way to involve young people in exploring the consequences of carrying a knife and responding when incidents occur.
Lymphoma, leukaemia and myeloma arise from different parts of the white blood cell system. Unlike solid tumours, they can be widely distributed in the body, and this means they need a different approach.
It is widely accepted that the rising prevalence of obesity is a major threat to current and future health of individuals, the public, and the NHS. Obesity comes from a complex interaction of personal choices, genetics, economics, the food industry, and the environment, among other things.
Spying for Queen Elizabeth I was very different from modern-day intelligence services - or was it? This lecture brings together historian Stephen Alford and Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, and will discuss Tudor spies and the modern-day secret service.