BBC Education and The Wellcome Trust:Medicine Through Time. Videotape: incorporating five 25 min programmes. London: BBC Educational Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0 563 376953, £24.99.

Teachers' Resource Pack, with four theme booklets, over 40 picture sources, posters, time lines, pupils' worksheets etc. London: BBC Educational Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0 563 376392, £19.99.

BBC Education Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/medicine/.

It was in the late 1970s that the Schools History Project first launched its ‘developmental studies’ programme to help youngsters understand how changes in science and technology have impacted upon human life at different periods. Possible topics included Farming through the ages – surely one of the most important as we might see it today – and Warfare through the ages, but in the event it was Medicine Through Time and Energy Through Time which were developed most fully. By the 1990s the first of these had achieved a firm and regular place as a component of GCSE courses and about one third of all those taking history exams in the GCSE now study it. The involvement of the BBC and the Wellcome Trust in developing resources to support the work was therefore amply justified by its standing in the current curriculum.