Cancer, diabetes, dementia.. We think of these diseases as scourges of modern industrial living, but have they always existed undetected in humans? Do we have genetic predispositions to such conditions? The archive of human skeletal remains at the Museum of London provides a large bank of evidence to investigate how far some of these diseases go back in time.

The industrial age was a key period in human history where the population’s lifestyles changed radically in terms of occupations, housing, diet and leisure activities: all of which impacted on their health. London had become the most densely populated metropolis in the world - the beating heart of trade and consumerism - but at what price? Jelena Bekvalac explains how, using modern medical imaging technologies and osteoarchaeological examination of nearly 2,400 human skeletal remains, she has been able to establish the existence of present day diseases in individuals living both before and during industrialisation and how the perils of unregulated rural and urban lives, changing food consumption, transport and technologies as well as improving medical treatment and life expectancy, have altered human health patterns over time.