Period dramaMedicine true to its era.
What a doctor could do in 1880, 1932 or 1962 is very different from today. We make sure the treatments, the language, the equipment and the hospitals on screen fit the year your story is set.
How we help
Getting the period right without slowing the story
Period medicine is full of details audiences notice: a drug that had not been discovered yet, an operation done the modern way, or a hospital run as if the NHS already existed. We check scripts and storylines against the medicine of the time and suggest period-true alternatives that keep the scene working.
Often the history gives you more drama, not less. Before antibiotics, an infected cut could kill. Before modern forensics, a poisoning could go unnoticed. Those gaps are gifts to a writer.
- Which treatments, drugs and anaesthetics existed in your year
- How hospitals ran before and after the NHS began in 1948
- Who did what, from matron and ward sister to house surgeon
- Period language, bedside manner and what patients expected
- Childbirth, infection and surgery before antibiotics
- How deaths were investigated: coroners, inquests and period forensics
- Instruments, props and set dressing
INT. COTTAGE HOSPITAL WARD - NIGHT (1932)
A single lamp. THOMAS, flushed and restless, tosses in the bed. NURSE BELL wrings out a cloth.
NURSE BELL
I'll start him on antibiotics.
I'll sponge him down and sit with him. The fever has to break on its own.
Adviser's noteAntibiotics are still a decade away. A nurse watching through the night is a stronger scene than a prescription.
Illustrative example written for this website. We never share or publish material from clients' scripts.
Period credits
Period mysteries we have advised
- Father Brown
- Sister Boniface Mysteries
Both series are set in mid-century England, where the medicine, the policing and the hospitals all need to feel of their time.
Setting a story in the past?
Tell us the year and the medical moments in your story, and we'll help make them feel right for the period.