Articles

Our words and pictures explore the connections between science, medicine, life and art. Dive into one no matter where in the world you are.

1-20
Photograph of an advertising leaflet folding out into a poster (on the reverse) showing a variety of bottles of coloured liquid and the protective card packaging for sending them through the mail. The leaflet is pictured raised slightly off a grey concrete textured background.
  • In pictures

Historical ways to hang on to your hair

Could upper-class hair-hygiene regimes cause baldness, or does hair health depend on a blast of deadly mercury? Maisie Jenkins scours the archives for historic follicle care.

Part of Inside Our Collections

drawing of a bird flying in the sky.
  • Comic

Have you discovered inner strength you never knew you had?

Part of Pandemic journal

Mixed media collage of four people, three female and one male, taken from various distances. Surrounding them are various hand drawn doodles. The closest person, to the left of the frame, is a woman wearing glasses, surrounded by colourful dots. Behind her a woman is sitting backwards on a chair with her head in her hands. She has been outlined in blue and black pen and has an ominous cloud above her head. Towards the center right the full body portrait of a man with his arms folded and staring at the camera. A series of outlines surround his body, complete with a yellow mark drawn on his chest. To the far right, the full body portrait a woman is framed by the handwritten words “Not that much has changed” in purple marker pen.
  • Article

Is it really OK to not be OK?

Our mental healthcare system is still the poor relation of services that treat physical illness, and the pandemic has shone a spotlight on this situation. Campaigner James Downs argues for fundamental change.

Photograph of cut out pieces of archive material from above, all raised slightly above a flat light blue background. One of the illustrations shows a shocked woman looking at enlarged microscope illustration of caricatured microbes found the dirty water causing a cholera outbreak. Surrounding the woman is a series of circular illustrations showing infection rates of the cholera outbreak during different years starting in 1840.
  • Article

Why pandemic denial is nothing new

Could today’s Covid-deniers be taking lessons from history? After all, it’s nearly 200 years since frustrations at a cholera-induced lockdown erupted in Sunderland.

Lesley Imgart comic detail
  • Comic

I've come to appreciate social interaction

Are you interacting with strangers more?

Part of Pandemic journal

Artwork created by painting over the surface of a black and white photographic print with colourful paint. The artwork shows the original scene of a young woman walking through a parkland scene pushing a pram. Sitting up inside the pram is a young toddler facing forwards. Behind them is a black hooped fence separating the path from the planted grass area. In the background are trees and the top of a large stone building. The woman, toddler and pram are surrounded by a large oval shape painted green, which is covered in small lighter green dots and many organic shaped circular light green outlines. Around the edge of the oval shape are a line of coloured painted spots, of yellow, pink and purple.
  • Serial
Part6

Finding consolation in social isolation

Feeling isolated and anxious during the lockdowns of the last year, Tanya Perdikou found solace in reconnecting to her past and reaching out to neighbours in the present.

Part of How to belong

Photograph of a high redbrick wall running from left to right, in front of which is an empty road and a crossing with traffic lights and road signs. At the bottom of the image is a grass verge with a small crop of bright yellow daffodils.
  • Article

Chasing spring

Isabella Kaminski reflects on a transformative journey that saw her cycle the length of the UK, tracking the first signs of spring. She explores what the changing seasons can tell us about ourselves and the climate crisis.

Lesley Imgart comic detail
  • Comic

I'm taking it 1 to 3 days at a time

Are you ready to make plans yet?

Part of Pandemic journal

Artwork created by painting over the surface of a black and white photographic print with colourful paint. The artwork shows the original head of a young girl from the photograph beneath. The girl is pictured from the chest up and is smiling to the camera. Apart from her head and face, the rest of the image is a painted cyan background covered in small blue dots and purple lines forming cell like structures around the blue dots. The girl's clothes are painted differently, with a yellow background, covered in orange dots, surrounded by loops of purple lines, arranged almost like scales or feathers.
  • Serial
Part5

Belonging, babies and self-belief

As a first-time mother living abroad, it seemed too exhausting to truly connect with new acquaintances. Instead, Tanya Perdikou began to make a kind of peace with herself.

Part of How to belong

Photographic collage of a series of landscapes overlapping on one another. The individual images feature obstacles to the visually impaired such as shadows, wheelie bins, street furniture and lampposts. In the centre of the frame are three overlapping photographs that make up a pier that reaches out to sea.
  • Article

Making sense of senses lost

In rapid succession, Steve Barker suddenly lost sight and hearing on his left side. The effect on how he perceives the world has been profound.

Woman sitting down, eating a piece of toast, an empty shopping bag is lying on the table.
  • Comic

I struggle with the uncertainty

How are you coping with the unknown?

Part of Pandemic journal

Artwork created by painting over the surface of a black and white photographic print with colourful paint. The artwork shows the original scene of a young girl walking towards the camera with her head turned to the left and her hair obscuring the side of her face. The girl is pictured in front of part of a rural cottage. The front door can be seen under a deep porch made of wooden trellis and tree trunks. To the left of the door is a small window in a white washed brick wall. There are shrubs and lawn in front of the cottage. Under the porch is a petrol lawn mower and part of a white plastic laundry basket. The girl is surrounded by an oval shaped painted cyan background covered in small blue and larger purple dots. Over the original print to the right and above the painted oval are pairs of small painted dots. One dot in the pair is green, the other purple. These dots float like butterflies within the scene.
  • Serial
Part4

Searching for a place to call home

Wherever she’s lived, Tanya Perdikou has rarely felt at home, and numerous moves have perpetuated a sense of disconnection. But signs from nature offer powerful moments of connection.

Part of How to belong

Photographic mosaic made up of a grid of images, numbering 8 across and 8 down. Each image is of a closeup of different mouth, in the process of speaking, frozen in a variety of shapes different shapes. Some mouths appear more than once across the grid.The images are monotone with a light green tint over all of them.
  • Book extract

Out of the mouth trap

After 15 years of speech therapy, Jonty Claypole decided to make peace with his stammer. He explores our fear of disfluency, revealing how accepting it could actually increase our creativity and persuasiveness.

Part of Inside Our Books

  • Comic

I never stopped being me

Are you a different person now than you were before the pandemic?

Part of Pandemic journal

Artwork created by painting over the surface of a black and white photographic print with colourful paint. The artwork shows the original head of a young girl from the photograph beneath. The girl is pictured from the chest up and is smiling off to the right of camera. Apart from her head and face, the rest of the image is a painted red background covered in small yellow dots and thick purple lines crisscrossing the background. The girl's cloths are painted differently, with a light purple background, covered in orange, green and dark purple dots, linked together by straight red lines.
  • Serial
Part3

When you don’t belong, you drink

In the third part of her exploration of belonging, Tanya Perdikou unpicks the addictions that have shaped her past and uncovers the connections that make recovery possible.

Part of How to belong

Photograph of a black and white photographic print of Alice Stewart, looking directly at the camera, and holding sheets of gridded paper. The print has been photographed resting slightly above a grey concrete textured background.
  • In pictures

We are the survivors of slow-motion epidemics

Pioneering epidemiologist Dr Alice Stewart realised how things in our daily lives could be as deadly as any infectious disease.

Part of Inside Our Collections

Artwork created by painting over the surface of a black and white photographic print with colourful paint. The artwork shows the original head of a man from the photograph beneath. The man is pictured from the chest up and is smiling off to the left. He is holding his right hand up into the air. The top of the image crops off his arm just above the wrist. Apart from his head, the rest of the image is a painted cream background covered in small green dots and large red helixes which resemble DNA structures running in lines diagonally from the top right to the bottom left. The individual's cloths are painted differently, with a blue background and covered in orange, pink and purple linked hexagons. Around his neck is a neckerchief painted a darker blue with purple zig-zag lines and yellow spots.
  • Serial
Part2

Ancestry, privacy and the family tree

Wanting to find out more about her Jamaican grandfather, Tanya Perdikou contemplates DNA testing. But first she has to consider the potential impact of unexpected results.

Part of How to belong

Photograph of a warm wood grained, polished tabletop from above. Resting on the table, cutting diagonally across the top right corner is part of an unfolded map showing roads, lakes, and the contours of hills. Resting on the map are four three dimensional shapes, a red triangle, a light blue cube, a bright yellow star and a light green arrow. To the centre and bottom left of the image are three photographic prints with thin white borders. These photographs show mountain walking scenes looking over hills, rocky outcrops, valleys and lakes. In one of the photographs a lone figure can be seen looking out at the view.
  • Article

A walk through other people’s expectations

The steep path isn’t the only thing Caroline Butterwick has to navigate on her Lakeland hike. Always aware of other people’s expectations, she continually monitors how her disability might seem to strangers.

Ruby Elliot Rubyetc
  • Comic

Home

Make yourself comfortable in your own body.

Artwork created by painting over the surface of a black and white photographic print with colourful paint. The artwork shows the original heads of two individuals from the photograph, on the left an adult woman and on the right a young baby. The baby is being held in the adult's arms. Apart from the heads the rest of the image is a painted yellow background covered in small green, orange and blue dots. The individual's cloths are painted differently, the adult's has a green background with wavy orange horizontal lines and pink spots. The baby's is green with pink cell like patterns with red centres.
  • Serial
Part1

Belonging and why we long for it

Tanya Perdikou’s upbringing emphasised conventional respectability, but other influential family members embraced the bohemian life. Caught between two sets of values, she questions where, if anywhere, she fits in.

Part of How to belong