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39 results
  • Article
  • Article

The search for a cure for endometriosis

| Jaipreet VirdiAnne Howeson

Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.

  • Article
  • Article

How the Peckham Experiment inspired my fiction

| James Wilkes

Find out how an unruly mass of archive material from a 1930s radical health centre has inspired brand new writing.

  • Article
  • Article

Meredith Wadman’s prescription for writing

| Jennifer Trent Staves

The Wellcome Book Prize shortlisted author of ‘The Vaccine Race’ answers five questions on health, inspiration and storytelling.

  • Article
  • Article

Having children as a fat woman

| Ellie LevensonBenjamin Gilbert

When she sought fertility advice, and at antenatal appointments, Ellie Levenson found that medics were openly anti-fat. Only years later can she evaluate the true repercussions of their words and actions.

  • Article
  • Article

Eugenics and the welfare state

| Indy BhullarGergo Varga

Indy Bhullar explores the ideas of William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss, who were strongly influenced by eugenic thinking, and yet championed the idea of the welfare state.

  • Article
  • Article

Does mass media pave the way to fascism?

| Charlie WilliamsSarah MarksDaniel Pick

In the aftermath of World War II, psychoanalysts found the psychological roots of authoritarianism closer to home than was comfortable.

  • Article
  • Article

How your hairdresser could save your life

| Kristin HohenadelThomas S G Farnetti

Barbers and hairdressers have a unique view of us – one that means they can spot potentially dangerous health problems. Find out how buzzcuts can lead to blood-pressure checks, and dip-dyes show the way to the dermatologist.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Our complicated love affair with light

| Lauren ColleeSteven Pocock

Sunlight is essential, but our relationship with artificial light is less clear cut. It expands what’s possible; it also obscures and polices. In this long read, Lauren Collee pits light against night, and reveals the shady places in between.

  • Article
  • Article

Rose Mackenberg’s deceptive activism

| A R Hopwood

Discover how a New York private investigator became part of Houdini’s mission to expose the fraudulent mediums making money from their vulnerable, grieving clients.

  • Article
  • Article

The chymist’s trade card

| Julia Nurse

An 18th-century trade card reveals far more than its owner may have intended.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

My important, ridiculous nose

| A L Kennedy

The nose is a much-maligned appendage, but it’s a powerful organ capable of invoking powerful emotions from past memories and sexual attraction.

  • Article
  • Article

The enduring myth of the mad genius

| Anna Faherty

There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.

  • Article
  • Article

How light pollution affects our circadian rhythms

| Christine Ro

Too much of the wrong sort of light can send our natural cycles off-kilter – is city life messing with your circadian rhythm?

  • Article
  • Article

The secret hystery of a womb

| Anna Blundy

A Renaissance image of a caesarean section inspired Anna Blundy to recount the story of a hidden, perhaps mysterious part of her body.