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136 results
  • Article
  • Article

Illuminated manuscripts, illuminating medicines

| Cheryl Porter

From rare bugs to exorbitantly priced plant parts, find out more about the artistic and medical uses of pigments from the past.

  • Article
  • Article

Hamlet, the melancholic Prince of Denmark

| Nelly Ekström

Hamlet clearly demonstrates an excess of black bile and is arguably the most famous literary melancholic.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Bloodletting at the barber-surgeon’s

| Amelia Soth

Scratchy throat? Burning fever? Broken heart? It all comes down to the same issue: too much blood.

  • Article
  • Article

The sum of my parts

| Jessica FursethKathleen Arundell

Testing positive for a rogue gene meant Jessica Furseth was more susceptible to cancer. After the years of anger and dissociation from her body that followed, she began to pick up the pieces.

  • Article
  • Article

Inhaling happiness and gasping for a high

| Stevyn Colgan

The rapid, short-lived high we get from whippets, reefers and vapes can be accompanied by long-term health consequences. The search is on for safer ways to get stoned.

  • Article
  • Article

Pain and the power of touch

| Fiona MurphyCamilla Greenwell

As a new physiotherapist, Fiona Murphy quickly learned that her patients’ pain was unpredictable and very personal. But using the right words became the key to helping them.

  • Article
  • Article

Migraine, creativity and me

| Lydia Ruffles

Novelist Lydia Ruffles explores how migraine has made her mind stretch, shrink, widen and change, and how it’s influenced her art.

  • Article
  • Article

The making of ‘Quacks’

| Helen Babbs

How do you create a medical comedy that’s authentic and laugh-out-loud funny?

  • Article
  • Article

The stranger who started an epidemic

| Anna Faherty

New Orleans, 1853. James McGuigan arrives in the port city and succumbs to yellow fever.

  • Article
  • Article

The intimate and invasive art of ethical taxidermy

| Helen BabbsThomas S G Farnetti

Does displaying dead animals bring us closer to nature, or drive us further apart?

  • Article
  • Article

Chemotherapy-day drawings

| Clare Smith

Undergoing treatment for bowel cancer, artist Clare Smith produced around 70 abstract drawings while sitting in the chemotherapy chair. She reflects on how creativity can bring respite in a crisis.

  • Article
  • Article

On body horror and growing up strange

| Briar Ripley PageSonia Leong

A young child’s unusual feelings, reactions and assertions are routinely dismissed by adults. Find out how manga horror stories became a source of strength, and helped them trust their adult body.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Eating their own kind

In his grisly history of cannibalism, zoologist Bill Schutt asks what drives an animal to feast on its own flesh and blood.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Winter blues and the story of SAD

| Linda Geddes

In ‘Chasing the Sun‘ Linda Geddes reveals why for some people, winter is literally depressing, showing how we first came to recognise seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

  • Article
  • Article

Mapping the body

These intricate anatomical drawings show how Ayurveda practitioners have explored the human body and how it works.

  • Article
  • Article

Black pepper to fuel fiery fights and cure haemorrhoids

| Alice White

This common condiment was once very valuable and, until surprisingly recently, used as a versatile medicine.

  • Article
  • Article

Shakespeare’s cholerics were the real drama queens

| Nelly Ekström

In Shakespeare’s times, people’s personalities were categorised by four temperaments. The choleric temperament was hot-tempered and active.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Ayurveda: Knowledge for long life

| Aarathi Prasad

The story of medicine in India is rich and complex. Aarathi Prasad investigates how it came to be this way.

  • Article
  • Article

The relationship between science and art

| Victoria Kingston

Often seen as opposites, science and art both depend on observation and synthesis.

  • Article
  • Article

The enigma of the medieval folding almanac

| Elma Brenner

With its combination of rich, portable data and high-end style, this folding almanac could have been the medieval equivalent of the latest iPhone.

  • Article
  • Article

Confession as therapy in the Middle Ages

| Katherine Harvey

The line between confession and counselling has been blurred for centuries.

  • Article
  • Article

Born different

| Chris North

For Chris North, being born intersex in the 1940s meant his many childhood hospital visits, tests and operations were not explained or discussed. As he reveals, doctors encouraged strict secrecy.

  • Article
  • Article

Surviving a flesh-eating disease

| Scott NeillNan Carreira

Nearly dying from a skin infection gave Scott Neill a chance to start again after an early life marked by grief and depression.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Dangers inside and out

| Eimear McBrideAlexandra Gallagher

Eimear McBride reflects on the deadly consequences of misogyny in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard and argues why advising women to simply “stay indoors” is wrong.

  • Article
  • Article

Losing touch

| Agnese ReginaldoAisha Young

In these pandemic times, when touch has become taboo, Agnese Reginaldo explores the importance of physical contact to our wellbeing.