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130 results
  • Article
  • Article

What is violence?

| Laura BuiJessa Fairbrother

Criminologist Laura Bui explores her early understanding of violence and outlines its definition and wider consequences.

  • Article
  • Article

The healing power of the physic garden

| Iona Glen

Having experienced the healing power of plants and gardens, Iona Glen goes in search of present-day “physic gardens” and their origins in history.

  • Article
  • Article

The big freeze

| Charlotte SleighGergo Varga

In recent years we’ve come to realise that global heating is our biggest threat. But it’s hard to shake off the fear of a return to ice-age conditions, the predominant narrative since the late 17th century.

  • Article
  • Article

Nurturing my autistic, gender-questioning child

| Jude LaxJack Lax

As mother of an autistic child who questions her gender, Jude Lax describes cherishing her growing daughter as she explores her identity.

  • Article
  • Article

姜、蒜、葱 Ginger, garlic and spring onions

| Nina Mingya PowlesFaye Heller

Nina Mingya Powles felt adrift in the UK, living thousands of miles from home. But nurturing familiar tastes and smells in her tiny balcony garden helped her roots begin to grow.

  • Article
  • Article

Coleridge’s hypochondria

| Mike JayNaki Narh

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

A doctor, his community and coronavirus

| Gavin FrancisKieran Dodds

Reflecting on his experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, GP Gavin Francis vividly recalls a home visit to a man stricken with breathing difficulties.

  • Article
  • Article

A brief history of ventilation

| Dr Lindsey FitzharrisSteven Pocock

As ventilators continue to play an important part in helping very ill coronavirus patients, medical historian Dr Lindsey Fitzharris traces their development from the first attempts at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation through centuries of medical crises.

  • Article
  • Article

The seizure dog

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

Aparna Nair's dog Charlie made her feel safe in the world. His uncanny ability to sense when she was about to experience a seizure also gave her an unexpected ally in her struggles with epilepsy.

  • Article
  • Article

The epilepsy diagnosis

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

Epilepsy exists between the mind and body, something that Aparna Nair experienced for herself when she was diagnosed as a teenager.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Healing hearts and saving lives

| Joanna CannonBenjamin Gilbert

Cardiology is a prestigious specialism, known for its life-saving, heroic staff. But a doctor’s training eventually reveals other, less obvious ways to save lives.

  • Article
  • Article

Rejecting shame and a decade of change

| Jess Thom

Jess Thom spent years trying to ignore and suppress the tics of Tourette’s syndrome. Read what happened when she decided to celebrate them instead.

  • Article
  • Article

Confronting male stereotypes in the classroom

| Okechukwu NzeluRobin Hammond

Sometimes men just don’t like football. Writer and teacher Okechukwu Nzelu decides to be himself in front of his students.

  • Article
  • Article

Life on the line

| Katy GeorgiouSteven Pocock

Former Samaritans helpline volunteer Katy Georgiou recalls the desperate voices she heard during her night shifts, and those whose isolation she helped to alleviate.

  • Article
  • Article

How the magician’s assistant creates the illusion

| Naomi Paxton

Without breaking the spell, performer Naomi Paxton reveals the subtle ways the magician’s assistant helps the audience to keep believing.

  • Article
  • Article

Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis

| Giulia Smith

Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.

  • Article
  • Article

Born in the NHS

| Cal Flyn

Despite underfunding, strikes and scandals, the first two decades of the 2000s has seen the British people’s love of and loyalty to the NHS soar.

  • Interview
  • Interview

Inside the minds of Teeth’s two curators, James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing

| Gwendolyn Smith

James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing talk visceral reactions, their interactions and object extractions.

  • Article
  • Article

Living with early onset Parkinson’s

| Pete Langman

Ten years ago, three little words changed Pete Langman’s world.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

You know the drill

| Richard Barnett

Richard Barnett opens wide the true meaning of a healthy mouth.

  • Article
  • Article

The cures and demons of sleep paralysis

| Sarah Jaffray

Discover the murky past of sleep paralysis, the terrifying disorder once associated with demonic possession

  • Article
  • Article

Hysteria

| Helen FosterEast Midlands Oral History ArchiveAsma Istwani

Mental health and emotional symptoms are common during menopause, but a long history of dismissing sufferers as 'hysterical women', at the mercy of their emotions has made it much harder to discuss these issues and to get support.

  • Article
  • Article

Are people born violent?

| Laura BuiJessa Fairbrother

Laura Bui explores how the nature vs nurture debate applies to those who commit homicide.

  • Article
  • Article

Dyslexia and its misconceptions

| Madeleine MorleyLucy Grainge

Overcoming common myths about dyslexia only adds to the challenges of growing up with the condition. Madeleine Morley, who was diagnosed with dyslexia aged eight, goes into myth-busting mode and shares her personal experiences.

  • Article
  • Article

Finding my body through the wilderness

| Jennifer NealFaye Heller

Writer Jennifer Neal used vigorous exercise classes to try and heal herself in the years following an assault. But it was only while hiking outdoors that she found true strength.