- Long read
- Long read
Healthy scepticism
Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.
- Article
- Article
Sacred cows and nutritional purity in India
Apoorva Sripathi explores the complex reasons behind India’s recent boom in all things dairy – beginning with a 1970s Western food-aid programme.
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- Article
Equality in genetics
Genetic counsellor Sasha Henriques harnessed her energy and resolve to tackle the racial biases she saw in her profession – with positive and promising results.
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- Article
Revelations of blindness in the Middle Ages
Medieval texts, from Islamic medical treatises to Christian books of miracles, reveal surprisingly varied and complex experiences of blindness. But when medieval scholar Jude Seal experienced visual impairment themselves, they gained an even deeper understanding of the lives they were studying.
- Photo story
- Photo story
Portraits, from a distance
Join photographer Michelle Sank on her daily walk around Exeter. Strength, frustration, resilience and eccentricity all show in these candid images portraying life under the constraints of coronavirus lockdown.
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- Article
Can our sexual desires be transformed?
In the 1950s, many psychiatrists thought that homosexuality could be reformed. One found that it couldn’t – and his discoveries led to a change in the law.
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- Article
Mask, ritual and fertility
Today many of us learn about fertility, conception and pregnancy online. But that wasn’t always the way. Discover how masks and rituals played an important educational role.
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- Article
The chymist’s trade card
An 18th-century trade card reveals far more than its owner may have intended.
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- Article
Why some patients make my heart sink
Instead of getting nowhere with certain demanding, manipulative patients, our anonymous GP wonders if there’s a way to help them.
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- Article
Death and our digital ghosts
When we die, our data lives on. And as companies are increasingly spotting money-making opportunities from digital legacies, now could be the time to think about – and control – yours.
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- Article
Questioning the psychoanalyst
Maggie Robbins gives her personal take on the common misconceptions around her field of work.
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- Article
What writing myself has revealed
Caroline Butterwick talks to two creators about how lived experience feeds their art, and reflects on her own year of writing about her life.
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- Article
Seeds for the future
Indigenous groups have a key role as guardians of biodiversity, and their knowledge could help us all preserve our world. To survive, we all need to collaborate, reject prejudice, and share what we know.
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- Article
Witches
Many of the women persecuted as witches in the 16th-century “witch craze” were over 50 and exhibited signs of menopause. Helen Foster suggests that the stigma of the wicked witch still affects older women and how they deal with menopause.
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- Article
Life lessons across the digital divide
What could 86-year-old Tony teach 20-something Adele as she showed him how to use his smartphone? Rather a lot about digital exclusion, it turns out.
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When the sun goes down
Despite the country’s colonial and industrial dominion, the finest minds of Victorian Britain began to fear the devastating effects of declining natural resources. Even the death of the sun.
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A brief history of ventilation
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.
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- Article
The epilepsy diagnosis
Epilepsy exists between the mind and body, something that Aparna Nair experienced for herself when she was diagnosed as a teenager.
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Printing the body
The 18th century saw multiple technical developments in both printing and medicine. Colourful collaborations ensued – to the benefit of growing ranks of medical students.
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Why all of us are evil
Science proves that we’re all capable of evil: your secret fantasy about killing someone you hate is surprisingly normal. But the way to better moral choices is to fight emotional instinct.
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Medics, migration and the NHS
In the 1960s the NHS became Britain’s biggest employer. So to help fill all those jobs, the government brought in thousands of workers from abroad.
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The rise and fall of a medical mesmerist
Uncover the fascinating story of the doctor who popularised hypnotism as a medical technique, and could name Dickens among his famous friends.
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- Article
The meanings of hurt
In the early modern period, gruesome incidents of self-castration and other types of self-injury garnished the literature of the time. Alanna Skuse explores the messages these wounds conveyed.
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- Article
Air of threat
Novelist Chloe Aridjis vividly describes the suffocating atmosphere of Mexico City, as a combination of topography, crowded neighbourhoods, and reckless political diktats create a downward spiral.
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- Article
A bad atmosphere in the Balkans
The citizens of Belgrade, one of the most polluted cities in Europe, are finally pushing back against the polluters, whose activities they’ve been encouraged to accept.