- Article
- Article
The law of periodicity for menstruation
Dr Edward Clarke's Law of Periodicity claimed that females who were educated alongside their male peers were developing their minds at the expense of their reproductive organs.
- Podcast
- Podcast
Tranquillity
Moya Lothian-McLean asks: when was the last time you felt utterly tranquil?
- Article
- Article
Children in burns prevention campaigns
Whose responsibility is it to prevent accidental burns and scalds in the home? Shane Ewen’s research shows that it’s everyone’s concern.
- Article
- Article
Care, creativity and a connected world
Find out about the challenges Wellcome Collection has faced during the last very demanding year.
- Article
- Article
NHS strikes and the decade of discontent
When the social unrest of the 1970s spread to the NHS, dissatisfied staff challenged the status quo for the first time in quarter of a century.
- Article
- Article
Born in the NHS
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.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
Medics and the bomb
Would a nuclear attack on the UK overwhelm the NHS? At the height of the Cold War, despite government optimism, medics predicted doom.
- Article
- 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.
- Article
- Article
Rag mags and monthly issues: Five period zines to stop you seeing red
Using humour, personal experience and political activism to explore the bloody reality of menstruation.
- Article
- Article
The child whose town rejected vaccines
Gloucester, 1896. Ethel Cromwell is taken ill at the height of Britain’s last great smallpox epidemic.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
Fees, funding and the NHS
In the 1950s, dramatic political battles over NHS charges brought down a government. But public confidence in the service still grew.
- Article
- Article
The psychological impact of nuclear war
How would you hold up psychologically if a nuclear bomb was dropped? Discover the British government’s secret predictions from the 1980s.
- Article
- Article
Graveyards as green getaways
Stressed city dwellers have been visiting cemeteries in greater numbers since the start of the pandemic. Discover how, despite the constant reminders of death, graveyards bring visitors a sense of renewal.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Of incubators, orchids and artificial wombs
In this extract from Claire Horn’s new book, ‘Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth’, she traces the development of the artificial womb, soon to become a reality.
- Article
- Article
Society, not Covid-19, makes us vulnerable
Rick Burgess coped with the death of his mother in February 2020 by immersing himself in the task of protecting his community from Covid-19 and challenging the government's failure to protect and support elderly and Disabled people during the pandemic.
- Article
- Article
Dealing with the dead after a nuclear attack
Cold War-era predictions of death on a vast scale became routine. But the British authorities were less prepared to dispose of the bodies.
- Article
- Article
The colonist who faced the blue terror
India, 1857. In a British enclave, Katherine Bartrum watches her friend, and then her family, succumb to the deadly cholera.
- Article
- Article
How tuberculosis became a test case for eugenic theory
A 19th-century collaboration that failed to prove how facial features could indicate the diseases people were most likely to suffer from became a significant stepping stone in the new ‘science’ of eugenics.
- Long read
- Long read
Primodos, paternalism and the fight to be heard
Journalist Florence Wildblood examines the case of Primodos – a conveniently quick but risky hormone pregnancy test that was prescribed in the 1960s and ’70s – and profiles two women at the story’s shocking heart.
- Article
- Article
The tower in fiction, film and life
The high-rise estates born of postwar idealism soon became symbols of crime and squalor. But after one terrible tragedy, public bodies are being forced to rethink our towers.
- Article
- Article
A history of twins in science
For thousands of years, twins have been a source of fascination in mythology, religion and the arts. Since the 19th century, they have also been the subject of scientific study and experimentation.
- Article
- Article
How to thrive in lockdown
Gareth Berliner shares how being a Disabled person has given him the resilience and motivation to find a new creative challenge during lockdown.
- Article
- Article
Cowpox, Covid-19 and Jenner’s vaccination legacy
The well-known story of vaccination pioneer Edward Jenner has at its heart his drive to make vaccines free of charge and available to all. Now his principles extend to the global campaign for a people’s patent-free vaccine for Covid-19.