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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.

The chymist’s trade card

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

Interpreting the Ayurvedic Man

The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria

A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.

Beating the bodysnatchers

When a rise in grave robbing called for strong measures, mortsafes became the unassailable solution. Allison C. Meier explores.

The castration effect

Discover how testosterone – or the lack of it – affects the male body, from eunuch slaves to castrato singers, and on to hormone reduction in modern prostate cancer treatment.

Mapping the body

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

Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

Getting under the skin

Before the invention of X-ray in 1895 there was really only one way to accurately study the human body, and that was to cut it open.

The relationship between science and art

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

Why the world needs collectors

Those who collect play an important role as “facilitators of curiosity”, says Anna Faherty.

What is hysteria?

Hysteria has long been associated with fanciful myths, but its history reveals how it has been used to control women’s behaviour and bodies

History of condoms from animal to rubber

Come on a journey from the first recorded condoms in the 16th century to the modern female condoms in the 1990s – and everything in between.

Between sickness and health

In early 2020, the subject Will Rees was studying – imaginary illnesses – took on a new relevance as everyone anxiously scanned themselves for Covid symptoms each day. But this kind of self-scrutiny is nothing new, as he reveals.

Exceptional talent and the trouble with IQ tests

Is a high IQ really a mark of genius, or does something else explain the exceptional?

Inside the mind of Ayurvedic Man’s curator, Bárbara Rodriguez Muñoz

The choices a curator makes – what goes in? what stays out? why? – are often as fascinating as the exhibition itself.

Nymphomania and hypersexuality in women and men

The history of nymphomania is closely bound with society's views on women and their sexuality.

The yogi as hermit, warrior, criminal and showman

How the modern world changed the life and reputation of the yogi.

The meaning of happiness

What is happiness? Tiffany Watt Smith charts how its definition has changed over time, from chance emotion to something that can be measured and controlled.

It’s getting mighty crowded

Mid-20th-century population-density research on mice produced a whiskered apocalypse, predicted to become the fate of humans too. But perhaps a more compassionate approach could fend this off.

Plant portraits

The beautiful and mysterious illustrations in medieval herbals convey a wealth of knowledge about the plants they portray.

Ayurveda: Knowledge for long life

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

Robinson Crusoe and the morality of solitude

Robinson Crusoe, fiction’s most famous castaway, was certainly isolated, but did he suffer the intrinsically modern affliction of loneliness?

Rehab centres and the ‘cure’ for addiction

Guy Stagg takes us on a brief history of rehab centres and their approaches to addiction and recovery.