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68 results
  • Article
  • Article

NHS Blue: the colour of universal healthcare

| Cal Flyn

The 1980s and 1990s saw ideas from the world of business infiltrating the NHS, including the introduction of an internal market, followed by a corporate branding exercise.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

The meaning of happiness

| Tiffany Watt SmithEleanor Shakespeare

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.

  • Article
  • Article

The catharsis of cringe

| David JesudasonCamilla Greenwell

Watching cringe comedy can be therapeutic. Find out why some of us are drawn to the build-up of stress in shows like ‘Frasier’ and ‘The Office’.

  • Article
  • Article

The white tears of Taranaki

| Sarah Alice HopkinsonCat O’Neil

Taranaki in Aotearoa, New Zealand, is home to the world’s largest dairy factory. Sarah Hopkinson questions the price paid by an area dominated by monoculture.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

The post-war adverts that tried to cure lonely women

| Fred Cooper

Isolated housewives, lonely female office workers: while the 1950s saw the birth of a general concern about them, manufacturers also spotted an opportunity. Find out how advertising promised that products could salve solitude.

  • Article
  • Article

The birth of the public museum

| Elissavet Ntoulia

The first public museums evolved from wealthy collectors’ cabinets of curiosities and were quickly recognised as useful vehicles for culture.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

The Migraine Art Competition Collection

| Rada Vlatkovic

The Migraine Art Competition ran for seven years in the 1980s and resulted in over 500 unique and striking works of art that represent what it means to live with migraine.

  • Article
  • Article

Pain and the power of activism

| Jaipreet VirdiAnne Howeson

Today, women with endometriosis have more access to better information than ever before. Jaipreet Virdi applauds the shared stories, online communities and self-help books empowering women in pain.

  • Article
  • Article

In search of the ‘nature cure’

| Samantha WaltonSteven Pocock

Under the competing pressures of modern life, many of us succumb to mental ill health. Samantha Walton explores why so-called ‘nature cures’ don’t help, and how the living world can actually help us.

  • Article
  • Article

The origins and meanings of pharmacy symbols

What have snakes, unicorns and crocodiles got to do with pharmacies? The history of these modern signs goes back to the Greek gods.

  • Article
  • Article

The enduring myth of the mad genius

| Anna Faherty

There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.

  • Article
  • Article

The birth of Britain's National Health Service

| Cal Flyn

Starkly unequal access to healthcare gave rise to Nye Bevan’s creation of a truly national health service.

  • Article
  • Article

Colonialism and the origins of skin bleaching

| Ngunan AdamuAmaal Said

The widespread practice of skin bleaching was heavily influenced by the Western colonisation and slavery of African and South Asian countries. Ngunan Adamu explores this toxic history.

  • Article
  • Article

Is shoegaze the loneliest genre of music?

| Christine Ro

Christine Ro explores the connection between shyness and shoegaze.

  • Article
  • Article

Getting around the rules of sex education

| Hannah J Elizabeth

What should we and shouldn’t we teach our teens about sex, inside and outside of the classroom?

  • Article
  • Article

Public health campaigns and the ‘threat’ of disability

| Aparna Nair

By continuing to represent disability as the feared outcome of disease, public health campaigns help to perpetuate prejudice against disabled people.

  • Article
  • Article

The unearthly children of science fiction’s Cold War

| Ken Hollings

In the 1950s a new figure emerged in British novels, film and television: a disturbing young alien that revealed postwar society’s fear of the unruly power of teenagers.

  • Article
  • Article

Eugenics and the welfare state

| Indy BhullarGergo Varga

Indy Bhullar explores the ideas of William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss, who were strongly influenced by eugenic thinking, and yet championed the idea of the welfare state.

  • Article
  • Article

Interpreting the Ayurvedic Man

| Lalita Kaplish

A British Sign Language video is the latest interpretation of an unique 18th-century Nepali painting about Ayurvedic medicine.

  • 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.

  • Article
  • Article

‘Jessy’, a film about cerebral palsy

| Anthony McKay

How the 1950s British film industry portrayed this disease.

  • Article
  • Article

Children in burns prevention campaigns

| Shane Ewen

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

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

Why gene editing can never eliminate disability

| Jaipreet Virdi

In a world where DNA testing and gene editing offer ways to eliminate certain disabilities, Jaipreet Virdi explores a more accepting and inclusive approach.

  • Article
  • Article

When doctors get sick

| The Secret GP

Feeling guilty about developing a health problem, our anonymous GP contemplates how the system could better support doctors when they’re sick.