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36 results
  • Article
  • Article

Graphic battles in pharmacy

James Morison’s campaign against the medical establishment inspired a wave of caricatures mocking his quack medicine.

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  • Article

Ginger’s role in cures and courtroom battles

| Alice White

Some people will use a dose of ginger to help with hangovers – but it hasn’t always been a friend to the thirsty.

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Confusion, guilt, and the battle to breastfeed

| Joanna WolfarthRosie Barnes

Most new mums are told that breast is best. But breastfeeding doesn’t always come as easily or naturally as you might imagine.

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Witches

| Helen FosterEast Midlands Oral History ArchiveAsma Istwani

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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A brief history of tattoos

| Amy Olson

The earliest evidence of tattoo art dates from 5000 BC, and the practice continues to hold meaning for many cultures around the world.

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The yogi as hermit, warrior, criminal and showman

| Lalita Kaplish

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

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Fees, funding and the NHS

| Cal Flyn

In the 1950s, dramatic political battles over NHS charges brought down a government. But public confidence in the service still grew.

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NHS strikes and the decade of discontent

| Cal Flyn

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.

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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.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

The man who remembers everything

| J A Mortram

Tilney1 can remember his life in minute detail, but can’t control the incessant intrusion of thoughts and images from the past. As cuts to mental health services isolate him more and more, a crisis approaches.

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My illness made me an activist, but now I’m exhausted

| Emily BashforthStephanie Wynne

Emily Bashforth’s illness made her an advocate but now she’s battling burnout. She argues why we all need to be mental health activists, not just those with lived experience.

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The father of handwashing

| David JesudasonSteven Pocock

Doctors performing autopsies and then delivering babies – with not a hint of soap in between – was the grim recipe producing a lot of motherless offspring in the 1800s. But one man’s gargantuan efforts to upend accepted medical thinking turned the tide.

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The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians

| Annabel SowemimoGergo Varga

Dr Annabel Sowemimo explores the web of connections between early Black British doctors, the role of empire in West Africa and the pernicious reach of scientific racism.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Inside the Cold War mind

| Martin SixsmithSteven Pocock

Martin Sixsmith explores the competing national psyches of Russia and America, and a world divided between their irreconcilable visions of human nature.

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Guerrilla public health

| Harry Shapiro

From safe-use guides to needle exchange schemes, Harry Shapiro reflects on 40 years of drug harm reduction in the UK.

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Political brilliance and the power of self-promotion

| Anna Faherty

How do you convince people you’re exceptional? Meet the ultimate self-styled genius.

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Sex in graphic novels

| Stephen Lowther

Sex and sexuality have long been explored in the history of the graphic novel.

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Cloves to mull, mask and numb

| Helen Babbs

Sweet, pungent, warm, woody: cloves smell and taste like Christmas. But there’s much more to this spice than that.

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Bleeding healthy

| Julia Nurse

For thousands of years, and in many different cultures, people have practised bloodletting for health and medical reasons. Julia Nurse explains where and when bleeding was used, how it was done, and why.

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Doctors and the English seaside

| Jane Darcy

Fashionable seaside towns in England owe much of their popularity to 18th-century doctors, who advised them to take the 'sea cure'.

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How to play in a museum

| Holly Gramazio

Some museums create games for visitors to play. In others, if you’re creative and inquisitive, you can make up your own. Find out how a game can give you a different perspective on art and objects.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Pum Dunbar’s living lessons

| Pum Dunbar

Read the ‘legends’ that give insight into Pum Dunbar’s creative process while producing her recent series of collages.

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Female masturbation and the perils of pleasure

| Dr Kate Lister

Dr Kate Lister exposes the brutal 19th-century ‘cures’ for women who indulged in masturbation.

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Native Americans through the 19th-century lens

| Allison C Meier

The stories behind Rinehart's photographs may not be as black and white as they first appear.

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Indian botanicals and heritage wars

| Sita Reddy

Colonial botanical texts, as astonishingly beautiful as they are, may cast very dark shadows.