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37 results
  • 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.

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  • 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.

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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'.

  • 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.

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Booze and bad behaviour

| Stevyn Colgan

Our love of alcohol is like a party that’s lasted nine centuries. But there are signs that the demon drink is losing its appeal.

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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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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.

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A history of twins in science

| William Viney

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.

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Drugs in Victorian Britain

| Louise Crane

Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?

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Remote diagnosis from wee to the Web

| Christine RoSteven Pocock

Medical practice might have moved on from when patients posted flasks of their urine for doctors to taste, but telehealth today keeps up the tradition of remote diagnosis – to our possible detriment.

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History of condoms from animal to rubber

| Taryn Cain

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.

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Plant portraits

| Julia Nurse

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

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Genius spirits and the mystery of creative inspiration

| Anna Faherty

Once upon a time, we all had a genius.

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The conditional child

| Deanna Fei

Deanna Fei asks what it means to sustain a life, drawing on her own experience of having a premature baby as well as an 18th-century essay.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Rehab centres and the ‘cure’ for addiction

| Guy StaggJess Nash

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

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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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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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The healing power of breathing

| Effie Webb

The healing powers of different breathing methods are said to help with a range of health challenges, from asthma to PTSD. Effie Webb traces their spiritual origins and explores the modern proliferation of breathwork therapies.

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Why the world needs collectors

| Anna Faherty

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

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Mary Morris-Knibb, a woman of courage and ability

| Daila MalafronteSteven Pocock

A Jamaican election banner reveals the story of a pioneering women’s rights campaigner who continues to inspire 80 years on.

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Not one yoga, but many yogas

| Lalita Kaplish

From ancient tradition to modern gym class, yoga means many things to many people.

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The ‘undesirable epileptic’

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

Abused in her marriage for being 'a sick woman', Aparna Nair looked to history to make sense of the response to her epilepsy. She discovered how centuries of fear and discrimination were often endorsed by science and legislation.

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Hunting lost plants in botanical collections

| Nataly Allasi CanalesCat O’Neil

A bark specimen at Kew recalls the story of a South American man who harvested the most potent source of the only effective malaria treatment available in the late 1800s. Killed for his work and forgotten by history, Manuel Mamani was a victim of the colonial juggernaut.

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What is hysteria?

| Sarah Jaffray

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

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The search for a cure for endometriosis

| Jaipreet VirdiAnne Howeson

Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.