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37 results
  • Article
  • Article

Medics and the bomb

| Taras Young

Would a nuclear attack on the UK overwhelm the NHS? At the height of the Cold War, despite government optimism, medics predicted doom.

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  • Article

Medics, migration and the NHS

| Cal Flyn

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.

  • 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.

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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.

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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.

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The enduring myth of the mad genius

| Anna Faherty

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

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The prostitute whose pox inspired feminists

| Anna Faherty

Fitzrovia, 1875. A woman recorded only as A.G. enters hospital and is diagnosed with syphilis.

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How tuberculosis became a test case for eugenic theory

| Hannah CornishGergo Varga

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.

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Cocaine, the Victorian wonder drug

| Douglas SmallBenjamin Gilbert

Today, cocaine has a very poor public image as one of the causes of crime and violence. But for the Victorians it was welcomed as the saviour of modern surgery.

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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.

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The poor child’s nurse

| Briony Hudson

Charming family scenes in Victorian ads for children’s medicines were at odds with some of the dangerous ingredients they contained.

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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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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.

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Aphasia and drawing elephants

| Thomas Parkinson

When Thomas Parkinson investigated the history of “speech science”, he discovered an unexpected link between empire, elephants and aphasia.

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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.

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Duelling doctors

| Russell Moul

An enduring enthusiasm for 18th-century gentlemen to defend their ‘honour’ by duelling placed doctors in a delicate position. Specially when they faced being shot themselves.

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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.

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Picturing mental health

| Lalita KaplishSolomon Szekir-Papasavva

Ron Hampshire created artworks while resident at Netherne psychiatric hospital. What can we learn from them?

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Between sickness and health

| Will ReesNaki Narh

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.

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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.

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Theriac: An ancient brand?

| Briony Hudson

The name theriac survived for around for two millennia as a pharmaceutical term. But a ‘brand’ name is not always a guarantee of quality.

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Maladaptive daydreaming, gender myths and me

| Laura Grace SimpkinsTanya Cooper

Can you daydream too much? Excessive daydreamer Laura Grace Simpkins reflects on studies into “maladaptive daydreaming” and asks why so few fellow dreamers seem to be men.

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The indelible harm caused by conversion therapy

| Jules MontagueStephen Nestor Ostrowski

With first-hand evidence from two powerful testimonies, neurologist Jules Montague explores the destructive history of conversion therapy, a punitive treatment designed to ‘cure’ people of homosexuality.

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Divining the world through an artist’s almanac

| Amanda Couch

Amanda Couch's artists book, 'Huwawa in the Everyday: an almanac' is inspired by the entrail like folds of a medieval folding and its function as a guide for astrological divinations linking the body, health and the heavens. Like the original almanac her work is designed to be carried out into the wider world.

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The epilepsy diagnosis

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

Epilepsy exists between the mind and body, something that Aparna Nair experienced for herself when she was diagnosed as a teenager.