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Adapting to life as a thalidomide survivor
Growing up as a thalidomide survivor meant coping with all the usual challenges of childhood and adolescence, while having to fit into a world designed for the able-bodied.
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A brief history of ventilation
As ventilators continue to play an important part in helping very ill coronavirus patients, medical historian Dr Lindsey Fitzharris traces their development from the first attempts at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation through centuries of medical crises.
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The hell of hay fever
After years suffering in silence, David Jesudason finds speaking out about his pollen allergy gives him hope for a future where his hay-fever symptoms are under control.
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Rediscovering Margaret Louden, a forgotten NHS hero
Bored during lockdown, David Jesudason started bin diving at night. Then a chance discovery set him on a new path: to tell the story of a forgotten female surgeon.
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A little wildness
To salve her longing for a dog, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan chose a puppy. She found that, despite centuries of domestication, her dog still retains aspects of her wild ancestry.
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Finding consolation in social isolation
Feeling isolated and anxious during the lockdowns of the last year, Tanya Perdikou found solace in reconnecting to her past and reaching out to neighbours in the present.
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Exceptional talent and the trouble with IQ tests
Is a high IQ really a mark of genius, or does something else explain the exceptional?
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‘Jessy’, a film about cerebral palsy
How the 1950s British film industry portrayed this disease.
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Intelligence testing, race and eugenics
Specious ideas and assumptions about intelligence that were born during the great flourishing of eugenics well over 100 years ago still inform the British education system today, as Nazlin Bhimani reveals.
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An insider’s view of Play Well
Curator Shamita Sharmacharja offers behind-the-scenes insights into an exhibition about the serious business of play.
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Jim, the horse of death
Horses’ blood was used to produce an antitoxin that saved thousands of children from dying from diphtheria, but contamination was a deadly problem. Find out how a horse called Jim was the catalyst for the beginnings of medical regulation.
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Navigating in a connected world
Alex Lee ponders the promising ideas, stalled projects and pricey gadgets that aim to help visually impaired people get out and about. But it seems that an actual human could be the essential ingredient.
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Artificial intelligence and the dream of eternal life
Until now, eternal life was the stuff of fiction, or in the unknowable realms of religion. But an artificial intelligence that ‘remembers’ the whole of an individual’s experience could be the way to life after death.
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Public health campaigns and the ‘threat’ of disability
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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Why make-believe matters
Michael Rosen explores the point of play, and reveals why we should all do a little more daydreaming.
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Do good mothers make good democracy?
To be psychologically fit for democracy, one distinguished paediatrician argued that you need a ‘good enough mother’ – and that we must acknowledge the bad side of our feelings.
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The child whose town rejected vaccines
Gloucester, 1896. Ethel Cromwell is taken ill at the height of Britain’s last great smallpox epidemic.
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Are you still nursing?
Julia Martins might get the side-eye for breastfeeding a three-year-old in the UK but, as she explains, examples from history, as well as the cultural norms of Brazil, where she grew up, are firmly on the side of extended nursing.
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Father of the house
Stuart Evers thought he’d shaken off his family’s rigid definition of masculinity. But when he became a dad, those buried patriarchal ideas made an unexpected return.
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Ways appear
While his sense of body shame meant the personal side of his life was unfulfilled, Chris’s career was rewarding. His own childhood experiences gave him profound empathy for the children he worked with.
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Defying deafness through music
Did you know that Beethoven’s profession meant he was ashamed to admit to being deaf? Find out how similar prejudices persist today and how our writer is helping to break them down.
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Going viral in the online anti-vaccine wars
‘Anti-vaxxers’ are taking their message online using powerful images as well as words. But is the pro campaigners’ response any better?
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What happy endings teach us in childhood
Kate Wilkinson explores why, in quest fiction, good must triumph over evil, and what that means both for childhood dreams and adult realities.
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The tradesman who confronted the pestilence
The City of London, 1665. As the Great Plague hits the capital, John New faces a deadly dilemma.
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Why do victims become violent?
Witnessing both overt violence and coercive control can cause invisible harm to children. But preventing them from repeating that behaviour in the future remains a challenge.