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36 results
  • Article
  • Article

Illuminated manuscripts, illuminating medicines

| Cheryl Porter

From rare bugs to exorbitantly priced plant parts, find out more about the artistic and medical uses of pigments from the past.

  • Long read
  • Long read

The ambivalence of air

| Daisy LafargeCarol Nazatto

Daisy Lafarge investigates the effects of air quality and pressure on body and mind, exploring air as cure, but one with contradictions.

  • Interview
  • Interview

Inside the mind of George Vasey, co-curator of Misbehaving Bodies

| Gwendolyn SmithThomas S G Farnetti

Discover how curator George Vasey honoured the approaches of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, who mischievously subvert clichés around illness and death.

  • Article
  • Article

The making of ‘Quacks’

| Helen Babbs

How do you create a medical comedy that’s authentic and laugh-out-loud funny?

  • Article
  • Article

The solidarity of sickness

| Sinéad GleesonCamilla Greenwell

Visiting an injured friend in hospital prompts writer Sinéad Gleeson to reflect on the instant rapport forged between compatriots in the kingdom of the sick.

  • 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

A symbol of a lost homeland

| Yasmeen Abdel MajeedJacqueline Reem Salloum

The story of one protective amulet from Palestine reveals a complex tale. Encompassing the personal history of an influential doctor and collector, it provides a window onto dispossession and exile, and the painful repercussions that are still felt today.

  • Article
  • Article

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.

  • Article
  • Article

Womb milk and the puzzle of the placenta

| Joanna Wolfarth

A human baby needs milk to survive – and this holds true even before it’s born. Joanna Wolfarth explores “womb milk”, as well as ancient and modern ideas about the placenta.

  • Interview
  • Interview

Inside the mind of Ayurvedic Man’s curator, Bárbara Rodriguez Muñoz

| Gwendolyn Smith

The choices a curator makes – what goes in? what stays out? why? – are often as fascinating as the exhibition itself.

  • Article
  • Article

Ken’s ten: looking back at ten years of Wellcome Collection

| Ken Arnold

Wellcome Collection founder Ken Arnold picks his favourite exhibits.

  • Article
  • Article

The Key to Memory: Write it down

Nick Dent explores what the Library of the Human Genome can tell us about how and why we remember.

  • 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.

  • Interview
  • Interview

Inside the minds of Teeth’s two curators, James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing

| Gwendolyn Smith

James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing talk visceral reactions, their interactions and object extractions.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Ayurveda: Knowledge for long life

| Aarathi Prasad

The story of medicine in India is rich and complex. Aarathi Prasad investigates how it came to be this way.

  • Article
  • Article

Mapping the body

These intricate anatomical drawings show how Ayurveda practitioners have explored the human body and how it works.

  • Article
  • Article

Behind the scenes: Drawing the Bombay plague

Ranjit Kandalgaonkar discusses his commission for 'Ayurvedic Man: Encounters with Indian medicine'.

  • Article
  • Article

A medieval guide to practical magic

| Rebecca J S NiceThomas S G FarnettiMartin Hopton

With few sources of effective help available when treating an injured patient, the medieval physician could instead stage a healing ceremony using a practical how-to guide he carried with him.

  • Article
  • Article

Getting under the skin

| Taryn Cain

Before the invention of X-ray in 1895 there was really only one way to accurately study the human body, and that was to cut it open.

  • Article
  • Article

Indian botanicals and heritage wars

| Sita Reddy

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

  • Article
  • Article

Lovesickness and ‘The Love Thief’

| Julia Nurse

An 11th-century poem of love, lust and possibly gruesome death still resonates today.

  • Article
  • Article

What happy endings teach us in childhood

| Kate WilkinsonLaurindo Feliciano

Kate Wilkinson explores why, in quest fiction, good must triumph over evil, and what that means both for childhood dreams and adult realities.

  • Article
  • Article

Epidemic threats and racist legacies

| Jacob Steere-WilliamsDark Matter

Epidemiology is the systematic, data-driven study of health and disease in populations. But as historian Jacob Steere-Williams suggests, this most scientific of fields emerged in the 19th century imbued with a doctrine of Western imperialism – a legacy that continues to influence how we talk about disease.

  • Article
  • Article

Sharing Nature: Over the rainbow

| Helen Babbs

Here’s your choice of the most meaningful nature photo on the theme of health.

  • Article
  • Article

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'.