- Article
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Duelling doctors
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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Doctor in the house
A house is not always a home – sometimes it’s impermanent, impersonal. But other aspects of the itinerant life can be the source of a sense of home.
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Are doctors medical detectives?
Do doctors really identify medical conditions in the same way that detectives solve crimes? Neurologist Jules Montague makes her diagnosis.
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When doctors get sick
Feeling guilty about developing a health problem, our anonymous GP contemplates how the system could better support doctors when they’re sick.
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Doctors and the English seaside
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
A doctor, his community and coronavirus
Reflecting on his experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic, GP Gavin Francis vividly recalls a home visit to a man stricken with breathing difficulties.
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The ancient doctors who refused payment
The NHS might only be 70 years old, but the idea of free healthcare goes back to Ancient Greece, when devout doctors provided their services without charge.
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The doctor who challenged the unicorn myth
Our era of fake news and medical misinformation is nothing new. Estelle Paranque relays the thrusts and parries of a 440-year-old row over a magical cure-all, the unicorn horn.
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Dying at home and the doctor’s role
Our anonymous GP talks about the bittersweet rewards of supporting a patient when he chose to die at home.
- In pictures
- In pictures
The celebrity physician and the plague
The iconic “plague prevention costume” invented by a 17th-century French doctor secured his fame in royal circles. But other aspects of Charles de Lorme’s career made him a controversial figure.
- In pictures
- In pictures
The post-war adverts that tried to cure lonely women
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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Female masturbation and the perils of pleasure
Dr Kate Lister exposes the brutal 19th-century ‘cures’ for women who indulged in masturbation.
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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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Why some patients make my heart sink
Instead of getting nowhere with certain demanding, manipulative patients, our anonymous GP wonders if there’s a way to help them.
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The extraction of the excruciating bladder stones
Among those vying to find alternatives to major surgery for bladder stones, young doctor Jean Civiale stood out, painstakingly honing a method that was to become the norm.
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When depression is worse than physical illness
Chronic physical illnesses can be accompanied by troubling depressive symptoms. Elly Aylwin-Foster urges doctors to treat every aspect of her condition with the same care.
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The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria
A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.
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Cracks that let the light in
Rai Waddingham lives with voices other people cannot hear. Here she describes how she has come to accept, understand and calm her voices, and to acknowledge her strength.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Healing hearts and saving lives
Cardiology is a prestigious specialism, known for its life-saving, heroic staff. But a doctor’s training eventually reveals other, less obvious ways to save lives.
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Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis
Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.
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The stranger who started an epidemic
New Orleans, 1853. James McGuigan arrives in the port city and succumbs to yellow fever.
- In pictures
- In pictures
How Mills & Boon made medicine romantic
‘Doctor-nurse’ romances are a hugely popular trope. Agnes Arnold-Forster explores their history and surprisingly nuanced depictions of womanhood, hospitals and the welfare state.
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Vaccinating a community, saving lives
Doctor Jane Harvey always goes the extra mile to care for her patients, and in recent months that’s extended to huge efforts to save lives with her coronavirus vaccination push.
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Cowpox, Covid-19 and Jenner’s vaccination legacy
The well-known story of vaccination pioneer Edward Jenner has at its heart his drive to make vaccines free of charge and available to all. Now his principles extend to the global campaign for a people’s patent-free vaccine for Covid-19.
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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.