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26 results
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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'.

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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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What is air, and how do we know?

| Hasok ChangTracy Satchwill

Watching bubbles in fermenting beer led 18th-century scientist Joseph Priestley to invent sparkling water – and to discover that different gases make up the air we breathe.

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Robinson Crusoe and the morality of solitude

| Professor Barbara Taylor

Robinson Crusoe, fiction’s most famous castaway, was certainly isolated, but did he suffer the intrinsically modern affliction of loneliness?

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Illness and the influence of the stars

| Taras YoungSteven Pocock

Could alien germs from space have caused major pandemics across the world? Taras Young investigates the ideas of a few unconventional scientists who believe this to be the case.

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Indian botanicals and heritage wars

| Sita Reddy

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

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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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Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

| Cassidy Phillips

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

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Artificial intelligence and the dream of eternal life

| Giovanni TisoThomas S G Farnetti

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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Thunderbolts and lightning

| Ruth Garde

Fire in the sky has always exerted a hold on our imagination, even as early scientists unlocked the secrets of atmospheric electricity.

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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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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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Exceptional talent and the trouble with IQ tests

| Anna Faherty

Is a high IQ really a mark of genius, or does something else explain the exceptional?

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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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Eels and feels

| Ruth Garde

For Georgian Londoners, the allure of electric animals was both intellectual and sensual.

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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 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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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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The eye of darshan

| Adrian Plau

The Hindu concept of darshan means “divine revelation”, but it’s also about the multilayered ways in which we see the world around us. Adrian Plau explains how one image in a Panjabi manuscript relates to darshan, and why it’s so striking.

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Nymphomania and hypersexuality in women and men

| Taryn Cain

The history of nymphomania is closely bound with society's views on women and their sexuality.

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Would you like to buy a unicorn?

| Cassidy Phillips

The story behind why somebody tried to sell Henry Wellcome a unicorn head in 1928.

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Deadly doses and the hardest of hard drugs

| Stevyn Colgan

The invention of the modern hypodermic syringe meant we could get high – or accidentally die – faster than before. Find out how this medical breakthrough was adapted for deadly uses.

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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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The meanings of hurt

| Alanna SkuseSteven Pocock

In the early modern period, gruesome incidents of self-castration and other types of self-injury garnished the literature of the time. Alanna Skuse explores the messages these wounds conveyed.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

My important, ridiculous nose

| A L Kennedy

The nose is a much-maligned appendage, but it’s a powerful organ capable of invoking powerful emotions from past memories and sexual attraction.