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29 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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The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria

| Natasha Ruiz-GómezKathleen Arundell

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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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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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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The girl with no name

| Paul Craddock

When a now anonymous teenager sold her tooth for transplant, she couldn’t have predicted that she’d end up at the heart of a troubling story about 18th-century beauty ideals.

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The ‘epileptic’ in art and science

| Aparna NairTracy Satchwill

From scarred outsiders in literature to the cold voyeurism of medical films and photography, people who experience seizures and epilepsy are rarely shown in a compassionate light in popular culture.

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Providing care across languages

| Niyoshi ShahRanganath Krishnamani

When medics are taught in English but their patients speak other languages, effective communication becomes fraught. Niyoshi Shah explores the linguistic gaps between patient and doctor.

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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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Tragic artists and their all-consuming passions

| Anna Faherty

Does having a debilitating disease help or hinder creative genius?

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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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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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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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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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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.

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The hidden history of homesickness

| Gail TolleyMaria Rivans

Gail Tolley delves into the history of homesickness and discovers that its rich past holds a clue to how we view the experience today.

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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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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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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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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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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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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.