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Spanish flu and the depiction of disease
The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed many millions more than World War I did. Find out why contemporary artistic depictions of its devastating impact are so rare.
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Dirt, disease and the Inspector of Nuisances
In the days when ‘bad air’ was thought to spread disease, dozens of Inspectors of Nuisances ceaselessly struggled against the perils of dirt – both visible and invisible.
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The colonist who faced the blue terror
India, 1857. In a British enclave, Katherine Bartrum watches her friend, and then her family, succumb to the deadly cholera.
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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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The cook who became a pariah
New York, 1907. Mary Mallon spreads infection, unaware that her name will one day become synonymous with typhoid.
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When monarchs healed the sick
Our current Queen fortunately doesn’t have to spend hours laying hands on the sick to cure them. But it was a different story for monarchs of the early modern era, whose touch was a sought-after treatment for scrofula.
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The science of why things spread
From deadly pandemics to viral tweets, Adam Kucharski explores what makes something contagious.
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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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Performance art, frozen in time
For over a year, live performance art with an audience present has been largely impossible. But still images continue to allow artists in this sphere to inspire audiences at home.
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How tuberculosis became a test case for eugenic theory
A 19th-century collaboration that failed to prove how facial features could indicate the diseases people were most likely to suffer from became a significant stepping stone in the new ‘science’ of eugenics.
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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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The father of handwashing
Doctors performing autopsies and then delivering babies – with not a hint of soap in between – was the grim recipe producing a lot of motherless offspring in the 1800s. But one man’s gargantuan efforts to upend accepted medical thinking turned the tide.
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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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Losing touch
In these pandemic times, when touch has become taboo, Agnese Reginaldo explores the importance of physical contact to our wellbeing.
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The first seizure
Historian Aparna Nair had her first seizure when she was 11. Here she recalls that first time, and how other people’s reactions are sometimes the most disturbing part about having a seizure.
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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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We who can’t believe
Unless she falls to the floor unconscious, Anne Boyer has always ignored signs of illness. Cancer, however, made her face her fallibility.
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Remote diagnosis from wee to the Web
Medical practice might have moved on from when patients posted flasks of their urine for doctors to taste, but telehealth today keeps up the tradition of remote diagnosis – to our possible detriment.
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My mother, and metaphors of a pandemic
A pandemic. Two members of one family, living thousands of miles apart. And months of calls and messages that helped them grow closer.
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The ‘epileptic’ in art and science
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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Between sickness and health
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 building as tool of healing
When we’re ill, it’s not just medical care that helps to treat us. Architects have discovered that the right environment can play an important part too.
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The search for a cure for endometriosis
Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.
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Fake news and the flu
Discover how history shows that fake news could play a deadly role – by generating potentially lethal misinformation during a future pandemic.
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Living with early onset Parkinson’s
Ten years ago, three little words changed Pete Langman’s world.