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Shakespeare and the four humours
Blood. Phlegm. Black bile. Yellow bile. The theory of the four humours informed many of Shakespeare's best-known characters, including the phlegmatic Falstaff.
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Diagnosing OCD in the past
Mining the writings of and about famous historical figures, retrospective psychologists try to diagnose their mental health problems. But, inevitably, partial evidence is open to misinterpretation.
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Hamlet, the melancholic Prince of Denmark
Hamlet clearly demonstrates an excess of black bile and is arguably the most famous literary melancholic.
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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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Questioning the psychoanalyst
Maggie Robbins gives her personal take on the common misconceptions around her field of work.
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When self-deception becomes global hoax
Being deceived isn’t always a case of believing someone else’s lie. Experiments have shown that many of us can be manipulated into accepting our own fictions as true.
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Why even plastic surgery can’t hide you from facial recognition
Once upon a time, plastic surgery allowed a few notorious criminals to evade the law. But today, sophisticated facial-recognition technology has turned dreams of anonymity to dust.
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Robinson Crusoe and the morality of solitude
Robinson Crusoe, fiction’s most famous castaway, was certainly isolated, but did he suffer the intrinsically modern affliction of loneliness?
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Rose Mackenberg’s deceptive activism
Discover how a New York private investigator became part of Houdini’s mission to expose the fraudulent mediums making money from their vulnerable, grieving clients.
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Louis Wain’s cryptic cats
Once famous for his quirky cat illustrations, today Louis Wain is often portrayed as a ‘psychotic’ artist whose illness can be mapped out through his drawings. Here Bryony Benge-Abbott takes a more rounded view.
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A head apart from the body
We look to the future of science via science fiction to explore how a head may live apart from its body.
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Charged bodies
Electrified humans brought education and performance together with a spark in the 18th century.
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Why pandemic denial is nothing new
Could today’s Covid-deniers be taking lessons from history? After all, it’s nearly 200 years since frustrations at a cholera-induced lockdown erupted in Sunderland.
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Where does violence come from?
The popular understanding of certain ideas in psychology have become so embedded that it’s easy to blame the parents when a young person commits a crime. Laura Bui looks to the past for evidence.
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Why all of us are evil
Science proves that we’re all capable of evil: your secret fantasy about killing someone you hate is surprisingly normal. But the way to better moral choices is to fight emotional instinct.
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Getting under the skin
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.
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Native Americans through the 19th-century lens
The stories behind Rinehart's photographs may not be as black and white as they first appear.
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Shame and the online free-for-all
Lucia Osborne-Crowley looks at how shame manifests online, where public humiliation is common and second chances all too rare.
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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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What is hysteria?
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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Western magic’s fascination with the foreigner
Could modern magic shows be perpetuating damaging cultural stereotypes? Shelley Saggar shows how ‘exotic’ costumes and imagery are far from harmless fun.
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The girl with no name
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 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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Wonder Woman’s wonder women
Discover more about the women who inspired an icon: Wonder Woman’s story of bondage, bracelets and birth control.
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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.