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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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Thomas Sankara and the stomachs that made themselves heard
Thomas Sankara’s vision to transform farming and health in Burkina Faso turned to dust with his assassination. Perry Blankson highlights the considerable achievements of Sankara’s brief span in power.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Ayurveda: Knowledge for long life
The story of medicine in India is rich and complex. Aarathi Prasad investigates how it came to be this way.
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Who was Audrey Amiss?
Elena Carter introduces the vast collection left behind by artist Audrey Amiss, who documented her life in astonishing detail.
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Chillies and the trouble with Scoville
Measuring the heat of these peppers can leave you a little lukewarm.
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A body apart from the head
We look back at the importance of the head, from how it’s influenced our language to the bold political statement of having it removed.
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Sacred cows and nutritional purity in India
Apoorva Sripathi explores the complex reasons behind India’s recent boom in all things dairy – beginning with a 1970s Western food-aid programme.
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The solidarity of sickness
Visiting an injured friend in hospital prompts writer Sinéad Gleeson to reflect on the instant rapport forged between compatriots in the kingdom of the sick.
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Can our sexual desires be transformed?
In the 1950s, many psychiatrists thought that homosexuality could be reformed. One found that it couldn’t – and his discoveries led to a change in the law.
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NHS Blue: the colour of universal healthcare
The 1980s and 1990s saw ideas from the world of business infiltrating the NHS, including the introduction of an internal market, followed by a corporate branding exercise.
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The intermediate life of spirits
Courttia Newland explores the events and his feelings surrounding the death of his mother-in-law, Tara Chauhan.
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The unimprovable white cane
Recent technological additions to the white cane aim to make the world easier for visually impaired people to navigate. Alex Lee explores whether new is really better.
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Cataloguing Audrey
Work begins in earnest to restore order to the archive Audrey Amiss kept of the minutest happenings in her life. Like detectives, the archivists search for subtle clues to chronology in the mass of materials.
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Believe yourself better
There’s more to recovery than medication. In future, our unconscious minds could be recruited to put a positive spin on our health problems, helping us feel better faster.
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Yoga adapts to time and place
A yoga teacher in 1930s India inspired today’s transnational practice with his spectacular fusion of tradition and innovation.
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Designing better mental health wards
Bringing colour and natural light to tired, grubby mental health wards has a measurably positive effect on patients. A few groundbreaking projects are showing the way.
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How can I stop fainting?
Fed up with the faints that bolstered her fragile young snowflake image, Gwen Smith sought expert medical help to keep her upright in trying situations.
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It’s getting mighty crowded
Mid-20th-century population-density research on mice produced a whiskered apocalypse, predicted to become the fate of humans too. But perhaps a more compassionate approach could fend this off.
- Book extract
- Book extract
The meaning of happiness
What is happiness? Tiffany Watt Smith charts how its definition has changed over time, from chance emotion to something that can be measured and controlled.
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Abandoning daydreams of a life without diabetes
After years of longing for a cure for her type 1 diabetes, Daisy Watson Shaw, partly due to medical advances in managing the condition, has reached a state of acceptance. Her wishes now are for greater understanding.
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The men who meddled with nature
The ‘acclimatisation societies’ of the 19th century sought to ‘improve’ on the natural world by releasing non-native species into the wild. The effects were disastrous.
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Good animals, bad humans?
Could an animal be more evolved than a human? Victorian psychologists thought that in some cases the answer could be ‘yes’.
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Does mass media pave the way to fascism?
In the aftermath of World War II, psychoanalysts found the psychological roots of authoritarianism closer to home than was comfortable.
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The big freeze
In recent years we’ve come to realise that global heating is our biggest threat. But it’s hard to shake off the fear of a return to ice-age conditions, the predominant narrative since the late 17th century.
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Society, not Covid-19, makes us vulnerable
Rick Burgess coped with the death of his mother in February 2020 by immersing himself in the task of protecting his community from Covid-19 and challenging the government's failure to protect and support elderly and Disabled people during the pandemic.