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Mistakes and perfect medicine

This week our anonymous GP reflects on how a mistake made in a busy, stressful environment could have had serious consequences.

How slums make people sick

A newly gentrified corner of Bermondsey leaves little clue to its less salubrious history. But a few intrepid writers recorded the details of existence in one of London’s most squalid slums.

The healing power of the physic garden

Having experienced the healing power of plants and gardens, Iona Glen goes in search of present-day “physic gardens” and their origins in history.

Unravelling genetic origins from the potato to cinchona

Starting with the humble potato, Nataly Allasi Canales reveals how researchers unearth the genetic origins of modern plant varieties, and explains why their work is so important for biodiversity.

You, a thousand years ago

Jack Hartnell argues that, if we were transported into the medieval past, we’d find ourselves somewhere different yet strangely familiar.

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.

Interpreting the Ayurvedic Man

Relieving suburban stress in the 1950s

The ‘perfect’ wife. Her stressed-out husband. And the demands of the idealised suburban life in 1950s America. Fortunately, a new Pfizer tranquilliser could calm things down for everyone.

Documents of my breath

Swati Joshi’s childhood bronchitis meant that she couldn’t imagine being able to breathe easily. As an adult, she chronicles her recovery through artworks created using bubbles and her breath.

“Life and the universe change our plans”

Artist Lil Sullivan returns to the printmaking workshop for the first time after her stroke, and uses broken and discarded everyday objects to create art.

When doctors get sick

Feeling guilty about developing a health problem, our anonymous GP contemplates how the system could better support doctors when they’re sick.

How to stay together while keeping apart

Vivek Murthy explores how we can keep physically distant while staying emotionally connected.

Disability, education and prejudice

In the 1960s and 1970s, thalidomide survivors had to fight for a proper education. If they weren’t brought up in institutions, they were often viewed as objects of curiosity, encountering verbal and sometimes physical abuse, both at school and in the world beyond.

The psychological impact of nuclear war

How would you hold up psychologically if a nuclear bomb was dropped? Discover the British government’s secret predictions from the 1980s.

Why we need to decolonise the skies

Astronomer Dr Tana Joseph explores how rethinking way we look at the stars could improve our relationship with our own planet and make it a healthier place to live.

How Indigenous insight inspires sustainable science

The forest of the Amazon Basin is inextricably bound up with the lives of the Indigenous peoples living there. Find out how they feel about the forest, use what it provides, and try to protect it from aggressive commercial exploitation.

Conflicted and confused about lithium

Covid-19 left Laura Grace Simpkins out of work and living back with her parents. She now had time to restart her research into her medication, but was she mad to continue?

Coleridge’s hypochondria

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.

Cracks that let the light in

Rai Waddingham lives with voices other people cannot hear. Here she describes how she has come to accept, understand and calm her voices, and to acknowledge her strength.

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.

Leaving Mexico and finding refuge in hope

In Mexico, violence of all kinds – organised, street, domestic – is accepted as normal. From the UK, Laura Morales speaks out and fights to help those suffering back home.

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.

Genius spirits and the mystery of creative inspiration

Once upon a time, we all had a genius.

The shock of cardiac arrest when you’re young and fit

Footballer Christian Eriksen’s on-pitch collapse in 2020, witnessed by thousands, was shocking. Fellow cardiac-arrest survivor Meg Fozzard explores the risks in the young and fit, and how we can all help.

Hunting lost plants in botanical collections

A bark specimen at Kew recalls the story of a South American man who harvested the most potent source of the only effective malaria treatment available in the late 1800s. Killed for his work and forgotten by history, Manuel Mamani was a victim of the colonial juggernaut.