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71 results
  • Article
  • Article

A history of mindfulness

| Matt Drage

Matt Drage questions how an ancient religious practice became a secular cure for stress.

  • Article
  • Article

Yoga adapts to time and place

| Lalita Kaplish

A yoga teacher in 1930s India inspired today’s transnational practice with his spectacular fusion of tradition and innovation.

  • Article
  • Article

Medics, migration and the NHS

| Cal Flyn

In the 1960s the NHS became Britain’s biggest employer. So to help fill all those jobs, the government brought in thousands of workers from abroad.

  • Article
  • Article

Healing hard-working hands

| María Cristina JimenezLouise Hinman

The names we use to describe different hand injuries tell us about history, gender and class. Occupational therapist María Cristina Jiménez explores those injuries, and the changing ways we talk about them.

  • Article
  • Article

Life before assistive technology

| Alex LeeIan Treherne

When an inherited condition caused Alex Lee’s vision to deteriorate, he began to discover the technologies that would help him navigate the world around him. Here he describes how his life began to change.

  • Article
  • Article

Vivekananda’s journey

| Lalita Kaplish

How a young Indian monk’s travels around the world inspired modern yoga.

  • Article
  • Article

Blood

| Helen FosterEast Midlands Oral History ArchiveAsma Istwani

Discover the history, mythology and taboos around blood and menopause, and hear from some contemporary voices about their experiences of periods and the onset of menopause.

  • Article
  • Article

The sweet sound of synthetic speech

| Alex LeeIan Treherne

After Alex experienced a serious deterioration in his sight, he came to rely on artificial voices to help him with everyday tasks. Find out how synthetic speech came to be developed.

  • Article
  • Article

The unimprovable white cane

| Alex LeeIan Treherne

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.

  • Article
  • Article

Being trans in the world of sex work

| Dr Adrienne MacartneyJessa Fairbrother

Unstable. Predatory. Risk takers. Dr Adrienne Macartney sheds stark light on the hostile and negative assumptions faced by trans sex workers.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Rehab centres and the ‘cure’ for addiction

| Guy StaggJess Nash

Guy Stagg takes us on a brief history of rehab centres and their approaches to addiction and recovery.

  • Article
  • Article

Intelligence testing, race and eugenics

| Nazlin BhimaniGergo Varga

Specious ideas and assumptions about intelligence that were born during the great flourishing of eugenics well over 100 years ago still inform the British education system today, as Nazlin Bhimani reveals.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

“I’ve never talked to anybody about this before”

Douglas is furious. He’s at crisis point and needs help. Read the first of his two sessions with psychoanalyst Susie Orbach.

  • Article
  • Article

Would you like to buy a dinosaur?

| Ross MacFarlane

Two remarkable letters and a drawing of a plesiosaur by Mary Anning offer a tantalising portal into the exciting world of fossil hunting and discovery of the 1800s.

  • Article
  • Article

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.

  • Article
  • Article

Pain and the power of touch

| Fiona MurphyCamilla Greenwell

As a new physiotherapist, Fiona Murphy quickly learned that her patients’ pain was unpredictable and very personal. But using the right words became the key to helping them.

  • Article
  • Article

Dyslexia and its misconceptions

| Madeleine MorleyLucy Grainge

Overcoming common myths about dyslexia only adds to the challenges of growing up with the condition. Madeleine Morley, who was diagnosed with dyslexia aged eight, goes into myth-busting mode and shares her personal experiences.

  • Article
  • Article

Birthdays, appraisals and Harold Shipman

| The Secret GP

Our anonymous GP ponders how a prolific serial murderer has increased the workload of every family doctor.

  • Article
  • Article

Daniel Regan on using photography to manage emotions

| Daniel Regan

Artist Daniel Regan manages his emotions and stays grounded through photography, allowing him to engage in the world around him.

  • Article
  • Article

The intimate and invasive art of ethical taxidermy

| Helen BabbsThomas S G Farnetti

Does displaying dead animals bring us closer to nature, or drive us further apart?

  • Article
  • Article

Remote diagnosis from wee to the Web

| Christine RoSteven Pocock

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.

  • Interview
  • Interview

How to design an HIV awareness campaign

| Paul Steinberg

Using carefully crafted, colourful graphics is one public health team’s creative approach.

  • Article
  • Article

Eugenics and the welfare state

| Indy BhullarGergo Varga

Indy Bhullar explores the ideas of William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss, who were strongly influenced by eugenic thinking, and yet championed the idea of the welfare state.

  • Article
  • Article

Remote romance and the common cold

| Elena CarterThomas S G Farnetti

Getting creatively romantic due to a virus sounds all too contemporary, but our archives show what socially distanced seduction looked like seven decades ago.

  • Article
  • Article

Dynamo on the past, present and future of magic

| Kate WilkinsonThomas S G Farnetti

The magician takes a tour and shares stories of history and inspiration.