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Disturbed minds and disruptive bodies
Prison officers tried to regulate women’s minds and bodies and maintain a new disciplinary routine in the second half of the 1800s.
- Long read
- Long read
Primodos, paternalism and the fight to be heard
Journalist Florence Wildblood examines the case of Primodos – a conveniently quick but risky hormone pregnancy test that was prescribed in the 1960s and ’70s – and profiles two women at the story’s shocking heart.
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A wee spot of bother
Euphemisms can both appear to diminish experiences while at the same time making them easier to talk about. Carrie Hynds, who experienced the latter part of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”, explores the relationship between language and trauma.
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Fees, funding and the NHS
In the 1950s, dramatic political battles over NHS charges brought down a government. But public confidence in the service still grew.
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Words of hope and anger
Author and spoken word poet Penny Pepper remembers her childhood dreams, and speaks out against the barriers society uses to prevent disabled people from fulfilling their potential.
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The housing that gives hope to refugees
A safe place of one’s own can be a source of healing and hope. George Kafka reports on two Athens-based projects helping displaced people by putting housing first.
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Intelligence testing, race and eugenics
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.
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Eugenics and the welfare state
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.
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The tower in fiction, film and life
The high-rise estates born of postwar idealism soon became symbols of crime and squalor. But after one terrible tragedy, public bodies are being forced to rethink our towers.
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Bloody capitalism and the cash flow of the menstrual cycle
Once they thrived on taboos and shame. Now period-product manufacturers are finding new ways to flourish in this era of period activism – but products aren’t the end of the story.
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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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Why the 1918 Spanish flu defied both memory and imagination
The Black Death, AIDS and Ebola outbreaks are part of our collective cultural memory, but the Spanish flu outbreak has not been.
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Cocaine, the Victorian wonder drug
Today, cocaine has a very poor public image as one of the causes of crime and violence. But for the Victorians it was welcomed as the saviour of modern surgery.
- Long read
- Long read
Healthy scepticism
Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.
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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.
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The prostitute whose pox inspired feminists
Fitzrovia, 1875. A woman recorded only as A.G. enters hospital and is diagnosed with syphilis.
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Our Covid complicity
Athena Stevens thought she had a cold that she tried to ignore, but it turned out to be Covid-19. Here she reflects on how we have all put ourselves and others at risk with the choices we’ve made during this pandemic.
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Guerrilla public health
From safe-use guides to needle exchange schemes, Harry Shapiro reflects on 40 years of drug harm reduction in the UK.
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How do advertisers get inside our heads?
Vance Packard exposed techniques of mass manipulation developed by 1950s advertisers that are still at work today in the age of big data.
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A symbol of a lost homeland
The story of one protective amulet from Palestine reveals a complex tale. Encompassing the personal history of an influential doctor and collector, it provides a window onto dispossession and exile, and the painful repercussions that are still felt today.
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In search of the ‘nature cure’
Under the competing pressures of modern life, many of us succumb to mental ill health. Samantha Walton explores why so-called ‘nature cures’ don’t help, and how the living world can actually help us.
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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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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 birth of the public museum
The first public museums evolved from wealthy collectors’ cabinets of curiosities and were quickly recognised as useful vehicles for culture.
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Do good mothers make good democracy?
To be psychologically fit for democracy, one distinguished paediatrician argued that you need a ‘good enough mother’ – and that we must acknowledge the bad side of our feelings.