- In pictures
- In pictures
Superstition, contagion and medical rumour
The great generator of confusion, rumours have not spared human health from their chaos. Find out how whispers, gossip and rumours have caused medical mishaps through the ages.
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Printing the body
The 18th century saw multiple technical developments in both printing and medicine. Colourful collaborations ensued – to the benefit of growing ranks of medical students.
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Reversing the psychiatric gaze
Nineteenth-century psychiatrists were keen to categorise their patients’ illnesses reductively – by their physical appearance. But we can see a far more complex picture of mental distress, revealed by those patients able to express their inner worlds in art.
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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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Birth, babies and boxes of memories
With memories of her baby in neonatal intensive care still fresh, Erin Beeston decides to unearth the poignant objects her family kept following births, going back as far as Victorian times.
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Demanding a diagnosis for invisible pain
After dozens of hospital visits and handfuls of painkillers, a plethora of scans and tests bring diagnosis closer for Jaipreet Virdi.
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Beating the bodysnatchers
When a rise in grave robbing called for strong measures, mortsafes became the unassailable solution. Allison C. Meier explores.
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The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria
A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.
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The enduring myth of the mad genius
There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.
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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.
- Photo story
- Photo story
The man who remembers everything
Tilney1 can remember his life in minute detail, but can’t control the incessant intrusion of thoughts and images from the past. As cuts to mental health services isolate him more and more, a crisis approaches.
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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.
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Mapping the body
These intricate anatomical drawings show how Ayurveda practitioners have explored the human body and how it works.
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Making sunstroke insanity
Medical historian Dr Kristin Hussey takes a closer look at sunstroke and mental illness, and how, in the late 19th century, they connected at the crossroads of colonial science and the idea of whiteness.
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When kids are offered free cosmetic surgery
When they were a child, Jasmine Owens’ dentist offered to break their jaw – for free. It would make them look better, he said. Read on to find out whether or not they agreed.
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The making of ‘Quacks’
How do you create a medical comedy that’s authentic and laugh-out-loud funny?
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To stop or stay on lithium
In the final part of her investigation into lithium, Laura Grace Simpkins faces a dilemma – should she put her own mental health or other people and the planet first?
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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.
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Photographs as evidence of gender identity and sexuality
Intriguing photographs from sexologists’ archives suggest they could have helped people explore their gender identity and sexuality.
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Doctors and the English seaside
Fashionable seaside towns in England owe much of their popularity to 18th-century doctors, who advised them to take the 'sea cure'.
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Divining the world through an artist’s almanac
Amanda Couch's artists book, 'Huwawa in the Everyday: an almanac' is inspired by the entrail like folds of a medieval folding and its function as a guide for astrological divinations linking the body, health and the heavens. Like the original almanac her work is designed to be carried out into the wider world.
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Crime drama and the realistic cadaver
Today we are accustomed to the increasingly realistic look of dead bodies in on-screen dramas. Special-effects expert Hildegunn M S Traa reveals how crime and morgue scenes reflect the social idea of death.
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Plant portraits
The beautiful and mysterious illustrations in medieval herbals convey a wealth of knowledge about the plants they portray.
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The relationship between science and art
Often seen as opposites, science and art both depend on observation and synthesis.
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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.