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135 results
  • Article
  • Article

Yoga gets physical

| Lalita Kaplish

Modern yoga owes a debt to the physical culture movement that created a world obsessed with health and fitness.

  • Article
  • Article

When depression is worse than physical illness

| Elly Aylwin-FosterJohn Miers

Chronic physical illnesses can be accompanied by troubling depressive symptoms. Elly Aylwin-Foster urges doctors to treat every aspect of her condition with the same care.

  • Article
  • Article

The healing power of the physic garden

| Iona Glen

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

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Still ill: Corona diary

| Monique Jackson

In vivid words and pictures, artist Monique Jackson depicts her experience of becoming ill with Covid-19 last year.

  • Article
  • Article

Born different

| Chris North

For Chris North, being born intersex in the 1940s meant his many childhood hospital visits, tests and operations were not explained or discussed. As he reveals, doctors encouraged strict secrecy.

  • Article
  • Article

Rebuilding my identity after a brain injury

| Chris MillerThomas S G Farnetti

Chris Miller talks about how a brain injury forced him to reassess his place in the world – physically, personally and socially.

  • 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

Dying at home and the doctor’s role

| The Secret GP

Our anonymous GP talks about the bittersweet rewards of supporting a patient when he chose to die at home.

  • Article
  • Article

Sick of being lonely

| Thom James

When his relationship ended, Thom James first withdrew from the world, then began to suffer from illnesses with no apparent physical cause.

  • Article
  • Article

The case of the cancerous stomach

| Thomas MorrisEmily Evans

Steak and schnitzel were on the menu again after Theodor Billroth successfully excised a woman’s stomach cancer in 1881. Remarkably, today’s surgeons still perform the same procedure, with slight modifications.

  • Article
  • Article

Rethinking the placebo effect

| Anjuli SharmaSteven Pocock

The placebo effect has long been harnessed for both legitimate and fraudulent use, but we’re only just discovering how and why our bodies respond positively to dummy drugs, as Anjuli Sharma reveals.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

You know the drill

| Richard Barnett

Richard Barnett opens wide the true meaning of a healthy mouth.

  • Article
  • Article

Confession as therapy in the Middle Ages

| Katherine Harvey

The line between confession and counselling has been blurred for centuries.

  • Article
  • Article

Believe yourself better

| A R Hopwood

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.

  • Article
  • Article

Disability, education and prejudice

| Ruth BlueHollie Chastain

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.

  • Article
  • Article

The side effects of lithium mining

| Laura Grace SimpkinsMatjaž Krivic

Laura Grace Simpkins attempts to untangle some uncomfortable truths about the social and environmental costs of making her medication.

  • Article
  • Article

The soul in the stomach

| Michael WalkdenAnnemarieke Kloosterhof

A 17th-century physician’s controversial theory about the link between the emotions and the stomach reminds us that we shouldn’t ignore our ‘gut feelings’.

  • Article
  • Article

The art of scientific glassblowing

| Helen BabbsThomas S G Farnetti

Exciting things happen when art, craft, engineering and science collide. Glassblower Gayle Price is proof of that.

  • Article
  • Article

The enduring myth of the mad genius

| Anna Faherty

There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.

  • Article
  • Article

The prostitute whose pox inspired feminists

| Anna Faherty

Fitzrovia, 1875. A woman recorded only as A.G. enters hospital and is diagnosed with syphilis.

  • Article
  • Article

Why some patients make my heart sink

| The Secret GP

Instead of getting nowhere with certain demanding, manipulative patients, our anonymous GP wonders if there’s a way to help them.

  • Article
  • Article

Sex work, stigma and whorephobia

| Matt Valentine-ChaseJessa Fairbrother

Like everyone, sex workers sometimes need medical or mental health support. But shame and stigma seriously affect attitudes and access.

  • Article
  • Article

Sick of the theatre

| Michael Regnier

What makes the stage a good place to share real-life experiences of ill health?

  • Article
  • Article

Birth, babies and boxes of memories

| Erin BeestonNaomi Williams

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.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

The man who remembers everything

| J A Mortram

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.