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Manipulating the evidence with deepfake technology
How can you be sure that the person speaking on the screen is genuine? Find out how sophisticated digital manipulation is blurring the boundaries between real and ‘deepfake’.
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Medics and the bomb
Would a nuclear attack on the UK overwhelm the NHS? At the height of the Cold War, despite government optimism, medics predicted doom.
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Electrical epilepsy and the EEG Test
The EEG (electroencephalograph) literally electrified the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy. But for Aparna Nair the dreaded EEG tests of her adolescence were a painful ordeal.
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Finding a cure for homesickness
While technology can mitigate some aspects of homesickness, other components of home are harder to replicate. Find out how 21st-century studies are helping homesickness sufferers find silver linings in their new situation.
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The politics and power of audio-description
Traditional theatre audio-description often lets down artists and audiences. But, done well, it has the potential to be a force for creativity as well as accessibility.
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Why even plastic surgery can’t hide you from facial recognition
Once upon a time, plastic surgery allowed a few notorious criminals to evade the law. But today, sophisticated facial-recognition technology has turned dreams of anonymity to dust.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Ayurveda: Knowledge for long life
The story of medicine in India is rich and complex. Aarathi Prasad investigates how it came to be this way.
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Finding out where my lithium comes from
The origins of the lithium Laura Grace Simpkins swallows daily are unclear. If we don’t know the provenance of our pills, how can we make informed decisions about them?
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Disabled musicians and the fight to perform
Music might be the universal language, but unfortunately it doesn’t come with universal access. London-based artist Miss Jacqui discusses the barriers to her career with Jamie Hale.
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A history of gestation outside the body
It’s been over 400 years since a Swiss alchemist theorised that foetuses could develop outside the womb. Claire Horn examines incubator technology past and present, and explores the possibilities recent prototypes might bring.
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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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The enduring myth of the mad genius
There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.
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Thousands of years of women’s pain
Even in the 21st century, women with severe monthly pain find their suffering minimised or dismissed by the medical profession. Such pain is seen as simply a natural part of being female.
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Abandoning daydreams of a life without diabetes
After years of longing for a cure for her type 1 diabetes, Daisy Watson Shaw, partly due to medical advances in managing the condition, has reached a state of acceptance. Her wishes now are for greater understanding.
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Why gene editing can never eliminate disability
In a world where DNA testing and gene editing offer ways to eliminate certain disabilities, Jaipreet Virdi explores a more accepting and inclusive approach.
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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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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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“Disability is never an individual diagnosis”
As a 35-year-old man, I am sure that my fear of getting old is not uncommon. But for me, that fear goes deeper. I have spina bifida.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Of incubators, orchids and artificial wombs
In this extract from Claire Horn’s new book, ‘Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth’, she traces the development of the artificial womb, soon to become a reality.
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Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis
Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.
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Remote diagnosis from wee to the Web
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.
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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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Artificial intelligence and the dream of eternal life
Until now, eternal life was the stuff of fiction, or in the unknowable realms of religion. But an artificial intelligence that ‘remembers’ the whole of an individual’s experience could be the way to life after death.
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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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A brief history of ventilation
As ventilators continue to play an important part in helping very ill coronavirus patients, medical historian Dr Lindsey Fitzharris traces their development from the first attempts at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation through centuries of medical crises.