- Article
- Article
Illuminated manuscripts, illuminating medicines
From rare bugs to exorbitantly priced plant parts, find out more about the artistic and medical uses of pigments from the past.
- Article
- Article
Hunting lost plants in botanical collections
A bark specimen at Kew recalls the story of a South American man who harvested the most potent source of the only effective malaria treatment available in the late 1800s. Killed for his work and forgotten by history, Manuel Mamani was a victim of the colonial juggernaut.
- Article
- Article
Ken’s ten: looking back at ten years of Wellcome Collection
Wellcome Collection founder Ken Arnold picks his favourite exhibits.
- In pictures
- In pictures
We are the survivors of slow-motion epidemics
Pioneering epidemiologist Dr Alice Stewart realised how things in our daily lives could be as deadly as any infectious disease.
- Article
- Article
Interpreting the Ayurvedic Man
A British Sign Language video is the latest interpretation of an unique 18th-century Nepali painting about Ayurvedic medicine.
- Article
- Article
A medieval guide to practical magic
With few sources of effective help available when treating an injured patient, the medieval physician could instead stage a healing ceremony using a practical how-to guide he carried with him.
- Article
- Article
The healing power of the physic garden
Having experienced the healing power of plants and gardens, Iona Glen goes in search of present-day “physic gardens” and their origins in history.
- Article
- Article
Indian botanicals and heritage wars
Colonial botanical texts, as astonishingly beautiful as they are, may cast very dark shadows.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
Mary Bishop and the surveillant gaze
Writer and artist Rose Ruane explores the paintings of Mary Bishop, created during a 30-year stay in a psychiatric hospital, which speak of constant medical surveillance and censorious self-examination.
- Article
- Article
Plant portraits
The beautiful and mysterious illustrations in medieval herbals convey a wealth of knowledge about the plants they portray.
- Article
- Article
The chymist’s trade card
An 18th-century trade card reveals far more than its owner may have intended.
- Article
- Article
Rag mags and monthly issues: Five period zines to stop you seeing red
Using humour, personal experience and political activism to explore the bloody reality of menstruation.
- Article
- Article
The law of periodicity for menstruation
Dr Edward Clarke's Law of Periodicity claimed that females who were educated alongside their male peers were developing their minds at the expense of their reproductive organs.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
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.
- 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.
- Article
- Article
How tuberculosis became a test case for eugenic theory
A 19th-century collaboration that failed to prove how facial features could indicate the diseases people were most likely to suffer from became a significant stepping stone in the new ‘science’ of eugenics.
- Article
- Article
How Indigenous insight inspires sustainable science
The forest of the Amazon Basin is inextricably bound up with the lives of the Indigenous peoples living there. Find out how they feel about the forest, use what it provides, and try to protect it from aggressive commercial exploitation.
- Article
- Article
Fleeing fear, defying prejudice
As teenage refugee Sedra Al-Yousef grappled with rebuilding her life and education in another country, at the same time she used compassion and humanity to demolish populist anti-refugee myths.
- Long read
- Long read
Healthy scepticism
Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.
- Article
- Article
Mapping the body
These intricate anatomical drawings show how Ayurveda practitioners have explored the human body and how it works.
- Article
- Article
What Black women do when the NHS fails them
Sabrina-Maria Anderson explores misogynoir – hatred of Black women – within the NHS, and how women like her are consequently turning to other sources of medical support.
- Article
- Article
The Key to Memory: Mark it out
Sarah Bentley explores what a papier-mâché figure from Japan can tell us about how and why we remember.
- Article
- Article
Picturing mental health
Ron Hampshire created artworks while resident at Netherne psychiatric hospital. What can we learn from them?