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11 results
  • Article
  • Article

The birth of Britain's National Health Service

| Cal Flyn

Starkly unequal access to healthcare gave rise to Nye Bevan’s creation of a truly national health service.

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  • Article

Intelligence testing, race and eugenics

| Nazlin BhimaniGergo Varga

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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NHS Blue: the colour of universal healthcare

| Cal Flyn

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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The psychological impact of nuclear war

| Taras Young

How would you hold up psychologically if a nuclear bomb was dropped? Discover the British government’s secret predictions from the 1980s.

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Delusional recycling and the problem with plastic

| Arianne ShahvisiIfada Nisa

Many of us are guilty of wishful thinking when it comes to our rubbish. Arianne Shahvisi exposes shaky recycling infrastructure and overseas dumping, arguing for an end to waste colonialism.

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Between sickness and health

| Will ReesNaki Narh

In early 2020, the subject Will Rees was studying – imaginary illnesses – took on a new relevance as everyone anxiously scanned themselves for Covid symptoms each day. But this kind of self-scrutiny is nothing new, as he reveals.

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The child whose town rejected vaccines

| Anna Faherty

Gloucester, 1896. Ethel Cromwell is taken ill at the height of Britain’s last great smallpox epidemic.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Primodos, paternalism and the fight to be heard

| Florence WildbloodKathleen Arundell

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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The poor child’s nurse

| Briony Hudson

Charming family scenes in Victorian ads for children’s medicines were at odds with some of the dangerous ingredients they contained.

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The prostitute whose pox inspired feminists

| Anna Faherty

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

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Yoga gets physical

| Lalita Kaplish

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