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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.

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.

Parks and politics in Brixton’s past and present

Gentrification is creeping along Railton Road, but racial inequality still lingers in memories of the 1980s, and in the continuing lack of green-space access.

Migraine, creativity and me

Novelist Lydia Ruffles explores how migraine has made her mind stretch, shrink, widen and change, and how it’s influenced her art.

Aphasia and drawing elephants

When Thomas Parkinson investigated the history of “speech science”, he discovered an unexpected link between empire, elephants and aphasia.

Intelligence testing, race and eugenics

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.

Audrey and her family

In working on Audrey Amiss’s archive, Elena is getting closer to understanding her. But the way her niece and nephew remember Audrey adds essential detail to the picture.

Menstruation, magic and moon myths

Why do stories cloaking periods in magic and mystery persist? Pragya Agarwal argues against myth-making and for inclusive menstrual education, grounded in fact.

Birthdays, appraisals and Harold Shipman

Our anonymous GP ponders how a prolific serial murderer has increased the workload of every family doctor.

Yoga adapts to time and place

A yoga teacher in 1930s India inspired today’s transnational practice with his spectacular fusion of tradition and innovation.

Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

Race, religion and the Black Madonna

Mystery and controversy surround the dark-skinned religious icon who represents the Virgin Mary throughout the Catholic world.

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.

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.

Rehab centres and the ‘cure’ for addiction

Guy Stagg takes us on a brief history of rehab centres and their approaches to addiction and recovery.

On nature cures and taking the waters

When chilly outdoor swims began to chip away at her depression, Jessica J Lee was drawn to a closer study of the complex natural world around her.

Tragic artists and their all-consuming passions

Does having a debilitating disease help or hinder creative genius?

The intimate and invasive art of ethical taxidermy

Does displaying dead animals bring us closer to nature, or drive us further apart?

Soil health and dairy farming in the UK

Although healthy soil means more nutritious dairy products, modern intensive farming methods pollute and degrade the environment. However, a regenerative agriculture movement is kicking back against mainstream industrial farming.

Daria Martin on ‘Sensorium Tests’ and ‘At the Threshold’

A little wildness

To salve her longing for a dog, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan chose a puppy. She found that, despite centuries of domestication, her dog still retains aspects of her wild ancestry.

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.

The intermediate life of spirits

Courttia Newland explores the events and his feelings surrounding the death of his mother-in-law, Tara Chauhan.

Inside the minds of Teeth’s two curators, James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing

James Peto and Emily Scott-Dearing talk visceral reactions, their interactions and object extractions.

Healthy scepticism

Healthcare sceptics – like those opposed to Covid-19 vaccinations – often have serious, nuanced reasons for doubting medical authorities.