- Article
- Article
How architecture builds a profession of stress
Architects might produce buildings that enhance our health, but at what cost? Kristin Hohenadel explores architecture’s pressurised and stressful culture.
- Article
- Article
Acid and the sexual psychonauts
How LSD fuelled one woman’s journey of sexual self-discovery in the late 1950s.
- Article
- Article
Equality in genetics
Genetic counsellor Sasha Henriques harnessed her energy and resolve to tackle the racial biases she saw in her profession – with positive and promising results.
- Book extract
- Book extract
A history of sex for sale
Kate Lister’s cultural history of the sex trade puts sex workers centre stage. In this extract, she argues why the way we write, think and talk about sex work matters.
- Article
- Article
Graphic battles in pharmacy
James Morison’s campaign against the medical establishment inspired a wave of caricatures mocking his quack medicine.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
Defying deafness through music
Did you know that Beethoven’s profession meant he was ashamed to admit to being deaf? Find out how similar prejudices persist today and how our writer is helping to break them down.
- Book extract
- Book extract
Why the NHS is worth saving
In this extract from his latest book, ‘Free For All’, Dr Gavin Francis poses challenging questions to be addressed if a health service that’s free for all at the point of use is to remain possible.
- Article
- Article
Is your job bad for your teeth?
Some surprising occupations pose hidden risks to dental health. Could your ivories be in particular peril?
- Article
- Article
Trust me, I’m a patient
Artist Rachel Rowan Olive is an expert in the way her mental health condition affects her. Here she explains how it helps if doctors understand that.
- Article
- Article
Questioning the psychoanalyst
Maggie Robbins gives her personal take on the common misconceptions around her field of work.
- Article
- Article
Blood
Discover the history, mythology and taboos around blood and menopause, and hear from some contemporary voices about their experiences of periods and the onset of menopause.
- Article
- Article
When doctors get sick
Feeling guilty about developing a health problem, our anonymous GP contemplates how the system could better support doctors when they’re sick.
- Article
- Article
The amateur silversmith
It started as hobby and soon became a passion. Geraldine Holden tells us where the art and science of silver unite.
- Article
- Article
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.
- Article
- Article
Adapting to life as a thalidomide survivor
Growing up as a thalidomide survivor meant coping with all the usual challenges of childhood and adolescence, while having to fit into a world designed for the able-bodied.
- Article
- Article
Thalidomide babies
In a time without scans or antenatal tests, neither medical staff nor parents were prepared for the damage to the foetus caused by the thalidomide drug.
- Article
- Article
The secret sting of cystitis
Agnes Arnold-Forster recounts her experiences of cystitis, explaining how this illness intersects with sexism, shame, and stigma from medical professionals.
- Article
- Article
The problem of the punctured heart
During World War II a young American surgeon working in England perfected shrapnel-removal techniques that saved dozens of lives. Discover how one case sealed his reputation as the founder of cardiac surgery.
- Interview
- Interview
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.
- Article
- Article
Picturing mental health
Ron Hampshire created artworks while resident at Netherne psychiatric hospital. What can we learn from them?
- Article
- Article
Hysteria
Mental health and emotional symptoms are common during menopause, but a long history of dismissing sufferers as 'hysterical women', at the mercy of their emotions has made it much harder to discuss these issues and to get support.
- Article
- Article
Revelations of blindness in the Middle Ages
Medieval texts, from Islamic medical treatises to Christian books of miracles, reveal surprisingly varied and complex experiences of blindness. But when medieval scholar Jude Seal experienced visual impairment themselves, they gained an even deeper understanding of the lives they were studying.
- Article
- Article
Rediscovering Margaret Louden, a forgotten NHS hero
Bored during lockdown, David Jesudason started bin diving at night. Then a chance discovery set him on a new path: to tell the story of a forgotten female surgeon.
- Article
- Article
Happiness in time
Trying to define happiness is like trying to grasp water: it evades us, constantly changing and becoming evident only in retrospect.