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56 results
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Guerrilla public health

| Harry Shapiro

From safe-use guides to needle exchange schemes, Harry Shapiro reflects on 40 years of drug harm reduction in the UK.

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Getting around the rules of sex education

| Hannah J Elizabeth

What should we and shouldn’t we teach our teens about sex, inside and outside of the classroom?

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Beating the bodysnatchers

| Allison C Meier

When a rise in grave robbing called for strong measures, mortsafes became the unassailable solution. Allison C. Meier explores.

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Eugenics and the welfare state

| Indy BhullarGergo Varga

Indy Bhullar explores the ideas of William Beveridge and Richard Titmuss, who were strongly influenced by eugenic thinking, and yet championed the idea of the welfare state.

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Getting under the skin

| Taryn Cain

Before the invention of X-ray in 1895 there was really only one way to accurately study the human body, and that was to cut it open.

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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.

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Rocking psychiatry with R D Laing

| Adrian ChapmanSteven Pocock

Turn on, tune in, drop out. Discover how six rock songs from the 1960s and 1970s link the ideas of famous therapist R D Laing with the era’s counterculture.

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The art of soundproof design

| Kristin Hohenadel

Too much noise is more than annoying – it has serious negative effects on health and cognitive ability. Find out how designers and architects are mitigating the downsides of sound.

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The 200-year search for normal people

| Sarah ChaneyMaïa Walcott

Sarah Chaney poses the question we’ve likely all asked at some point in our lives: 'Am I normal?’, and explores whether normality even exists.

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The ancient doctors who refused payment

| Christopher DeCouSteven Pocock

The NHS might only be 70 years old, but the idea of free healthcare goes back to Ancient Greece, when devout doctors provided their services without charge.

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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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‘Jessy’, a film about cerebral palsy

| Anthony McKay

How the 1950s British film industry portrayed this disease.

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Going viral in the online anti-vaccine wars

| Alex Green

‘Anti-vaxxers’ are taking their message online using powerful images as well as words. But is the pro campaigners’ response any better?

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How to play in secret

| Holly GramazioThomas S G Farnetti

In secret games the strangers around you are playing too. They just don’t know it. Read on for some great ideas for undercover fun at work, school – or almost anywhere.

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This is a MOOD

| Kate WilkinsonLaurindo Feliciano

Adults might sometimes dismiss teenagers’ ‘moodiness’, but adolescence is a time of complex shifts in brain and body, which are intricately bound up with fluctuating feelings.

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Yoga adapts to time and place

| Lalita Kaplish

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

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What writing myself has revealed

| Caroline ButterwickKimberley Burrows

Caroline Butterwick talks to two creators about how lived experience feeds their art, and reflects on her own year of writing about her life.

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The law of periodicity for menstruation

| Lalita Kaplish

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.

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Laughing at disaster

| Isabella KaminskiGuillaume Chiron

If joking around can help us cope when the worst happens, could comedy be a useful way to connect on climate change?

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Families fighting for justice

| Ruth BlueHollie Chastain

In 1962 a group of parents whose children had been affected by thalidomide began a decades-long battle in the law courts, the media and Parliament in order to win fair justice for all thalidomide survivors.

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Louis Wain’s cryptic cats

| Bryony Benge-Abbott

Once famous for his quirky cat illustrations, today Louis Wain is often portrayed as a ‘psychotic’ artist whose illness can be mapped out through his drawings. Here Bryony Benge-Abbott takes a more rounded view.

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Printing the body

| Julia Nurse

The 18th century saw multiple technical developments in both printing and medicine. Colourful collaborations ensued – to the benefit of growing ranks of medical students.

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The unexpected parallels between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Wellcome Collection

| Russell Dornan

With the news of a sequel in development, Russell Dornan explores parallels between ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and Wellcome Collection.

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Dynamo on the past, present and future of magic

| Kate WilkinsonThomas S G Farnetti

The magician takes a tour and shares stories of history and inspiration.

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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.