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Cracks that let the light in
Rai Waddingham lives with voices other people cannot hear. Here she describes how she has come to accept, understand and calm her voices, and to acknowledge her strength.
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Rejecting shame and a decade of change
Jess Thom spent years trying to ignore and suppress the tics of Tourette’s syndrome. Read what happened when she decided to celebrate them instead.
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The search for a cure for endometriosis
Discover how a white American doctor’s experimental operations on black female slaves laid the foundations for modern gynaecological surgery.
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Desperate housewives and suburban neurosis
Discover how a pioneering health centre replaced housewives’ supposedly empty home lives with a social space that encouraged healthy child rearing.
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John Walter on ‘Alien Sex Club’
I’m a painter, but I make worlds.
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The secret lives of Britain’s first Black physicians
Dr Annabel Sowemimo explores the web of connections between early Black British doctors, the role of empire in West Africa and the pernicious reach of scientific racism.
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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.
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Performance art, frozen in time
For over a year, live performance art with an audience present has been largely impossible. But still images continue to allow artists in this sphere to inspire audiences at home.
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How to play with people who are better than you
It’s frustrating to lose a game to the same player every time. But help is at hand. Discover the ways you can make a game respond dynamically to participants so everyone has a chance of winning.
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The blight of the ballooning blood vessels
In 1817 an emergency operation on a London porter was hailed a ‘success’ despite the patient’s swift demise. Find out how this case became a landmark in vascular surgery.
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The extraction of the excruciating bladder stones
Among those vying to find alternatives to major surgery for bladder stones, young doctor Jean Civiale stood out, painstakingly honing a method that was to become the norm.
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London, city of lost hospitals
Come on the trail of hundreds of ghost hospitals, whose remnants hold clues to medical treatments of the past.
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Drugs in Victorian Britain
Many common remedies were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development?
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NHS Blue: the colour of universal healthcare
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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Exceptional talent and the trouble with IQ tests
Is a high IQ really a mark of genius, or does something else explain the exceptional?
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Why even plastic surgery can’t hide you from facial recognition
Once upon a time, plastic surgery allowed a few notorious criminals to evade the law. But today, sophisticated facial-recognition technology has turned dreams of anonymity to dust.
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Between sickness and health
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.
- Photo story
- Photo story
My body, my hair
To depilate or not to depilate? Farah Esset and Eden Rickson share a collection of personal pictures and stories that explore the intimate interplay between body hair and identity.
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The tower in fiction, film and life
The high-rise estates born of postwar idealism soon became symbols of crime and squalor. But after one terrible tragedy, public bodies are being forced to rethink our towers.
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Can our minds be taken hostage?
It’s not unusual for captives to end up feeling strong bonds with their captors. But is it a matter of submission or survival?
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Can our sexual desires be transformed?
In the 1950s, many psychiatrists thought that homosexuality could be reformed. One found that it couldn’t – and his discoveries led to a change in the law.
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Do good mothers make good democracy?
To be psychologically fit for democracy, one distinguished paediatrician argued that you need a ‘good enough mother’ – and that we must acknowledge the bad side of our feelings.
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Delusional recycling and the problem with plastic
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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Believe yourself better
There’s more to recovery than medication. In future, our unconscious minds could be recruited to put a positive spin on our health problems, helping us feel better faster.
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Womb milk and the puzzle of the placenta
A human baby needs milk to survive – and this holds true even before it’s born. Joanna Wolfarth explores “womb milk”, as well as ancient and modern ideas about the placenta.