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Restoring disorder to ‘The Book of Disquiet’
Printer Tim Hopkins explains what making an extraordinary new edition of Fernando Pessoa’s book revealed about both the text and the mind.
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- Book extract
The history of brainwashing
Is it possible to control what other people think? In this abridged extract from his book ‘Brainwashed’, psychoanalyst and historian Daniel Pick offers us a new history of thought control.
- Book extract
- Book extract
The shape of thought
Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s description of the moment in 1887 when he saw a brain cell for the first time never fails to move neuroscientist Richard Wingate to tears. Here he captures that enduring sense of wonder.
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Pain and the power of activism
Today, women with endometriosis have more access to better information than ever before. Jaipreet Virdi applauds the shared stories, online communities and self-help books empowering women in pain.
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Medieval doodles
Fish, lute players and defaced demons: marginal doodles in some of Europe’s first printed books provide a tantalising glimpse into the late-medieval mind.
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The meanings of hurt
In the early modern period, gruesome incidents of self-castration and other types of self-injury garnished the literature of the time. Alanna Skuse explores the messages these wounds conveyed.
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The Ladies of Llangollen
As we celebrate LGBT History Month, Sarah Bentley explores the relationship between the two 18th-century women known as the Ladies of Llangollen.
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The solidarity of sickness
Visiting an injured friend in hospital prompts writer Sinéad Gleeson to reflect on the instant rapport forged between compatriots in the kingdom of the sick.
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The poetic language of health
When his doctors could only offer phone consultations, James Morland turned to poetry to make sense of the medical terms describing his symptoms and test results.
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Robinson Crusoe and the morality of solitude
Robinson Crusoe, fiction’s most famous castaway, was certainly isolated, but did he suffer the intrinsically modern affliction of loneliness?
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Illness and the influence of the stars
Could alien germs from space have caused major pandemics across the world? Taras Young investigates the ideas of a few unconventional scientists who believe this to be the case.
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Bringing Braille back to the modern world
For anyone who thinks Braille is so last century, read on. New tech is helping dust Braille down and bring it to today’s visually impaired people.
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Found items
Books leave their traces in our minds, but we leave traces of ourselves in books too, as these fascinating items found inside old works show.
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Wonder Woman’s wonder women
Discover more about the women who inspired an icon: Wonder Woman’s story of bondage, bracelets and birth control.
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Cataloguing Audrey
Work begins in earnest to restore order to the archive Audrey Amiss kept of the minutest happenings in her life. Like detectives, the archivists search for subtle clues to chronology in the mass of materials.
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- Book extract
“I’ve never talked to anybody about this before”
Douglas is furious. He’s at crisis point and needs help. Read the first of his two sessions with psychoanalyst Susie Orbach.
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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.
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How do advertisers get inside our heads?
Vance Packard exposed techniques of mass manipulation developed by 1950s advertisers that are still at work today in the age of big data.
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A medieval guide to practical magic
With few sources of effective help available when treating an injured patient, the medieval physician could instead stage a healing ceremony using a practical how-to guide he carried with him.
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Sex in graphic novels
Sex and sexuality have long been explored in the history of the graphic novel.
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The doctor who challenged the unicorn myth
Our era of fake news and medical misinformation is nothing new. Estelle Paranque relays the thrusts and parries of a 440-year-old row over a magical cure-all, the unicorn horn.
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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.
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Would you like to buy a unicorn?
The story behind why somebody tried to sell Henry Wellcome a unicorn head in 1928.
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Dyslexia and its misconceptions
Overcoming common myths about dyslexia only adds to the challenges of growing up with the condition. Madeleine Morley, who was diagnosed with dyslexia aged eight, goes into myth-busting mode and shares her personal experiences.
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Lovesickness and ‘The Love Thief’
An 11th-century poem of love, lust and possibly gruesome death still resonates today.