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39 results
  • Article
  • Article

Inhaling happiness and gasping for a high

| Stevyn Colgan

The rapid, short-lived high we get from whippets, reefers and vapes can be accompanied by long-term health consequences. The search is on for safer ways to get stoned.

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How architecture builds a profession of stress

| Kristin Hohenadel

Architects might produce buildings that enhance our health, but at what cost? Kristin Hohenadel explores architecture’s pressurised and stressful culture.

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Epidemic threats and racist legacies

| Jacob Steere-WilliamsDark Matter

Epidemiology is the systematic, data-driven study of health and disease in populations. But as historian Jacob Steere-Williams suggests, this most scientific of fields emerged in the 19th century imbued with a doctrine of Western imperialism – a legacy that continues to influence how we talk about disease.

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Are doctors medical detectives?

| Jules MontagueJohn R A Smith

Do doctors really identify medical conditions in the same way that detectives solve crimes? Neurologist Jules Montague makes her diagnosis.

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Dementia playlists and musical memory

| Grace MeadowsSteven Pocock

Listening to the right music can provide both solace and pleasure for someone with dementia, helping them to reconnect with the world around them. Grace Meadows makes the case for more music in dementia care.

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Making sunstroke insanity

| Kristin D HusseyGergo Varga

Medical historian Dr Kristin Hussey takes a closer look at sunstroke and mental illness, and how, in the late 19th century, they connected at the crossroads of colonial science and the idea of whiteness.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

Your gut’s instincts

| Elsa RichardsonSteven Pocock

Cultural historian Elsa Richardson explores the stomach’s influence over our emotions, and why trusting your gut is often good advice.

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Medieval doodles

| Jack Litchfield

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.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

How stories bring us together

| Elif ShafakSteven Pocock

Elif Shafak considers how hard it is to be heard in our divided world, but how listening can nurture wisdom, connection and empathy.

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Hands-on healthcare

| Ella Nørgaard MortonThomas S G Farnetti

A young hospital volunteer feared her contribution was a long way from the serious business of real healthcare. But time spent painting patients’ nails proved to be a valuable contribution to life on the ward.

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Coleridge’s hypochondria

| Mike JayNaki Narh

An intense focus on his own bodily sensations led poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to self-medicate with narcotics. But this fascination also put Coleridge ahead of the medical sensibilities of his day.

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On body horror and growing up strange

| Briar Ripley PageSonia Leong

A young child’s unusual feelings, reactions and assertions are routinely dismissed by adults. Find out how manga horror stories became a source of strength, and helped them trust their adult body.

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Migraine, creativity and me

| Lydia Ruffles

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

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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.